There are a bunch of other equally cool physics simulations&#x2F;games on that website, well done

Many years ago there was a viral web-based game involving...shooting frogs, perhaps?The mechanics were not explained, you had to discover how to play it.The problem: the primary mechanism was pointer clicks, but the Mac&#x27;s tap to click didn&#x27;t work.So the game was in motion but nothing I did made any difference. I even wondered if perhaps the virality was a joke: the people who knew it didn&#x27;t actually work were playing a trick on everyone else.Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is that forcing the user to discover the mechanics works better when you control the full stack.Or that those of us who cherish tap to click should occasionally press harder, just in case.

Absolutely love things like this that encourage a little bit of discovery instead of instructions - makes it a bit more magical, I think

I was wondering why I couldn’t blow bigger bubbles?

So soothing! Todo: implement Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner (L-S-W) theory of particle coarsening for soap bubbles (avg size increases with cube of time) ;)

Holly cow.Old Version
Written in ActionScript 3.0
Supports spheres and boxes as collision shapes
Supports various joints (ball and socket, distance, hinge, prismatic, etc...)
Fast and stable collision solver

That caught me off-guard as well. I only ever written one thing in Haxe, but the experienced was mixed. It worked, but it also kind of painful to work with.For context: Haxe is a programming language with the main purpose to have several compile targets for many programming languages.Glad it is working for them.

&gt; Apparently that engine is written in something called Haxe and its multi-platform.Haxe is interesting. I remember coming across it back in the days of Flash.They also had a bytecode VM of their own called Neko.At the time when I heard of it there were three platforms you could target with Haxe: JavaScript, Flash, and Neko.It’s pretty cool to see that after all these years Haxe is still alive and in use.

Haxe is not that niche and is on the front page a lot:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?q=haxe" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?q=haxe</a>

This has vibes of the old Web, where amazing and niche things were happening. Apparently that engine is written in something called Haxe and its multi-platform.Sometimes I wonder what I&#x27;m missing out by looking at lists curated by points given out by people who come together by hyper specialised interests. Should have heard of it before hearing about the millionth JS framework.

Might take a little bit of refactoring ;) but <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works&#x2F;bubbles&#x2F;main.js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works&#x2F;bubbles&#x2F;main.js</a>

The author just explained the algorithm on Twitter: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shr_id&#x2F;status&#x2F;1589238902325669893" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shr_id&#x2F;status&#x2F;1589238902325669893</a>

Three.js is just a rendering engine -- it wouldn&#x27;t allow you to create something like this anyway.Also, I don&#x27;t believe that the bubble toy is related to their physics engine; it seems like a different type of physics. The engine is focused on 3D collisions, joints, springs, etc., whereas the bubble toy is simulating thin films.I wish there was source code for the bubble toy so we could see how it works!

Thought this was using three.js, but they built their own physics engine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;OimoPhysics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;OimoPhysics</a>

Voronoi Cells just fascinate me for some weird reason.

-- they talk a lot about hackathons in their tweets =) --eg: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atcoder.jp&#x2F;contests&#x2F;ahc016" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atcoder.jp&#x2F;contests&#x2F;ahc016</a>

His about page has some of his competitive programming results: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;about" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;about</a>(Sidenote: try dragging the profile pic!)

&gt; competitive programmings, mainly marathon-styled onesWhat kind of competitions is this referring to?

-- fun - also - love authors twitter avatar is dandelion - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shr_pc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shr_pc</a> - feel like they are in tune with the poetry of physics --

I watched it go for like a minute before realizing that I can actually interact! I love this.

If the challenge was to get the pin inside a big cluster of bubbles, then I succeeded.

Bubble Bobble (1986)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c64-wiki.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bubble_Bobble" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c64-wiki.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bubble_Bobble</a>

It seems to me a very interesting and entertaining mechanic that could evolve into a game.

Some bubbles take morethan expected time to popBut, they will all pop

Some bubbles take much more than expected time to pop up. But eventually, they all pop up.

Nothing truer could have been spoken concerning this masterpiece.

Oh nice! I figured out the fan and spike, but for some reason I didn&#x27;t think to try to wave the want around :)

Remove the spike and the little fan bubbles glom onto on another. Very cool. You can just wave the bubble wand around too…This is very fun.

Would that actually make sense?Maybe I don&#x27;t want to know.I&#x27;m still grappling with my last bout of &quot;holy moly is the universe a simulation?&quot; after reading about a way of dealing with latency in networked games that looks a lot like relativity.

Wow, the tiny physics engine is that advanced?

It’s totally not anything at all related to quantum tunneling in anyway.

I wonder if you could do this if you cranked your polling rate up to 500hz like many gaming mice can.

