Relax while watching bouncing particles making connections when they get closer
167 points by tikili 3 days ago | 57 comments
  • gus_massa 2 days ago |
    Nice. Have you tried a version where the particles have a small atraction/repulsion? (Bonus points for a bar to choose the force.) (1/r^2? can I choose the exponent?)
    • hnuser123456 12 hours ago |
      This is a very slippery slope towards making a full blown 3d three.js octree based n-body gravity simulation, at least for me :)
      • dylan604 12 hours ago |
        it doesn't have to be 3d though. another idea would be to assign mass values to the particles and see if after an amount of time if everything settles down to some sort of orbital track around each other. but either idea moves it from being a relaxing visual into a bit of sciencey simulator that totally changes to the scope of the project
    • dylan604 12 hours ago |
      I was expecting a +/- charge interaction like this as well, but that was just based on my brain's default interpretation of the word particle in the title with this being HN and all. It took a second for my brain to switch to just a visual fx particle system use of the word.

      Nonetheless, my default thoughts do not take away from it being a fun visual to zone out to for a bit

  • ddawson 12 hours ago |
    I feel like that's what's happening to my neurons when I'm browsing Reddit. And Hacker News.
  • justsomehnguy 12 hours ago |
    Need DVD version
  • grues-dinner 12 hours ago |
    Nice. Reminds me strongly of levitated.net (sadly broken due to no Flash) and complexification.net (sadly broken due to no Java).

    Geeking out over Jared Tarbell over dial up basically got me into computers in the first place.

  • leeoniya 12 hours ago |
    there is a website on the internet that has this in the banner or background, but i cannot remember what it was.
  • deadbabe 12 hours ago |
    What if you incorporate game of life type rules into this?
  • someoneontenet 12 hours ago |
    Neat, I’ve also made something like this with processing https://robw.fyi/constellation.html
    • hashishen 9 hours ago |
      this is great nice work
  • mjstone 12 hours ago |
    Reminds me of the Ex Machina end credits [1] (and the Android live wallpaper I made as a homage to it [2].)

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRJ-fPAO3Go [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.figmentano...

  • stackedinserter 11 hours ago |
    I can't relax, the fact that connections don't affect their speed/direction infuriates me.
    • stavros 9 hours ago |
      I didn't think I'd care, but I had the same reaction.
  • airstrike 11 hours ago |
    Made a version with charged particles. Probably bad physics all around, but here it is: https://shorturl.at/ocvEO
  • bouncybouncycat 11 hours ago |
    It seems to me that it is inevitable: every programmer goes through a phase where they do a bounded billiard ball simulation. It’s like a right of passage.
    • devin 11 hours ago |
      rite* of passage
      • jhncls 9 hours ago |
        A "wright of passage", a "craftsperson of passage", someone who facilitates or creates transitions -- like a metaphorical bridge-builder
        • mystified5016 3 hours ago |
          Rite, as in the ritual one performs to pass to the next stage of their goal.
  • kaeruct 11 hours ago |
    I'd like to share mine as well. There's a bit of more interaction between particles but I don't remember the exact logic. Code should be easy to read: https://kaeruct.github.io/projects/short-experiments/dots/
    • biomcgary 10 hours ago |
      Agglomerative clustering
    • nhecker 9 hours ago |
      I like this.
    • ides_dev 5 hours ago |
      I like how some of the particles get thrown out of the cluster on wider elliptical orbits, they look like comets.
  • voiper1 10 hours ago |
    Cute. First thing I did though was to see if moving my mouse or clicking affected it. Doesn't seem to, please add that!
  • 65 10 hours ago |
    This would make the perfect hero background to my portfolio site!
  • alentred 10 hours ago |
    That... is... mesmerizing... ... ... ⠋ ⠙ ⠹ ⠸ ⠼ ⠴ ⠦ ⠧ ⠇ ⠏ ⠋ ⠙ ⠹ ⠸ ⠼ ⠴ ⠦ ⠧ ⠇ ⠏

    Thank you. I wonder if I could use it for meditation. If only it would not require a blue screen.

