Tim Hutton
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2012–2022
3:37 · 312K views · Oct 9, 2012
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.
10 comments from Hacker News
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]
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]
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]
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
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.