SmoothLifeL on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2012–2022.
demo · intermediate · evergreen
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.
HN points to it whenever Game of Life or cellular automata come up, as the best visual example of a mesmerizing continuous-domain alternative.
“Must see evolution of GOL”
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
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]
in “Game of Life, Simulated in the Game of Life (2012) [video]” · View on HN
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]
in “29-year-old Conway conjecture settled” · View on HN
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]
in “Show HN: Yagol, a Game of Life sandbox built with React.js” · View on HN
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
in “Show HN: HTML5 Game of Life in 24-bit RGB” · View on HN
Also: [link] featuring the seminal paper by Stephan Rafler and Tim Hutton's video ▶ this video [link] featuring a more recent variant
in “Lenia – Mathematical Life Forms (2018) [video]” · View on HN
Reminds me of SmoothLife. Generalization of Conway's "Game of Life" to a continuous domain - SmoothLife (Stephan Rafler) [link] Video of SmoothLifeL: ▶ this video
in “ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program” · View on HN
(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 .
in “Self-Reproducing Cellular Automata” · View on HN
If you are familiar with Conway's game of life, there is also "smooth life" which uses turing style reaction-diffusion equations: ▶ this video
in “Alan Turing’s chemistry hypothesis turned into a desalination filter” · View on HN
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]
in “Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers” · View on HN
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.
in “Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers” · View on HN