I'm amazed that this runs wholly on the CPU. Seriously tempted to build a WebGL demo using similar concepts, with the addition of lenses and other optical geometry. It'd be tough to beat this in terms of the sheer cool factor, though.
If create any closed shape (using lines set at 100% reflective) around the light source, it seems to stop working so nicely. Are the rays just being reflected around in an infinite loop?
> If it gets popular, I’d love to create an iOS app. The web site works on iOS in a minimal capacity, but it’s slow and not at all fun to use. Sculpting with light on the iPad seems like a natural fit.
Why not instead make it animate to music and turn it into a good old Winamp or XMMS plugin? :)
I love it! I am tempted to add the function to be able to add more light sources with different colors, though it might need a different name for that garden.
It makes me think of a bit of a Matrioshka Brain structure (for example from the Alistair Reynolds story Troika), with a star and surrounding shells that capture ever more of the light.
Technically, it takes a similar approach to "real time" raytracing as the cycles render engine in Blender, increasing the number of samples (thus decreasing the noise) over time.
I like visual "toy" apps, interactive if you like and slow self-changing if you don't. Porting this to iOS would be great; one of those "if you don't I will" sorta things.
