The Visual tab controls how the WebGL renderer presents organisms, food, and environmental features. All settings take effect immediately without resetting the simulation.
Checkboxes
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|
| Additive Glow | On | Switches WebGL blend mode from standard alpha compositing (gl.ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA) to additive blending (gl.ONE). Overlapping organisms brighten each other rather than covering each other, producing a neon luminescence effect. |
| Death Particles | On | Spawns a burst of colored particles when an organism dies naturally or is eaten. Each burst uses the dying organism’s species hue. Up to 2,000 death-particle slots are maintained in a circular buffer. |
| Show Food Oases | On | Renders semi-transparent teal circles over each active oasis zone, making food-concentration regions visible at a glance. Oases are defined in the Species tab via the Food Oases slider. |
Death Particles can be disabled for a meaningful performance improvement on lower-end devices. Each kill event otherwise triggers multiple particle allocations and per-particle position, velocity, and lifetime updates every frame.
Sliders
| Setting | Range | Default | Description |
|---|
| Food Glow | 0.2 – 2.0 (step 0.1) | 1.0 | Multiplier applied to the WebGL point size of food pellets. Values below 1.0 make pellets smaller and dimmer; values above 1.0 make them larger and more prominent. |
| Trail Length | 0 – 0.95 (step 0.01) | 0 (Off) | Controls motion trail persistence. The UI displays a text label based on the value: Off (0), Short (< 0.3), Medium (< 0.6), Long (≥ 0.6). |
Trail length labels
| Value range | Label |
|---|
| 0 | Off |
| 0.01 – 0.29 | Short |
| 0.30 – 0.59 | Medium |
| 0.60 – 0.95 | Long |
How trails work
When Trail Length is 0, the renderer clears the canvas completely between frames — each frame shows only the current organism positions.
When Trail Length is greater than 0.01, the renderer skips the clear step and instead draws a full-screen quad over the previous frame using:
fill color: rgba(5, 10, 20, 1 - trailValue)
Combine Additive Glow with a Trail Length in the Long range (0.7 – 0.95) for a bioluminescent deep-sea effect. Organisms leave glowing streaks that bloom where populations are dense, and the dark background color (rgb(5, 10, 20)) of the fade overlay matches the default canvas background exactly, keeping the scene clean.