4 HN users recommended this demo4 months2012–2022score 4.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN points to it whenever Game of Life or cellular automata come up, as the best visual example of a mesmerizing continuous-domain alternative.
Tim Hutton's demonstration of SmoothLifeL, a continuous version of Conway's Game of Life using floating point values. It shows gliders traveling in any direction, rotating pairs, and elastic cord-like structures, with config details to run it yourself.
Must see evolution of GOL: "SmoothLife is a family of rules created by Stephan Rafler. It was designed as a continuous version of Conway's Game of Life - using floating point values instead of integers." [this video] [link]
SmoothLife, continuous Game of Life with floating point values
24 parallel games combined in a way indecipherable to normal human eyes isn't terribly interesting to me. I find SmoothLife more interesting: [this video]
SmoothLife as a more interesting take on Game of Life
If you're mesmerized by the "Game of Life" like I am your going to enjoy the Continuously Domain versions like smooth life. Check out the video[0], and an implementation in python[1] on HN. [0]: [this video] [1]: [link]
Mesmerizing continuous-domain version of Game of Life
Toffoli[0] & Margolus’[1] Cellular Automata Machines (1987) is the CA bible, I guess. Andrew Adamatsky edited the encyclopedic Cellular Automata (2018). Ed Fredkin's[2] stuff on reversible CA is fascinating. Gerard Vichniac[3] wrote some great papers in the 80s, e.g. Simulating Physics with Cellular Automata (1984). Kenichi Morita[4] papers. Rudy Rucker[5] has written a lot of stuff on 1 and 2D CA, and worked as a CA programmer. Etc. There are a lot of papers. The very common finite element method of solving differential equations and PDEs is basically the same thing as CA - see e.g. Anderson's Computational Fluid Dynamics . Attractors and approximations for lattice dynamical systems by Shengfan Zhou, 2002. 1954's Studies of Nonlinear Problems by Fermi, Ulam, Pasta, featuring a 1D CA. [link] Noether's theorem comes up frequently - that every symmetry of the system corresponds to a conservation law.[6] Smooth Life is Stephan Rafler's very cool version of CGOL with every discrete aspect turned into a continuous one.[7] [0] [link] [1] [link] [link] [2] [link] [3] [link] [4] [link] [5] [link] [6] [link] [7] best video of SmoothLife [this video] [link] This slideshow by Rafler contains the best, most complete explanation of it I've found: [link] Shadertoy version [link]
Original post: [link] Technical details on the YouTube page: [this video] (Two lots of source code available: Stephan's and mine) Other discussions about this: Reddit: [link] Metafilter: [link]
SmoothLife video with technical details and source code
Good job. Any idea why using the parameters specified in the video description of [this video] do not seem to replicate the output of the video? [link] I tried the same parameters in the version downloadable at [link] and it did not seem to produce similar output to the video either.
(not directly related to the article) The cellular automata in the article is a discrete one. For those interested, there are also "continuous" automata [this video] .
Reminds me of SmoothLife. Generalization of Conway's "Game of Life" to a continuous domain - SmoothLife (Stephan Rafler) [link] Video of SmoothLifeL: [this video]
Video of SmoothLifeL generalizing Game of Life to continuous domain
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