# PGSimCity

27 Hacker News commenters recommended PGSimCity and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People praise it as an engaging 3D visual tour of how PostgreSQL works internally. The most common complaint is that the screen is too busy and crowded with popups to follow.

## Why people recommend it

- Engaging way to show complex internals (3 comments): "it presents such a complex technical implementation process in such an engaging way" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064171)) "This is really cool, I like having visualization to hold on my head!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064140)) "I don't know what I am looking at but it is fabulous." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064116))
- Visually impressive and cool (3 comments): "Amazing, great work. Keep polishing this up!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064280)) "So much stuff to see but looks very cool!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065666)) "This is awesome, what a cool idea!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49081766))

## What people warn about

- Too busy and cluttered (2 comments): "There are too many boxes and things changing on the screen to get a sense of what is happening." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064136)) "I think it's too busy to understand." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065226))
- Popups and UI block the view (2 comments): "remove ~50% of the UI since it covers too much of a laptop screen" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064271)) "80% of the visual space is popups that completely block it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064209))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [ciechanow.ski](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ciechanow-ski.md): 33 recommend
- [Size of Life](https://hackerapproved.com/p/size-of-life.md): 30 recommend
- [Ithihāsas](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ithih-sas.md): 18 recommend
- [Now I Get It](https://hackerapproved.com/p/now-i-get-it.md): 17 recommend
- [Transformer Explainer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/transformer-explainer.md): 12 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "PGSimCity", https://hackerapproved.com/p/pgsimcity/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).