Perhaps lack of interpolation of mouse event points

If you move your mouse really really fast, you can get through the bubbles without popping them.

Agreed that Voronoi patterns emerge, but I&#x27;m not sure that they&#x27;re using an explicit Voronoi algorithm to achieve that effect. I doubt it.It&#x27;s more likely IMO that the Voronoi pattern emerges from the constraints of the simulation.

Looks like a little bit of Voronoi patterns when the bubbles connect?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Voronoi_diagram" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Voronoi_diagram</a>

Their physics engine doesn&#x27;t seem related to the bubble toy as far as I can tell (although another HN comment implies it is). The physics engine implements 3D collisions between solid objects, joints, springs, etc. But the bubble toy is a different type of physics.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;OimoPhysics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;OimoPhysics</a>

I absolutely love this and am curious about the technical details behind simulating soap bubbles like this (it looks like the code isn&#x27;t available). Does anyone know what algorithm is being used?

I was surprised by all the projects on the website. This isn&#x27;t even the coolest one

Strongly recommend experimenting with this after a bottle of Malbec!

(dmix man long time no see! Let&#x27;s hang out soon!)I agree that this is a true work of art. The variation and attention to detail is delightful. I hope more people put together and share stuff like this on HN.

I spent wayyy too much time playing with this, just trying to understand all the dynamics. What makes the bubbles burst, or merge, or collapse, or partially burst and partially expand a connected bubble.The impact of the various directions of the fan or pin.So much variation in such a simple seeming base.

Make sure to check out the rest of his site. Amazing. Pay careful attention to the recursive box on the “works” page.

anyone else make a giant scary bubble to take over the page

There is also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thisissand.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thisissand.com&#x2F;</a> - very good for long telephone conferences :-)

I&#x27;d count Townscaper as a toy as well.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oskarstalberg.com&#x2F;Townscaper" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oskarstalberg.com&#x2F;Townscaper</a>

Powdertoy is definitely a toy. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;powdertoy.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;powdertoy.co.uk&#x2F;</a>

If we&#x27;re linking to internet toys, here&#x27;s a bit of shameless self-promotion. Something I made a little while back: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frogulis.net&#x2F;little-bits&#x2F;eye-on-a-string" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frogulis.net&#x2F;little-bits&#x2F;eye-on-a-string</a>

Soda constructor, circa 2000. Draw things with lines. Make some of them springd. Watch them move around. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Soda_Constructor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Soda_Constructor</a>Someone rebuilt it in Javascript. It’s not mobile friendly, so I haven’t been able to try much with it yet. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peterfidelman.github.io&#x2F;constructor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peterfidelman.github.io&#x2F;constructor&#x2F;</a>

The last time I remember seeing an internet toy was over a decade ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;experiments.withgoogle.com&#x2F;browser-ball" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;experiments.withgoogle.com&#x2F;browser-ball</a>

It reminds me of The Incredible Machine game.

&gt; it is refreshingI recommend exploring the top-right link and poking around this person&#x27;s site. It felt like an old flash website and took me back a couple decades.

I used to do this on Total Drivin’ on PS1. There were all sorts of ledges and off-track locations you could get yourself onto if you drove off track in the right way, sometimes even wall driving. Many, many hours.

&gt; hate almost all games for this need to advance, earn levels, die and start over, compete and scoreOne of the only games I&#x27;ve truly enjoyed for a long time is SimCity. I learned this genre is sometimes called &quot;idle games&quot;.&gt; What differentiates idle games from other types of game systems is that they can progress without player input. When players do engage, they tinker with a system, rather than encountering a confrontation that they can win or lose.&gt; Idle games invites players to participate in the game world, but does not revolve around them. You are, essentially, not a center of the world but a spectator.On the Design of Idle Games, Katta Spiel et al. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.acm.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;10.1145&#x2F;3311350.3347180" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.acm.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;10.1145&#x2F;3311350.3347180</a> (PDF)---Neverhood looks fun! Love the claymation art.The Neverhood Trailer (1996) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OOcWNOxoG6E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OOcWNOxoG6E</a>

This is one of the allures of Forza Horizon for me. On the surface, it&#x27;s an MMRPG, with social, collection, crafting, levels, puzzles, competition, et al, all of that can be turned off &#x2F; ignored as desired.With those items off, it&#x27;s a great place to &quot;drive&quot; around, with different climates, seasons, amazing views, etc. Drive a classic convertible along a beachfront road. Explore dirt roads in an SUV during a snow storm.It&#x27;s no driving simulator, but it&#x27;s a pleasant way to get away from the world for a while. If you&#x27;ve got the winter blahs and like driving &#x2F; scenery, plug your PC or Xbox into the biggest display you have and get away for a while.

