Tools / Analysis
Water Pro v4 takes on the moving boundary between ocean and shore
Dan Greenheck’s latest preview combines precomputed shoreline work with a fast solver at the water’s leading edge. The intended setup is one terrain-registration call.
The next Three.js Water Pro update is concentrating on the place where an ocean stops being an open surface and meets land. In a preview posted on 2 November UTC, creator Dan Greenheck says v4 is nearly feature complete. The new island archipelago is the demonstration; the engineering story is how he is trying to make its shorelines look convincing without spending too much computation on them.
Calculate less at the moving edge
Greenheck describes a split approach. Much of the calculation is baked—computed in advance—while a fast solver handles the leading edge of the swash, the thin surge of water running up the shore. He contrasts this with using a computationally intensive shallow-water solver for the usual solution. The important distinction is where work happens: reuse what can be prepared, then spend runtime computation on the changing boundary.
His post does not disclose the full algorithm, the cost of that preprocessing or a frame-rate comparison. It is an explanation of a design choice, not yet a reproducible performance result. The remaining difficult feature he names is spray where water strikes rocks: a reminder that shoreline motion and airborne droplets are separate pieces of the effect.
Sources: Dan Greenheck / X [1]
Greenheck’s v4 island preview
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The creator’s development preview. It does not establish performance on a particular device.
Give it terrain, not a hand-drawn coastline
For users, Greenheck says one function call will register the terrain; there should be no need to draw shorelines manually. That is the practical attraction of this preview. A water system becomes easier to reuse when the surrounding geometry is its input, rather than another outline an artist must maintain alongside the scene. Whether it handles unusual terrain well still needs testing in the released version.
The existing product is a WebGPU-first ocean shader for Three.js. Its listing already includes FFT wave simulation, foam, buoyancy and underwater effects. Those are the foundation, not a list of features newly released with this preview. The advertised WebGL fallback also uses a different wave path, so compatibility should not be mistaken for identical simulation on every renderer.
Sources: Dan Greenheck / X [1] · Three.js Roadmap [3]
A preview with work still visible
Greenheck hopes to ship the update in two to three weeks. That is a target, not a release date. When checked on 3 November, the store’s newest listed download was still v3.5.1. A public demo is linked from the store, but its existence does not establish that the v4 shoreline system is available there. The next useful test is straightforward: put the released system against actual terrain and measure the cost of the shoreline, not just the beauty of the ocean.
Sources: Dan Greenheck / X [2] · Three.js Roadmap [3] · Three.js Water Pro [4]
SOURCES & METHOD
The record behind the article
Based on Dan Greenheck’s preview and release-window reply, plus the Water Pro product page, checked on 3 November 2026. We read the creator’s explanation and the current product listing; we did not benchmark v4, inspect its implementation or establish that the public demo runs this unreleased build.
- Water Pro v4 island archipelago and shoreline explanation Dan Greenheck / X · 2026-11-02
- Creator’s two-to-three-week target Dan Greenheck / X · 2026-11-02
- Three.js Water Pro: features, files and compatibility Three.js Roadmap
- Three.js Water Pro live demo Three.js Water Pro