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Show HN: Genetic Boids Web Simulation

attentionmech.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Genetic Boids Web Simulation

#14

Post by Xevion »

Awesome work, the green terminal style is really cool. And the fact that it's just Vanilla JavaScript, HTML & CSS is a pretty cool touch. I would've produced something a tenth the style with 10x the complexity

Just some ideas/suggestions: - Better colors: maybe genes can influence colors a bit? The random colors aren't that great, they're good though for making all the boids distinct. - Zooming: Scroll the mousewheel to Zoom In/Out, drag to move around - Interactive: Click on a Boid, have it be followed around using zoom! - Time controls: Not just framerate, but a % multiplier on simulation speed. - GPU Refactor: I don't think you're doing any of this yet, so maybe optimizing for a GPU-based speedup would be cool? See if you can reach 10,000 boids! Sebastian Lague's video goes into parallelization, just not in JavaScript: https://youtu.be/bqtqltqcQhw

Re: Show HN: Genetic Boids Web Simulation

#17

Post by vimgrinder »

Xevion wrote: post #6
brulard wrote: post #4

That's beautiful. What are "signals"?

I don't know myself, but it seems to give boids their own unique state and add another layer of influence to their acceleration. https://github.com/attentionmech/genetic-boids/blob/485fe482... I'm reading the code but I don't know what it actually DOES in practice; my guess is that Boids with opposite genomes (binary strings with default length 6) are slightly attracted to eachother.

yes this only.

Re: Show HN: Genetic Boids Web Simulation

#18

Post by talkingtab »

The original Boids is from Craig Reynolds, here:

https://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

It was a java applet (sigh) and unfortunately I have not been able to find a working version. That version based on his three "steering" mechanisms had very realistic movement. Other versions, including this one, which are good do not have that same kind of quality. They look like simulations whereas the Reynolds version, for whatever reason, seemed much closer to watching an actual flock.

No criticism intended, it would just be nice to understand the why the difference.

Looking briefly at the code, it seems the fitness function is simply how close the boids are?

Very cool!

Re: Show HN: Genetic Boids Web Simulation

#19

Post by vimgrinder »

Xevion wrote: post #14

Awesome work, the green terminal style is really cool. And the fact that it's just Vanilla JavaScript, HTML & CSS is a pretty cool touch. I would've produced something a tenth the style with 10x the complexity Just some ideas/suggestions: - Better colors: maybe genes can influence colors a bit? The random colors aren't that great, they're good though for making all the boids distinct. - Zooming: Scroll the mousewheel…

hey thanks! color is coming from genome (check brightColorFromGenome)! nice suggestions, will definitely try to incorporate some of them.
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