It's the same idea updated with extra cycles.

It is pretty, and there are some nice aesthetic touches. But the overall look is still very blocky and VRML-ish.

I guess at some point we'll get photorealistic rendering - most likely in AR glasses rather than in the browser - and there will be a lot more experimentation for a while, some of it driven by AI.

But even this is in a tiny niche far, far outside the web mainstream, and if it hadn't been linked here hardly anyone would find it.

I remember the exact moment in the mid-90s when I realised the suits were moving in and the web was going to be transformed from a weird, colourful, mad eccentric thing into a generic mall.

From a corporate POV it has far exceeded my worst nightmares. Sites like this are a very small pushback, but they're not going to make a dent in the overall crapification and hustle-driven corporatisation of our biggest and most interesting planetary cultural resource.