Five Cellular Automata

As its name clearly states, Five Cellular Automata is a no-frills piece of software that makes it possible for you to explore some of the most interesting five cellular automata, namely an extended version of life - q-state Life, The Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction, Togetherness, Viral Replication, and Diffusion-Limited Aggregation.

Simple is the word that best describes both the installation process and the app's slightly-outdated UI. The application sports a non-resizable and compact main window that encompasses all of the controls in an orderly fashion.

To get started with Five Cellular Automata, simply choose the Automaton from the drop-down list, enter the appropriate values and parameters (according to each experiment), choose the number of colors and hit the Start button on the lower part of the main window.

As may have noticed, on each one of these five automata, the number of states is q. Quite interestingly, you are provided with the possibility to not only enter the number of states but also other parameters. For example, for the Togetherness automaton, you can change the number of states, the concentration percentage, the selection range and the lossy move change.

For the Viral Replication automaton, you can also fiddle about with parameters such as the number of states, active infection rate percentage, based rate and chance of cell division.

Please note that there's also a useful Help manual on the app's official website if you want to read more about this app. Once the visualization progress is at a desirable level, you can stop the process and capture screenshots by right clicking the animation panel. It is worth pointing out that the snapshots can only be saved as BMP files.

Taking everything into consideration, even though the app might look more at home on older iterations of Windows and even though the five automata are only represented in 2D, Five Cellular Automata is a useful app that offers a very simple way to explore the selected cellular phenomena.