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.