u/Evening-Appeal7606

Been dabbling with three.js for some time now (enthusiastic amateur programmer, not a serious software dev), and I have this vision of a "cool thing" I would like to see built (as I obviously lack the skills to build it myself, even with AI assistance):

I'm picturing a "Volumetric Cloudscape" generator. What do I mean by that? Imagine a cubic volume in your browser that shows a "Cloudscape", i.e. a landscape made of the different types of clouds we might normally see in the sky (Cumulonimbus, Cirrus, and everything else and in between). This should then include the different lighting effects seen throughout the day, depending on the position of the virtual sun.

My goal would be to simulate a breathtaking sunset that paints the entire sky in fire when the clouds are illuminated in golds, oranges, and reds.

The AI tells me that this is possible, but it would most likely involve serious shader core programmings as it suggested that we'd have to employ "raymarching" (which is, I am told, much more complex than raytracing) to account for the cloud volumes and their specific attributes like density etc.

Question to the experts: Is this a feasible project?

This is a project that has been close to my heart for quite some time now. My angle to Conway's Game of Life is to calculate hash values for individual configurations and then examine the properties - which leads me to my idea of the Daily Conway Glyph Challenge.

(Note to the Moderators: This text is the basis for a video project of mine I am currently working on. I deliberately chose long-form prose to get the main ideas across. My proposition is rather complex, both from the implementation and the execution, so it is imperative to have clarity of thought and expression. Please do not flag this as AI slop or AI generated - the work presented herein is my work, I assure you.)

https://preview.redd.it/sgu1moof6lwg1.png?width=844&format=png&auto=webp&s=16881e76f4e7f4e10a1752c74bcc9d6a840b879c

THE DAILY CONWAY GLYPH CHALLENGE

Here is a daily challenge for you Game of Life enthusiasts out there - or for anyone who likes computational puzzles.

It's really simple: Consider Conway's Game of Life on a grid made of 16x16 cells that wrap around at the edges (which makes the grid a torus, topologically speaking).

Every day, we want to find the longest-lived pattern that evolves from a random starting configuration (so-called "soups"), but there is a twist:

For each pattern we calculate a hash value, a string of letters and numbers that is determined by it's initial configuration using a mathematical function. Think of this hash value as the pattern's unique "fingerprint".

Now, to make this a daily challenge, we stipulate that the hash value for every competing pattern must contain today's date, e.g. in the form MMDD.

We then look at all such Game of Life patterns that we found with today's date in their respective hash values and rank them by how long they live before they reach a halting state.

Oh, and before you get any ideas: You won't be able to pre-calculate game of life patterns for a future date. The hash value we calculate takes in not only the pattern's configuration but also a "salt", a randomly generated value that cannot be determined in advance. For our challenge, we use the randomness beacon issued by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology - specifically, the first value generated after midnight UTC.

How Do You Play?

Do you want to participate? It's quick, it's easy, and it's free - just like pouring river water down your socks.

Hop over to our site ( https://lifehashes.net/dailychallenge ) and put in a user name - there is no registration or login required. Once you have confirmed your name, just slide on the "Auto-Hash Mode" and the calculation engine will do the rest.

How Does It Work?

The top canvas is the Seeker node which sifts through arbitrary Game of Life configurations and calculates their hash values. Once the seeker finds a pattern whose hash value contains today's date, it transfers the configuration to the Explorer node, the bottom canvas.

On the explorer node, the GOL pattern is evolved according to B3/S23 rules and its properties calculated, the most important one being the number of generations your pattern lives before it terminates.

Once the explorer has determined the generational count of your pattern, it automatically submits it to the daily ranking. It will take about 30 seconds for your entry to appear on the left-hand side - provided that your pattern lives long enough to be featured on the leaderboard.

All Conway Glyphs Terminate

Our algorithm checks Game of Life evolutions for repeating generations and terminates once a pattern enters into a loop. We do this to prevent patterns from repeating infinitely, e.g. gliders that wrap around the torus forever. This distinction is why we call those specific Game of Life patterns "Conway Glyphs" as a short-hand.

The S.G.P.I. Metric

Every pattern's rank on the leaderboard is determined by S.G.P.I. (Suite, Generations, Peak, Index).

Now, what does that mean?

Today's date can appear in three formats which constitute the "suites" (4: MMDD, 6: YYMMDD, 8: YYYYMMDD). These three suites are the first level according to which a pattern is evaluated. Naturally, it is much easier to find a suite 4 pattern than a suite 6 or a suite 8, so the different suites have separate leaderboards.

The second level is the number of generations the pattern evolves before reaching a halting state. The higher this value is, the higher this pattern will be ranked.

The third level is the "Peak" metric - it looks at all 256 cells for the pattern over its evolution and counts how many times each cell has been alive before the pattern halts. The highest alive-count for these 256 cells is the peak. The higher your pattern's peak, the higher your ranking.

It's a metric we came up with during our research into these Glyphs that serves as a proxy for spatio-temporal density of a pattern. (I explain the background of this metric in a separate video.)

The fourth level is the "index" at which place in the hash string the date appears. A date that appears right at the start of the hash string is higher-ranked than a date that appears towards the middle or the end, so the lower the index, the higher the rank.

An Example

Here is an example for the full ranking according to all four levels:

"4.189.56.23" denotes a 4 suite pattern with 189 non-repeating generations, a peak count of 56, and that today's date was found at position 23 in the hash string.

Conclusion

The leaderboard resets daily but we also feature weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and all-time champion lists. Your participation will contribute to exploring the space of Conway Glyphs - think of it as "SETI@Home" but for Game of Life.

Note

I am going to upload the source code for the webpage to GitHub so that everyone can verify that the choice of the NIST Randomness Beacon as the daily cryptographic salt is fair and valid.

TL;DR

This is a public computational challenge: We compete to find Conway's Game of Life patterns that evolve according to B3/S23 rules on the 16x16 torus (but restrict ourselves to non-repeating generations), calculate a patterns hash value plus a daily NIST Randomness Beacon as a salt to find long-running patterns whose hash value contains today's date.

Question: Volumetric Clouscapes?