One of the reasons Google makes its Chrome browser is to push the Web forward relentlessly. Google engineers aren’t afraid to do things like invent new formats for Web images or build WebGL-powered 3D maps of the world, even if most of our systems aren’t ready for it.
But in the interest of a faster, more capable Web, Google builds it anyway, and it encourages developers to contribute. It hosts a gallery of Chrome Experiments (with the tagline “Not your mother’s JavaScript.”) where it encourages developers to go nuts stretching these new Web technologies to their limit.
Today, the Chrome team highlighted a super-trippy demo by German computer science grad student Felix Woitzel, which uses WebGL to simulate the movement of crazy, colorful fluids using patterns modeled by the great mathematician Alan Turing. You can tickle it with your mouse, and it moves.
If you’ve got Chrome (or another browser that supports WebGL) and a computer that can handle it, you ought to check this out.
For those whose systems can’t or won’t handle it, here’s an extreme slow-mo video taken on my MacBook Air, which doesn’t much like doing WebGL Turing patterns and video screen captures at the same time:
Happy Friday, everybody.
