By the Numbers
The 212 → 225 jump happened faster than any previous interval — 13 new simulations in roughly 6 weeks. The acceleration came from a smarter internal workflow: simulation sub-components (physics engines, camera rigs, UI panel HTML) are now reused across sims rather than rewritten each time.
Category Breakdown (Top 10 by count)
| Category | Sims | Distribution |
|---|---|---|
| Physics — Mechanics | 28 | |
| Biology & Life Sciences | 16 | |
| Chemistry & Materials | 15 | |
| Quantum Physics & Computing | 14 | |
| Math & Algorithms | 13 | |
| Waves & Optics | 12 | |
| Fluid Dynamics | 11 | |
| Astrophysics & Space | 10 | |
| Ecology & Environment | 9 | |
| Economics & Social | 8 |
What Worked Well
-
Shared component library —
components.jsnow handles navbar, footer, cookie consent, dark/light toggle, and the language switcher. Removing those from individual sim pages has saved thousands of lines of duplicated HTML. - Bilingual from day one — since adding Ukrainian support (see Devlog #11), every new sim is created with both EN and UK pages in the same commit. The overhead per sim is now about 15 extra minutes.
- Category pages drive discovery — internal links from category index pages are responsible for 38% of pageviews. Investing in richer category pages (better descriptions, sim previews, related links) pays off significantly.
Pain Points We're Fixing
- Mobile controls — ~30% of visits are mobile. Most older simulations have no touch controls. This is the single biggest UX gap in the library and a top priority for Q2 2026.
- Load time on slow connections — simulations that use Three.js load the CDN bundle even when they only need Canvas 2D. We're tracking which sims actually need Three.js and refactoring the others.
- No simulation previews — category pages list simulations as text links only. Static preview thumbnails (generated screenshots) are planned for Q3 2026.
The Road to 300
75 new simulations in roughly 9 months is ambitious but achievable given the current pace. Here's the planned breakdown:
- Q1 2026 Materials Science category (10 sims) — crystal structures, phase diagrams, superconductivity, diffusion in solids
- Q2 2026 Data Visualization category (8 sims) — d-separability, Voronoi tessellation, force-directed graphs, spectrograms
- Q2 2026 Mobile controls retrofit — touch joysticks + pinch-to-zoom for all mechanics sims (no new pages, retrofit)
- Q3 2026 Cosmology & Cosmological Models (7 sims) — Big Bang nucleosynthesis, CMB simulation, dark matter halo, Hubble flow
- Q3 2026 Sim preview thumbnails — static screenshots for all 300 sims, category cards upgraded
- Q4 2026 Neuroscience (6 sims) — action potential propagation, Hodgkin-Huxley model, connectome visualization, STDP learning
- Q4 2026 Climate & Atmospheric Science expansions — ENSO cycle, aerosol scattering, ice core proxy model (5 sims)
Want to contribute? Every simulation is a self-contained HTML/JS file with no build step. The easiest way to add one is to fork the repo, duplicate a sim folder you like, and change the physics. See the contribution guide for details.
Looking Back at the First 100
Devlog #9 covered the 100-sim milestone. Re-reading it now, one prediction held up and one didn't. The physics category did become the largest — that was expected. What wasn't expected was how quickly Quantum Computing grew. Six months ago it had 3 simulations; today it has 10. The appetite for visual, interactive quantum computing explanations is larger than we anticipated.
Devlog #10 covered the annual review at 212 sims. The biggest change since then: the site became bilingual. The effect on organic search — particularly for Ukrainian-language queries — has been more immediate than expected. Ukrainian-language traffic is now 11% of total sessions.