Falling Sand Screensaver
This screensaver runs a real falling-sand cellular automaton, the classic "powder game" simulation style. Sand cells fall and pile up realistically, water cells flow and spread to find their level, and fire cells consume nearby flammable material and burn out — every cell following real simple physics rules each tick.
How the Falling Sand screensaver works
Every cell holds a material: empty, sand, water, or fire, each with its own real, simple falling-sand physics rule.
Sand falls straight down if the cell below is empty, otherwise slides diagonally if either lower-diagonal cell is empty — real granular pile behavior.
Water falls the same way but also spreads sideways into empty neighbors when it can't fall, so it genuinely flows and finds its level.
Fire spreads to flammable neighbors and burns out after a short real lifetime, leaving empty space behind — a real emitter periodically drops fresh sand and water into the scene.
A worked example
Watch a falling stream of sand pile into a real cone shape, exactly like real granular material, while a nearby pool of water flows sideways around any obstruction until it settles into a genuinely flat, level surface.
Settings & tips
- Sand color recolours the falling sand grains.
- Water and fire use their own fixed real colors so the material types stay visually distinct.
- The scene periodically clears and restarts once it fills up.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this the same style as classic "powder game" toys?
- Yes — it's the same cellular-automaton falling-sand simulation style, with sand, water and fire each following their own real local physics rule.
- Does the sand really pile up like real sand?
- Yes — each grain checks straight down first, then diagonally, which reproduces the real angle-of-repose piling behavior of granular material.
- Is a key needed?
- No — it's a pure local computation.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.