Site experiment · first seen June 17, 2026

The Desk That Learned Depth

The homepage keeps one logical desk in two representations: a quick 2D collage and an explorable 3D cliff room. The long-running experiment records what each model pass improved, what it broke, and which changes survived the same responsive and interaction checks.

Shared 2D/3D state Reciprocal room Model re-review Screenshot QA

Try the homepage desk Download reproduction MD

Historical June 2026 homepage capture showing an early 3D desk room before the reciprocal cliff-room rebuild — Historical checkpoint, not the current scene: the early room still read as a shallow stage.

Question

Can the same portrait, papers, records, and discoveries survive a switch from quick collage to small explorable world?

Method

Hold the brief, viewports, interaction states, and recovery paths steady while newer models critique the last best pass.

Decision

Keep only changes that survive screenshots, accessibility checks, telemetry grounded in live geometry, and human review.

From a switch to one architectural world

The first 3D mode extended the existing paper-and-record desk without replacing the 2D view. Early screenshots made the failures useful: furniture disappeared at ordinary viewports, dropped cards floated, rear yaw fell into blank space, and the exterior looked like a separate dollhouse. Later passes stopped polishing two approximations and reused the actual room under reciprocal cameras.

Jun 17c8ed8e5daAdded the visible 2D | 3D switch and the first Three.js desk room during the GPT-5.5/xhigh period.
Jun 21588e36509Checked in comparable 2D, room, outside, zoom, and album-state captures. They preserved evidence of the shallow room and separate miniature.
Jul 12840a3e1cbUnder GPT-5.6 Sol/ultra, rebuilt anchors, rear-orbit clearance, compact framing, raycasts, and grounded card recovery.
Jul 13a765c5291Replaced the hand-matched exterior miniature with the actual room graph under reciprocal cameras.

The model label is context, not a causal performance claim. Prompt, retained context, task scope, implementation history, and human critique changed too. The fair comparison is the evidence contract: same routes, same viewports, same important states, and an honest record of both accepted and reverted work.

Credit and provenance

The desk’s playful artifact language adapts an interaction lesson from Jackie Hu’s portfolio: small objects should reveal something real about the person. The room, assets, state model, and implementation are original to this site.