🚀 Quick Start
New here? Cells live or die depending on how many neighbours they have (the default 3D rule is B4-5/S4-6). Press Run in the playback dock under the 3D view (or Space), try a Pattern or Random world, and watch behaviour emerge. Switch to Advanced (Simple | Advanced, at the top of the control panel) later to customise rules, world size and visuals.
2D Life Demos (for intuition)
🧬 What is the Game of Life?
It's a "zero‑player" simulation created by mathematician John Conway in 1970. You create an initial pattern of cells, press play, and watch how simple rules produce complex, often surprising behavior.
Why 3D? This app extends Conway's 2D rules into three dimensions, creating even more fascinating emergent behaviors. Cells can now have up to 26 neighbors instead of just 8!
The beauty lies in emergence – simple local rules creating complex global patterns: gliders that move, oscillators that pulse, and structures that grow and evolve.
📋 The Basic Rules (2D: B3/S2-3 · 3D default: B4-5/S4-6)
- Survival (S): A live cell with 2 or 3 neighbors stays alive.
- Birth (B): A dead cell with exactly 3 neighbors becomes alive.
- Death: Otherwise, the cell dies or stays dead.
3D Differences: In 3D, cells can have up to 26 neighbours (6 faces + 12 edges + 8 corners), so the default 3D rule is B4-5/S4-6: born with 4 or 5 live neighbours, surviving with 4 to 6. You can also switch to Weighted counting, where faces count 3, edges 2 and corners 1 (sums up to 50), or to the von Neumann neighbourhood, which only looks at the 6 face neighbours.
Rule Notation: "B3/S2-3" means Birth with 3 neighbours, Survive with 2 or 3. Ranges like 4-6 and lists like 3,6-8 both work. Try the 30 presets (9 Classic, 8 Explorer, 13 Softology) in Rules (Simulate tab, Advanced mode)! Some have more than two states: in B4/S4/C5 a cell that dies takes three generations to fade, and nothing is born in its place meanwhile. The Rule field also reads Softology's order, survive/birth/states/neighbourhood: 4/4/5/M.
🎮 How to Use This App
First Time? Follow this sequence:
- Choose a Pattern in the Simulate tab (try "Sphere"), or press Random shape
- Press Run in the playback dock under the 3D view (or Space)
- Use your mouse to orbit around and explore (drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, right-drag to pan)
- Press Space again to pause; the step buttons (or . and ,) move one generation at a time
- Flip Advanced mode (top of the control panel) when ready for more control
Core Controls:
- Transport: run/pause, step back, step forward, restart and the speed live in the playback dock under the 3D view (Space, , ., R, and [ ] for speed). Edit (E) paints cells one slice at a time.
- Timeline: the thin line across the top of the playback dock is the population over the generations the history keeps (up to 200). Click or drag it to go back, or focus it and use ← →, Home and End; it pauses the world. Going back keeps the later generations on the timeline until you press Run or Step or edit a cell, which continues from there.
- Restart: regenerates the current pattern with the same seed, back to generation 0 (random patterns come back identical)
- Patterns: 22 patterns in five groups (Random, Geometric, Planes, Special, Engineered); Simple mode shows Cross, Cube and Sphere. N gives a random start (Random, Random Core, Clusters, Gradient X) a new seed; Random rule switches to a different rule preset and keeps the world, Random shape starts from a different pattern under the same rule, and Find rules… tries hundreds of random rules and keeps the lively ones
- Sharing: Share this world makes a short link to the exact generation, rules and look (a world grown from a pattern is rebuilt from it, rewind history included), and Copy embed code puts the world on another web page
- Ambient mode: in the Capture menu or with A, a screensaver that orbits the world and moves on to another whenever it dies out or settles; Esc leaves
- Rule strip: under the pattern name, one square per neighbour count (0–26). The B row lights the counts that give birth, the S row the counts that keep a cell alive. Click a square to switch it on or off; reset goes back to the rule before your edits. On a phone or touch screen, tap the strip to open a larger rule sheet with finger-sized toggles
- Camera: 5 views (keys 1–5) with a 750 ms eased transition, auto-orbit (O), plus manual orbit/zoom/pan. The dock's View menu holds Fit world (0), the views and auto-orbit, and the world stays framed beside the readout, dock and charts
- Modes: Simple mode keeps a fixed 15³ world with three patterns, themes, shapes and views. Advanced mode opens everything: world size, rules, boundaries, effects, lighting, cell editing, the pattern library and VR/AR
- Panel: three tabs, Simulate, Appearance and More. Search it with the magnifier in the tab row or ⌘/Ctrl K, open Settings with the gear beside it, hide it with P (or the × in its header), drag it by its header, resize it from the corner
- Auto-pause: the world pauses itself when every cell dies, when nothing changes any more, or when it starts repeating a cycle (the last two only while "Stop when the world repeats" is on in Playback; switch it off to run through them)
⌨️ Controls & Shortcuts
Mouse
Orbit the world
Drag
Zoom
Scroll (or middle-drag)
Pan
Right-drag (or Shift + drag)
Toggle a cell
Shift + click
Auto-orbit on or off
Double-click
Editing cells
Left paints, right erases, scroll moves the slice
Keyboard
Start / pause
Space
Step forward
. or →
Step back
, or ←
Restart pattern
R
New random pattern
N
Ambient mode
A
Camera views
1 – 5
Toggle auto-orbit
O
Toggle floor grid
G
Toggle world boundary
B
Edit cells
E
Move the slice (editing) · mirror · cutaway
↑ ↓ · M · C
Slower / faster
[ / ]
Fullscreen
F
Search controls
⌘/Ctrl K
Show or hide the controls
P
Start or stop video recording
V
Show shortcuts
H or ?