Try out beam.ng and Microsoft flight simulator.

There&#x27;s games where the goal is this wandering off. Outer Wilds does this quite well I think.

I hate almost all games for this need to advance, earn levels, die and start over, compete and score. One of very few games I played when I was young was Test Drive 4*, where I would simply drive around and play, switching wipers on and off. I liked sports cars games, but I would often go backwards or wonder off the track, if game permitted. Also.. Neverhood. And creative mode in Minecraft.*) Test Drive 3

For more on the subject, Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic: the Gathering): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;magic.wizards.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;making-magic&#x2F;what-game-2018-06-04" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;magic.wizards.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;making-magic&#x2F;what-game-201...</a>

Well, a sandbox game still has game in the name, right?

What I like to say to distinguish them is that for something to be a game there must be a lose condition

Have you tried Kerbal Space Program? My son and I love to just roam around exploring, and trying to build different rockets and airplanes. We&#x27;re just not interesting in the game, but the exploration is amazing. It is also a terrific learning tool.

It&#x27;s a wonderful thing: a toy, not a game.A game has a goal. Here you are free to experiment without being led or nudged. In the world of computer-based entertainment, it is refreshing.

Delightful toys like this are why I love the web. I&#x27;d never go through the rigamarole of installing an app to play with this, but I sure will click a link.

Such a fun surprise when I realized that the fan does not only push air but pulls air in as well. The bubble wand placed to the left of the fan will still make bubbles out the right hand side. Interestingly it makes bigger bubbles than normal.

Especially that the gallery one is also in the gallery...

Yes! Try scrolling there, I almost missed that.

I especially liked the one for the works page itself! Very fun.

That stung me hard. Damn, Orisinal. I spent so much time playing those wonderful games on rainy afternoons with a tea pot. I had a dinky little Sony VAIO laptop, they were called &quot;Netbooks&quot; at the time around 2005. It was bliss.

I made a small tribute[0] to Winterbells last year when beginning to learn Godot. Spent much time with that music on loop way back when playing that cozy game![0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;poacher2k.itch.io&#x2F;summercoins" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;poacher2k.itch.io&#x2F;summercoins</a>

That&#x27;s just beautiful. I wish I had free time, patience and skills to do something like that.

Also the homepage animation is a demo of Rayleigh–Taylor instabilityhomepage : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rayleigh%E2%80%93Taylor_instability" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rayleigh%E2%80%93Taylor_instab...</a>

That website is a work of art.This whole comment thread makes for happy reading.A talented person creating cool original things and a bunch of smart people playing with, discussing and appreciating their work.

More of their amazing work here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works</a>Also they appear to be a student?

There was absolutely nothing that could be done about either of those problems.

Too bad flash was security cancer on top of browsers that already have enough of their own issues.

I remember some impressive native demos of platform games 12 years ago. Did the Flash to HTML5 converter work well? I never migrated my own &quot;masterpieces&quot;

They also wrote one in ActionScript!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;OGSL&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;src&#x2F;com&#x2F;element&#x2F;oimo&#x2F;ogsl&#x2F;OGSL.as" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;OGSL&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;src&#x2F;com&#x2F;element&#x2F;...</a>

Funny enough this project is a descendent of the flash lineage – it&#x27;s written in haxe which first existed as an alternative ActionScript compiler. It&#x27;s since evolved to be a strong functionally focused language of its own and perfect for writing games and interactives like this and now exports js instead. There&#x27;s even a project (OpenFL) to preserve the old APIs!.A good example of how haxe has evolved since AS2, the author (saharan) has written their own shader language _in_ haxe which they&#x27;ve used in this project. Haxe has a compile-time macro engine which you can develop DSLs to improve your workflow
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;HGSL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;saharan&#x2F;HGSL</a>

&gt; I don&#x27;t know what&#x27;s so special about flashA GUI authoring tool which everybody can learn instead of some insane manual canvas coding.From tech perspective, it works in my Pentium III computer, and the animation is streamable. Try that with JS?

You could make web animations 15 years ago. I don&#x27;t know what&#x27;s so special about flash that people miss in modern web.

12 years have passed since Steve Jobs killed Flash and finally  people can make some decent interactive Web animations which correctly works on latest browsers.

context - it&#x27;s an old-skool (Victorian era?) song that has been adopted by West Ham football club, and I guess some fans recorded a version of it here :)

And make sure you put adequate tune for it <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Jn0sB3CSMbo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Jn0sB3CSMbo</a>

reminds me a lot of the little &quot;games&quot; that were included with wario ware on the nintendo DS

I love the fluid design on the &quot;works&quot; page as it resizes to the browser. Putting physics into your resize algorithm really shows a lot of care and attention.Haxe is an awesome project that&#x27;s been around for ages... I last looked at it as a potential replacement for AIR&#x2F;AS3 a decade ago but the GPU capabilities weren&#x27;t there yet with OpenFL. Seems like it&#x27;s time to take a new look!

