AETHER: devlog #2

since the initial release of aether (https://aether-gilt-kappa.vercel.app/) I’ve improved loads of things including refining the entire user experience and making it something that’s truly fun to use!

• I changed the way the orbital mechanics worked changing the accretion disk method from before to now having a regular orbit as its more intuitive for the user.

• I fixed particles simply being launched by attractor nodes since before as they accelerate and approach the attractor they didn’t slow down and simply passed straight through being essentially slingshotted out

• I reduced the power of the repulsors from 1.2 down to 0.4

• Decreased the attraction radius from 500px to 300px

• added a screen wrap so particles bounce back at the edges of the user’s screen rather than appearing on the opposite end of the screen - I’m thinking of making this a toggleable feature?

• added a collapsible sidebar

• added a feature to hide all nodes so you can see particles by themselves

• fixed having to refresh the screen every time you want to change themes - which you can now do live in any session!

welcome to Aether - a kinetic particle sandbox!

I wanted to build something visually stunning but also something that users could play with and explore on their own - so I started this project with no super defined end goal but to see what happens as I go.

It’s essentially a bunch of particles that you can influence and affect using attractors and repulsors - I’ll be adding loads more features soon!

so far its turning out pretty nice.

I’ve built it out using Next.js and tailwind CSS v4 for all the styling.

• I’m using a decoupled state management system with Zustand which allows me to separate the UI interface from the actual physics simulation loop so it won’t affect the frame rate.

• I made a customized 2D canvas that spawns and updates 1,500 particles simultaneously each with their own velocity, friction and boundary wrapping vectors.

• I added a random generator that spawns in the 1,500 particles and also randomly places a couple of attractors and repulsors.

• I added a realistic gravity affect to the attractor nodes by making the force vector applied to the velocity of a particle inversely proportional to the square of the distance.

  • f = (strength · 50) / d²

• Its deployed with vercel so you can check it out if you’d like: https://aether-gilt-kappa.vercel.app/

I’ll be adding loads more features soon - and making it way way way better this is just the base :)⚛️