Stop editing
Esc
Shortcuts are ignored while a text field has focus; click the 3D view first. The same list lives in Help & shortcuts in the app (press H).
Pro Tip: Turn on Auto-orbit in Camera (Appearance tab), press O, or double-click the scene, to keep the world rotating slowly while you work on other settings. Any drag stops it.
🎨 Pattern Guide
Each pattern creates different behaviors. Here are some highlights:
Sphere
A solid ball, radius a quarter of the box. A good first pattern
Cross
Three full axis lines through the centre. The pattern the app starts with
Random
Uniform random fill. Set the density in Advanced mode (default 15%)
Shell
Hollow sphere one cell thick
Glider (2D seed)
The 2D glider on the middle XY plane. Pick the 2D Conway rule preset to see it move
Clusters
Five small random blobs scattered through the box
Pyramid
A stepped pyramid standing on the floor
Engineered
Glider Engine, Oscillator, Spinner, Staircase: hand-built structures from an early prototype
All 20: Random, Clusters, Gradient X · Cross, Cube, Hollow Cube, Sphere, Shell, Pyramid · XY Plane, Floor (Y = 0), Back Wall (Z = 0) · Diagonal, Line X, Checkerboard, Glider (2D seed) · Glider Engine, Oscillator, Spinner, Staircase. Simple mode shows Cross, Cube and Sphere. Random patterns are seeded, so Restart reproduces them exactly. Save your own creations in the Pattern library (Simulate tab, Advanced mode).
🔧 Troubleshooting
Common Issues:
Simulation runs too slowly?
- Reduce world size (try 15×15×15 instead of 50×50×50) in Size & bounds, Advanced mode
- Lower the speed in the playback dock, or press [
- Switch to simpler cell shapes (Rounded, Cube or Point Cloud instead of Sphere)
- Turn off Bloom, ambient occlusion and soft shadows in Effects, or set Render quality to Low in Settings → Performance
Nothing happens when I press play?
- The world may have paused itself: it stops when every cell has died and, while "Stop when the world repeats" is on, when nothing changes any more or when it starts repeating. The status line at the bottom of the scene readout says extinct, still life or period n
- Press Restart (R) or pick a new pattern, then play again
- If "Stop when the world repeats" stopped it, click Keep running in the notification or switch the toggle off in Playback
- Check the speed in the playback dock: 0.5 gen/s is one generation every two seconds. Press ] to speed up
Can't find a control? Switch to Advanced at the top of the control panel: Playback, Size & bounds, Rules, Edit cells, Effects, Lighting, Pattern library and VR/AR only appear in Advanced mode. Check the tab too (Simulate or Appearance; help is behind the ?), or search the controls with ⌘/Ctrl K. Nothing needs an account or a paid plan. If the whole panel is gone, press P.
Shortcuts do nothing? A text field probably has focus. Click the 3D view, then try again.
🧪 Fun Experiments
Beginner Experiments:
- Start with the Sphere pattern and watch how it changes
- Press Random rule a few times on the same shape, or click squares in the rule strip, and compare what grows
- Try Random at 5%, 15% and 50% density (Random density slider, Advanced mode) - notice the differences
- Switch between Rounded, Cube and Sphere cell shapes, and try a few themes in the Appearance tab
- Turn on Auto-orbit (O) and watch from different angles
Advanced Experiments:
- Try the Softology presets (445, Amoeba, Pyroclastic, Crystal Growth) and press Restart from… under them: each comes with the start it grows best from. There are 30 presets in three groups
- Open Find rules…, hover the cards, and press More like this on one you like
- Load Glider (2D seed) with the 2D Conway preset and watch it travel
- Use Edit cells (E) to paint your own patterns slice by slice, or Shift+click any cell to toggle it
- Compare Standard vs Weighted neighbour counting, and Moore vs von Neumann neighbourhoods
- Experiment with Boundary conditions (Wrap, Fixed, Reflective)
- Create custom rules and see what emerges; save the results to the Pattern library
- Record a video (V), save a screenshot, or (members) save an STL for 3D printing from Capture in the playback dock
Look for still lifes (static), oscillators (repeating), spaceships (moving), and chaotic growth patterns! The readout's status line says still life or period n when the cycle detector catches one, and the Charts button in the playback dock opens population and cell-age charts above it.
What am I looking at?
Each block is a cell. On every step, cells check how many neighbors are alive and update according to the rules above. Cells fade from the young colour to the old colour as they age, and cells that die leave a fading ghost. Over time, simple local interactions create patterns: clusters, shells, ripples, and more.