Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Real mode demo inspired by CMatrix in 187 bytes
This is a tiny demo program inspired by CMatrix that creates a Matrix-style visual effect in real mode. At just 187 bytes, it's an extremely compact piece of code designed for programmers and demoscene enthusiasts… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Real mode demo inspired by CMatrix in 187 bytes launched in 2016; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1

Use generative AI to create future-facing videos
2022 · studio.d-id.com · its alternatives →
- 2

Bitmap & tilemap generation from a single example with the help of ideas from quantum mechanics - mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3IR
After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…
2025 · jdfio.com · its alternatives →
- 4

An introduction to non-line-of-sight imaging, and how to create images of hidden objects around a corner in under 10 minutes!
2019 · analytech-solutions.com · its alternatives →
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We ported pbrt-v4 to Julia and built it into a Makie backend. Any Makie plot can now be rendered with physically-based path tracing. Julia compiles user-defined physics directly into GPU kernels, so anyone can extend the ray tracer with new materials and media - a black hole with gravitational lensing is ~200 lines of Julia. Runs on AMD, NVIDIA, and CPU via KernelAbstractions.jl, with Metal coming soon. Demo scenes: github.com/SimonDanisch/RayDemo
Feb 2026 · makie.org · its alternatives →
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Real time AI creativity, instant creation, precision control
2024 · collov.ai · its alternatives →
- 9

Creating high-quality scientific figures can be time-consuming and challenging, even though sketching ideas on paper is relatively easy. Furthermore, recreating existing figures that are not stored in formats preserving semantic information is equally complex. To tackle this problem, we introduce DeTikZify, a novel multimodal language model that automatically synthesizes scientific figures as semantics-preserving TikZ graphics programs based on sketches and existing figures. We also introduce a Monte Carlo Tree Search-based inference algorithm that enables DeTikZify to iteratively refine its…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10

Took a break from the falling sand simulation blog posts this week to work on another small project. It's a little pixel world generator- each time you visit, you'll see a new little world. I really like this stuff and had a blast building it yesterday!
2022 · jason.today · its alternatives →
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repo of my sizecoding entries. Contribute to ilmenit/sizecoding development by creating an account on GitHub.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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This is a GPU "software" raytracer (i.e. using manual ray-scene intersections and not RTX) written using the WebGPU API that renders glTF scenes. It supports many materials, textures, material & normal mapping, and heavily relies on multiple importance sampling to speed up convergence.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A minimalist three-dimensional coding environment. Control 8x8x8 dots with a single JavaScript function.
2021 · doersino.github.io · its alternatives →
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Vectary Photon▲181One-click photorealistic rendering for 2D designers
2019 · vectary.com · its alternatives →
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C++ Matrix: The Matrix Reloaded in Terminals (Number falls, Banners, Matrix rains, Conway's Game of Life and Mandelbrot set) - akinomyoga/cxxmatrix
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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RadianceKit▲95Turn photos into 3D Gaussian Splats on your Mac
Jun 2026 · radiancekit.de · its alternatives →
- 18CC
Hello HN! Back in 2023, I introduced CFRS[], a minimalist drawing language with turtle graphics, featuring just six simple commands, through a "Show HN" post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37956065). Since then, I've received a number of creative patterns and animations created using this tiny, esoteric language by the small and friendly community that has since formed around it. In this post, I intend to share some of these interesting creations with everyone to highlight the ingenuity of their creators. If you create an interesting demo using this language, please…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 19SP
https://github.com/tracyhenry/Kyrix Open source MIT project from Turing award winner Michael Stonebraker. Seeking contributors.
2020 · its alternatives →
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The model uses a 1024-dimensional complex Hilbert space with 32 layers of programmable Mach–Zehnder meshes (Reck architecture) and derives token probabilities directly via the Born rule. Despite using only unitary operations and no attention mechanism, a 1024×32 model achieves coherent TinyStories generation after < 1.8 hours of training on a single consumer GPU. This is Part 1 - the next step is physical implementation with $50 of optics from AliExpress.
Nov 2025 · zenodo.org · its alternatives →
- 21AI
(space = reset) Fluid mechanics is an extremely interesting topic and I have been creative coding for a couple of months now. Therefore I started working on flow fields in processing. It had so much fun playing around with the different parameters in this project, I decided to rewrite in p5.js an added a control panel. You can change most of the parameters (within some constraints I thought to be reasonable), randomize the values and export and import settings. Hopefully some coders here get inspired and also join the great creative coding community.
2024 · synapse.nugatio.com · its alternatives →
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A simple javascript web radio visualizer. Contribute to victorqribeiro/radio development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23

Hey HN! We’ve been experimenting with integrating multimodal models directly into creative workflows, and ended up building an AI-first image editor using OpenAI’s new `gpt-image-1` (from GPT-4o) inside our SDK. Instead of prompting in ChatGPT and pasting outputs into a design tool, this lets you generate, edit, and remix images all in one canvas. This allows for really interesting new workflows, like quickly mixing multiple images, or creating visual prompts by using annotations and reference on the canvas. Some key details: - Built with our plugin system in CE.SDK (CreativeEditor SDK) -…
2025 · img.ly · its alternatives →
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I didn't realize Universe Sandbox ran on MacOS, and I was in the mood to play around a bit. Some functions it's got: - Random system generation - Sonification is super fun too - Habitability Simulation (Just for fun, don't cite this please) - Replacing, spawning, deleting objects I've had tons of fun building this, so I hope someone else can share the joy. It's free and runs in the browser. I'd love to hear any feedback. I think this is at a state where I might leave it as it is, but if people are interested in other features, maybe I'll keep working on it. I've kept saying I'll stop working…
Dec 2025 · luna.watermelonson.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →