Back at the old particle system I’ve been enhancing the interaction. In the applet you can now easily create and remove particles and links. Particles can be dragged and multiple particles can be selected. Right now everything is controlled with keypresses, but I plan to build an interface to easily switch between tools and to modify particle and spring properties as well as environmental properties. When its a little closer to finished I’ll post it into my interactive site.
In these images, springs are drawn in purple and forces are drawn as blue lines, stronger forces are darker. Drawing the forces is a little unnecessary but it creates interesting patterns. Which is, at this point, all this application really does.
What is particularly interesting is the way structures move. In the image below, a radial structure is dragged by its central point. The whole mass distorts into a cardioid shape. It eventually collapses into chaotic motion. Moving any particle in an interconnected set creates waves through the rest of the system.
