An interactive physics simulator with 1000’s of balls, in your terminal
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HN · launched Jan 19, 2026 · 75 upvotes (top 14%) · 1 view
Niche: physics and engineering simulation software · 104 launches, 8 in the last 7 days ▲ +14% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Education
- Dev tools
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 104 launches in physics and engineering simulation software →
Could you build this?
Partial While an AI assistant can write standard 2D physics math and basic ANSI terminal render loops, running an interactive simulation of thousands of colliding particles at high frame rates in a terminal requires delicate spatial partitioning and low-level performance optimization.
What it would actually take: A performant implementation requires a systems language like C, Rust, or optimized C++ utilizing spatial partitioning structures (such as uniform grids or spatial hashing) to keep pairwise collision detection under O(N^2). It requires specialized double-buffered terminal rendering techniques via VT100/ANSI escape sequences or raw termios handling to prevent severe flickering at high refresh rates. Achieving smooth 60fps with thousands of rigid bodies in a terminal demands low-level systems programming and cache-conscious data layout.
Discussion
15 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Fishtro demo (Future Crew 1992), Windows screensavers
Concerns raised: AI-coded nature not prominently disclosed, ANSI color contrast issues with different terminal backgrounds, Color mode accessibility concerns, Not computationally efficient as screensaver
Feature requests: Automated physics events for passive viewing, Plasma Pong in terminal, Subcharacter animation improvements
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 1019 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #136 of 1020 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 80 days after the earliest competitor.
- A gravity simulator where forces propagate at the speed of light · hn · 2026-09-03 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- I built an interactive 3D three-body problem simulator in the browser · hn · 2026-03-14 · 60 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Inertia, Physics in a Terminal · hn · 2026-07-19 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- PhysStudio · github · 2026-10-30 · 24 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- hyprsplitter · github · 2026-09-15 · 19 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- atlas-of-physics · github · 2026-10-28 · 311 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- PlayJev · github · 2026-09-17 · 19 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- dexterous-astra · github · 2026-09-17 · 93 upvotes · similarity 0.50
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.