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SmoothLifeL

Tim Hutton
Demos
YouTube
4 HN users recommended this demo4 months2012–2022 score 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” (HN, 2020)

1 strong recommendations · 3 recommendations · 6 citations · Demos · intermediate

10 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@sandworm101 Apr 2020 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Game of Life, Simulated in the Game of Life (2012) [video]
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
@TazeTSchnitzel May 2014 Recommends
on HN thread Show HN: HTML5 Game of Life in 24-bit RGB
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
@kjeetgill Jun 2018 Recommends
on HN thread Show HN: Yagol, a Game of Life sandbox built with React.js
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
@yesenadam Jan 2022 Recommends
on HN thread 29-year-old Conway conjecture settled
Read more
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]
Best video of SmoothLife

Citations, criticism and jokes

@wolfium3 May 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Self-Reproducing Cellular Automata
(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] .
Example of continuous cellular automata

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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