Inertia, Physics in a Terminal
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
HN · launched Jul 19, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views
Niche: physics and engineering simulation software · 104 launches, 8 in the last 7 days ▲ +14% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- B2C
- 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?
No Developing custom 3D numerical physics simulations (SPH fluid dynamics, thermal convection, n-body gravity) and an unaccelerated terminal braille rasterizer demands deep computational math and systems graphics expertise.
What it would actually take: The engine requires low-level systems programming in Rust or C++ implementing numerical solvers (Verlet/Runge-Kutta), spatial data structures (Barnes-Hut octrees and BVH), and smoothed-particle hydrodynamics for fluids. Additionally, it requires a custom CPU-only software rasterizer implementing 3D projection, depth buffering, and glyph packing into Unicode braille 2x4 dot matrices to achieve 60 FPS in a terminal or via WASM. This necessitates specialized mathematical physics and graphics optimization skills.
Discussion
1 comment analyzed.
Feature requests: Liquid wave generator simulation for continuous waves
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 389 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #345 of 390 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 255 days after the earliest competitor.
- An interactive physics simulator with 1000’s of balls, in your terminal · hn · 2026-01-19 · 75 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- A gravity simulator where forces propagate at the speed of light · hn · 2026-09-03 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- inertia-omega · github · 2026-10-05 · 96 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Inertia · hn · 2026-08-08 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- steel · github · 2026-11-09 · 194 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Free-Init · github · 2026-09-23 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- TIO-Former · github · 2026-09-14 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Silicon Physics Sandbox · hn · 2026-07-06 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.44
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.