  • polishdude20 10 hours ago |
    I'd love to see the connection line come from both particles and join between them! Ooo and also if they can like start with random colors and slowly as they meet their colors average out
  • christina97 10 hours ago |
    Having a hero background that was a variation of this was really popular about 10 years ago or so. You’ll still find them on plenty of websites built around that time.
    • duskwuff 6 hours ago |
      It's still extremely common in web site templates for cryptocurrency and AI companies. Sure, it's cliché as all hell, but that doesn't stop people from using it.
  • Zaskoda 8 hours ago |
    This is a lot like how I imagine a mesh net with mobile nodes working.
  • chkas 8 hours ago |
    Hello author here. I'm a little surprised to see this on the front page of Hacker News. This is just a simple demo for my educational programming language Easylang. You can easily edit the code and increase the particle count for example. In the IDE you can then create a link with the code embedded in the URL.

    https://tiki.li/run/#cod=dVLNbsIwDL7nKT5p0gRDdEGMA9PYM+yO0FT...

    • chkas 8 hours ago |
    • skygazer 7 hours ago |
      Well, that looks suspiciously like caustics in and around a swimming pool on a sunny day.
    • Root_Denied 4 hours ago |
      How hard would it be to push this into 3 dimensions instead of 2? It made me think of a starting point for a model of the universe and galaxy interactions.
  • junon 8 hours ago |
    Would love to see this with boids simulations :D
  • ausbah 8 hours ago |
    curious what do ppl usually use to make these animations? i’ve used pillow with python in the pass but that only really works with images and seems clunky
  • youainti 8 hours ago |
    This made me realize how much I miss screensavers. I used to sit and just stare at them meditatively as a teen.
    • grues-dinner 7 hours ago |
      I think I learned more about chaos theory by hacking a first person Rössler attractor "rider" into xscreensaver (instead of the usual Lorenz attractor) than by any other thing.
    • ykonstant 6 hours ago |
      Also the cool effects in music players.
  • greatNespresso 7 hours ago |
    Hypnotizing. Watching this with Beanie playing in the background. Mate that feels good
  • tempestn 7 hours ago |
    Anyone else's brain find this... I guess stressful, rather than relaxing? Something about them connecting but never hanging on, and the bits never all coming together, I think.
    • dotancohen 5 hours ago |
      Rather like connections in life maybe.

      All I see is blonde, redhead...

  • Recursing 6 hours ago |
    See https://bleuje.com/animationsite/2024_1/ for a collection of programmatic black and white animations made with https://processing.org/

    He publishes the source code on https://github.com/Bleuje/processing-animations-code/tree/ma...

  • bitwize 5 hours ago |
    Neat!

    I wrote a "game jam fail" game involving pulsating blue "cells" that cluster together and form attacking aliens:

    https://github.com/bitwize/cosmic-sweep

  • idiotsecant 3 hours ago |
    As an aside, I described this to Claude and had it recreate it in javascript with some other features I wanted. It took me 30 seconds to write the prompt and it worked flawlessly.

    Will anyone ever write fun things like this again once the machine can do it for you? How will young people ever get interested when the machine can do all the work for you?

  • thih9 3 hours ago |
    Note, you can edit the code.

    Here’s my version, with particles affecting each other: https://tiki.li/run/#cod=dVPbToNAEH3fr5jExLQacFH7UNP6Db43jaF...

  • nayuki 2 hours ago |
  • sota_pop 2 hours ago |
    This reminds me of the header on the home page of one of my favorite network theory books:

    https://networksciencebook.com/

    The version in the banner is interactive with your cursor!

  • bijection an hour ago |
    I built a similar thing that includes forces between particles meant to simulate a sort of fluid or, as you scroll down, a gelatinous solid. There’s a bit of free energy injected to keep things moving so it’s actually a very bad fluid sim, but I think that makes it a better interactive toy in exchange.

    One of the fun parts of naively n^2 particle simulations is trying to find ways to reduce the algorithmic complexity of collision detection. I remember messing with sweep lines and similar, though I don’t remember what optimizations made it into the final code. [0]

    [0] https://omrelli.ug

    • bluocms an hour ago |
      Looks really good and is also relaxing to watch when it’s compressed. Did you open sourced it?

      And your projects are really nice too. Wall smasher is amazing!