25 +1 Chrome Experiments

Today I want to point you towards a initiative leaded by Google which has some time but not enough publicity. Chrome Experiments.

Basically Chrome Experiments are small applets to show up the powerfull of Chrome web-browser against other browsers. (If we talk about running animations or programs inside the browser, Chrome is the fastest, but this doesn’t it is the best of the browsers).

So, after a survey over all the experiments I bring you my list of best 25. (Click on images to go to experiment description and launch experiment from there).

25. Growing flowers. It looks beautiful but a little annoying because you can’t stop the growing plant to take a picture of it.

24. A Calamar? Seems to be alive and can be controlled with mouse. Can get very nice configurations, but they are quite difficult to achieve.

23. This is a very good one. It’s a MIDI player with animation to see what is playing. And also has a wide list of MIDI files to play around.

22. Particles dancing around and making a heart. Sorry, but I respect love above all the things, and this one is perfect for making a smile on your loved ones.

21. This is actually very good idea. weather forecasting using tweets. (Inspired by xkcd idea maybe?).

20. This one reaches the computation limit of the browser, but it’s quite nice game.

19. A whole island! The technology to show this island in the browser is incredible. Read the info! It uses a dataset with 122880 x 122880 pixels. About 56GB of info. This technology allows to handle that big amount of data and show only the needed data each time.

18. This one uses a genetic algorithm technique to generate random faces from a set of faces. Each iteration the user picks the best face of all. In this way you can actually create or “grow up” a face.

17. Cellular designs. Make cellular-like designs and print them into 3D. (I can’t run it in this computer, but I can show you how it is).

16. This one is really funny, a lathe machine. You just pick material and start working with it. (I wonder if there is a game with different kinds of machines that actually simulates a workshop).

15. This one is very very good, but it doesn’t have good examples inside to test it. What it makes is, it takes a GIF (a colection of frames that show an animation) and plot’s them using z coordinate as time. Doing that allows us to actually see the whole evolution of the GIF. If the GIF represent a series of slides of an object, then this experiments allows us to actually reconstruct the object. As long as the examples provided are quite bad, I made this GIF.

Use it inside the experiment to get figures as this one.

I promise to create an amazing GIF for this one as soon as possible. Keep that in mind.

14. ChuClone. Another game. Quite nice, and remember that it is running inside your browser which is a real big challenge.

13. This one uses Turing Reaction-diffusion equations to create patterns in a fluid simulation. Remember that this equations are actually used to describe systems like the cheetah skin patterns or the propagation of spikes in the neural system.

Two years ago, I studied the Fitzhugh-Nagumo system for Neural Activity. Here are my videos… I think that now I should improve it. :/

Here a link to an applet for recreating the same experiment I did.

12. Recursion toy is another L-System. They are quite easy to build with object oriented programming, so that’s why there is so many of them, but even whith many of them around, not all are interesting at all. This one is cool because the number of parameters you can adjust. Check it out.

In this case I also have one myself, but you can’t adjust anything, sorry.

11. This one is just artistic, don’t allow any interaction, but it’s ambientation it’s great.

10. The next experiment creates networks of artists using last.fm API. I use to look for Freddie Mercury, and the result looks good. Maybe some connections should be stronger/weaker than the graph shows, but it is ok.

9. Another experiment about music. this time, you can draw a sound. It’s not big deal, but it’s an interesting idea.

8. Not sure what is this, but has very nice effects and also they interact into each other.

7. A multiuser sketchboard. Unfortunately It was disconnected when I tried to log, but you can see at the blog different creations made at the sketch.

6. This is one of the most beautiful games (and addictive) I have played. The objetive is to build the longest path. Try to complete the board, and then try to beat yourself. Also it’s one of the most refined experiments because it has no bugs.

5. The next one needs a good computer to run properly, but it’s amazing, and will make you stare at it for a long time. This kind of art is bringin new perspectives and I’m completely sure that in the next years we are going to see a really big revolution in the art and how we interact with it. It’s going to be more like a game or like a living and changin being than a static thing to look at.

4. I think that this bomb gaming experiment was very popular, so probably you already know about it, but just in case, I put it here.

3. We had drawing music and collaborative painting. Why not both at the same time? Plink. (not sure if it is still working).

2. It’s more difficult than you think, that’s all that I have to say. You have to create a chain reaction to destroy all the balls before your explosions fade away.

1. As I told you,  love is number one for me. This experiment will track the tweets in the selected country generating a Love/Hate tree. This is what i get.

And….

0. 100,000 Stars. A visualization of the solar system neighbourhood. Enjoy all of them and keep searching for beauty and new experiences!