R3F vs Three.js

You might ask, why use React Three Fiber instead of just Three.js directly? Let’s explore that. Three.js by itself is a powerful 3D engine – you create a scene, camera, objects, and animate them with imperative code. React Three Fiber (R3F) is a wrapper that allows us to write Three.js scene components as React components. This means we can describe our 3D scene in a more declarative style (using JSX syntax), which can make our code cleaner and easier to manage as the project grows. One big advantage is the separation of concerns: with R3F, our game’s state and logic can live in React (or in external state libraries like Koota), while the rendering of the 3D scene is efficiently handled by Three.js under the hood. The React system helps manage updates so that we re-render only when necessary. In fact, according to the three-fiber team, React Three Fiber can be more performant than using Three.js alone because it leverages React’s optimizations, and it stays in sync with Three.js updates. Essentially, R3F runs the Three.js rendering loop outside the normal React reconciliation, so it’s not slowed down by UI updates; instead, it can take advantage of React’s scheduling to better handle lots of objects or frequent updates. Another benefit is that we can compose our scene out of reusable pieces. For example, we could have a <Player /> component that encapsulates the player’s mesh, controls, and maybe even its own state, separate from an <Enemy /> component or <Environment /> component. This modular approach (thanks to React) makes it easier to work in a team or to debug parts of the scene. We mentioned Koota for game state management – this fits in here: we might use Koota to handle the game’s dynamic state (positions, physics, game rules) and then have React Three Fiber subscribe to that state and update the visuals accordingly. This way, heavy game logic updates don’t always force React to re-render everything; instead, Koota can update just the necessary parts. In summary, React Three Fiber gives us a cleaner structure and potential performance benefits while still using Three.js at the core for rendering. It’s like having the best of both worlds: the reliability of a proven 3D engine with the developer experience of React. Now that we’ve chosen our approach, we should talk about making sure our game runs smoothly – that brings us to scene optimization.