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PAXAL

faq

Common questions, grouped roughly. For anything not covered here, email hpj675@gmail.com.

WHAT IS THIS

What is PAXAL?

Real places, scanned — drivable in a browser tab. No download, no install. Technically the captures are Gaussian splats: photoreal reconstructions of actual streets, renderered locally on whatever device the visitor already has. The driving game is the first title; the platform behind it is the bet. See /how-it-works for the technical brief.

Do I need to download anything?

No. No download. No install. No streaming. No lag. Open the URL and drive.

What's the goal?

Prove that AAA-quality interactive experiences can be delivered to commodity browsers, including hardware that can't run a console title. Multiplayer, photoreal, open-world web games as a single engineering quarter rather than a decade away.

Is this open source?

Brand assets stay © PAXAL. The source is under active development; a public-source release lands when the external surface stabilises. Until then see /credits for what we stand on and /community for contact.

BROWSER + DEVICE

What browser do I need?

The browser you already have. The smoothest path uses WebGPU — Chrome 113+, Edge 113+, Chrome on Android 12+, Safari 18+ on macOS — and WebGL2 is the fallback elsewhere. The page picks the path automatically; there is nothing to configure.

My phone says it works but feels slow. Why?

The first-run calibration picks a preset from your adapter string. If the heuristic picked too high a preset, open Settings (`,`) and drop to BALANCED or PERFORMANCE. The second visit will pin to that choice automatically.

Does it support gamepad / touch / VR?

Gamepad and touch yes (auto-detected; the mobile control overlay slides in on coarse pointers). VR is parked — splats render into a WebGPU canvas, not a stereo pair; the spike is a separate beat.

CAPTURES + CONTENT

Are the scenes real places?

Yes. Every drivable arena is a Gaussian-splat capture — real photographs reconstructed as a point cloud with view-dependent appearance baked in. ROOM was self-captured; LUDLOW SQUARE and LA NIGHT are community-sourced under CC BY 4.0.

Will more arenas land?

Yes. A fourth arena is on the LATER tier of /roadmap; it pushes the asset pipeline end-to-end with either a self-capture or a re-licensed open dataset.

Can I add my own capture?

The pipeline is scriptable — see scripts/pipeline.mjs and scripts/split-by-scale.mjs. Drop a .compressed.ply under public/arena/, add the entry to lib/arenas.ts, and run the dev server. Spawn-pose calibration is currently manual.

PRIVACY + STORAGE

What gets stored on my device?

Splat chunks in OPFS (capped ~1 GB, LRU-evicted), a few KB of settings in localStorage (selected arena, audio mix, visual preset, calibration), a per-arena drive log, and the service-worker shell cache. Full breakdown at /privacy.

What gets sent to you?

Anonymous PostHog telemetry: WebGPU adapter family, first-pixel time, FPS samples, cache hits and misses, arena selections. No account, no email, no IP-derived location. Opt-out lives at Settings → Privacy.

How do I clear the cache?

Settings → Network & Storage → CLEAR CACHE. Drops OPFS + service-worker shell. Preserves your preferences and drive log — those are separate concepts.

FOLLOW + SHARE

How do I follow build progress?

/changelog for one-line entries per shipping beat, /roadmap for what's next, /devlog for longer-form design notes.

How do I share with attribution?

pnpm invite "Their Name" generates a deep-link URL with an anonymous attribution token the runtime telemetry picks up automatically. URL goes to the clipboard. No data about the recipient leaves their browser.

I found a bug. Where do I send it?

hpj675@gmail.com. Include the dev-probe panel if you can — hold tilde ~ for 3 seconds on the title screen and the full adapter + capability table drops in.