GLArt Final Project: Life Tower
Gosper Glider Gun. Click thumbnail for a larger screenshot (1024x1228)
The Life Tower is a 3D visualization of Conway's Game of Life. The current generation is drawn on top of the tower, and each successive generation is drawn underneath.
As the tower grows, it builds organic structures that are invisible in a conventional two-dimensional representation of Conway's Game of Life. This mapping of time to a spatial dimension mirrors the usual practice for representing one-dimensional cellular automata, in which successive generations are drawn in a two-dimensional field.
Download the source code (Requires LWJGL and Mark Napier's OpenGL demo code; standalone executables forthcoming). Once you have it running, press 'H' for usage instructions.
The Life Tower is a project for Mark Napier's GLArt class.
More screenshots after the jump.
R-Pentomino after eighty generations, using blue material. Click thumbnail for a larger screenshot (1024x1228)
Three pentadecathlons. Click thumbnail for a larger screenshot (1024x1228)