PGSimCity - How PostgreSQL Works
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
PGSimCity is a 3D interactive simulation modeling PostgreSQL internals as a city.
PGSimCity visualizes a PostgreSQL cluster as a 3D city with districts for clients, backends, buffer pool, WAL, storage, maintenance, and standby. Users can run queries, adjust parameters like shared_buffers, synchronous_commit, and autovacuum settings, and observe live metrics (TPS, cache hit ratio, WAL rate, replication lag). The simulation includes scenarios like checkpoint storms, cache thrash, bloat, and lock pile-ups. The author notes it is an early prototype built with AI assistance (Claude Opus 5) using ~3.86B tokens, and likely contains inaccuracies.
What commenters are saying
Commenters are impressed by the ambition and visual presentation, calling it "fabulous" and "amazing." Common feedback: the UI is too cluttered with popups that obscure the 3D visualization, camera controls need improvement, and the tour auto-advances rather than letting users explore interactively. Some suggest reducing visual noise, adding transparency to overlays, and fixing z-fighting glitches. One commenter notes the "SimCity" name may infringe EA's trademark. Another questions the accuracy of AI-generated content, but the author acknowledges the project uses LLM assistance.