My experience:&quot;Wow, neat. I wonder how they did this.&quot;tries to right click (no context menu appears)hit F12 for developer tools&quot;Oh, it&#x27;s just a solid 173KB of javascript. No big deal.&quot;notices the window resize affected the simulation&quot;There&#x27;s now a big blob of bubbles coalescing at the top of my screen. Wow!&quot;

This one is impressive too: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works&#x2F;sandvox&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works&#x2F;sandvox&#x2F;</a>

I can&#x27;t even trash the fan with my pokey stick.

Bubbles in this demo do absolutely pop by themselves.

Beautiful work. My 4 year old instantly got it. But she noted that bubbles usually pop themselves. She also wondered when the bubbles would run out.

It&#x27;s really easy to see how big an impact iOS low power mode has in the framerate of something like this.

It didn&#x27;t work (I think? It was just a white screen). I tried changing IP with CTRL+SHIFT+L and it wasn&#x27;t doing anything, then tried copying the link and opening in a different window, but it wouldn&#x27;t copy (because I used CTRL+L).  Only then I realized it just doesn&#x27;t let you press any button on the keyboard. JESUS CHRIST never show me this link again.

Love it. Now I can just stare and turn my brain off ;)

You also get completely glitched bubbles, [briefly] self-intersecting bubbles, and bubbles within other bubbles depending on how you position stuff!

Fun fact: if you zoom out a ton, place the bubble machine at the outside edge, and then zoom back in to standard, you get a crap ton of bubbles very quickly

I think it’s designed for mobile or touch screens.  Works perfectly on iPhone, and you need touch for various features.

It&#x27;s a beautiful page! I miss sites like this.Though strangely, it seems to disable all of my browser keyboard shortcuts. Even basic ones like going back, selecting the address bar, or changing the zoom level. I assume it&#x27;s just listening for all key events, though I didn&#x27;t even realize it was possible to override the basic ones.edit: I found the bug! It has a list that&#x27;s supposed to contain all possible keycodes, and if all the keys in your shortcut are on it that list it works. But I&#x27;m on macOS so my shortcuts all involve the &quot;MetaLeft&quot; or &quot;MetaRight&quot; key and those are missing from the list. Appending those keycodes to the minified array named `ba.G` fixes shortcuts for me!

you can move the bubble racket thingy to make huge bubbles as well !

You can also put the fan on top of the bubble blower... probably not very realistic, but a fun edge case :-)

While everyone&#x27;s loving the bubble physics, I just like the attention to detail where if you put the fan _in front_ of the bubble blower facing away from it, it will still blow bubbles in that direction if the air stream would still be drawn through the blower.

Fun! Would love to be able to throw the pin.

Yes, that&#x27;s it! How many years I have searched for this ... Thank you so much for finding it!

I&#x27;ve never heard of it, but it looks like you can download it from here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kultmags.com&#x2F;games.php?folder=S2VyblJlYWt0b3I=" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kultmags.com&#x2F;games.php?folder=S2VyblJlYWt0b3I=</a> (link under the screenshots)

Is anyone aware of a DOS game named Kernreaktor (nuclear reactor) and knows where to find it? Sonetimes its game type is also called &quot;bubbles&quot;.

this brings me internet joy, in a time when so much is terrible

beautiful work.what I like about this is that that air is particle system. and so are bubbles are made of elastic strings. in a sense there is no bubbles here, it is interaction of particles, and bubbles and air wind is emergent propertyback back to it.. making bubble, but not quite.. spinning a bubble

Aha I see what you mean - that&#x27;s great.((check out the second-last item in the gallery))

I love the gallery-ception:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works</a>

How do I make big bubbles with this? Because that&#x27;s what I do with real bubbles, blow them to be as huge as possible. This can&#x27;t do that.But bubbles require constant slow airflow, at that pace this does not make any bubble at all.

Therapeutic, please make it an app for the apple watch

Is this supposed to be a visual representation of the crypto market?

These are magical little apps. I’ve spent a good while looking for these types of projects. It’s like coming across a gold nugget. Here is a site I’ve found with some amazing apps that are really fun to interact with. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abowman.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abowman.com&#x2F;</a>

This site is so good. I&#x27;m personally a huge fan of:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works&#x2F;jelly&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oimo.io&#x2F;works&#x2F;jelly&#x2F;</a>