Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.
— Nassim Taleb — Antifragile
When Covid-19 shut down physical events in 2020, the demand for virtual alternatives surged overnight. Organisations needed ways to host conferences, bring distributed teams together, and share presentations and content — all through the browser, with no installs or plugins required.
This experiment at Tonijn bv explored PlayCanvas as a platform for building interactive 3D virtual event spaces running entirely in the browser via WebGL. The result was a navigable multi-room environment where attendees could move between breakout rooms, watch livestreams, interact with presentation content, and engage through integrated chat.
Building the environment
The 3D spaces were modeled in SketchUp and Cinema 4D, then imported into PlayCanvas where they were assembled into a scene graph with interactive elements — navigation buttons to move between rooms, embedded video players for livestreams, and UI overlays for presentations and dialog. Custom JavaScript handled camera transitions, media playback, button states, and scene routing.
Why WebGL
The browser-native approach was a deliberate choice. With teams suddenly working from home on varying hardware and network conditions, a lightweight WebGL application accessible through a URL removed every barrier to entry. No downloads, no app stores, no IT approval — just a link and a browser.
Tools
- PlayCanvas
- WebGL
- JavaScript
- Cinema 4D
- SketchUp
- HTML5
- CSS