How it’s built — The Glass Garden

v1.0 · 2026-10-27

■ Method

Procedural drawing. A 32-bit seed sets form, proportions, and pattern, drawn with Canvas 2D. No training
Two rooms: diatoms (disc, boat, long oval) and desmids (lobed, rounded, crescent)
Seven specimens per slide, relative magnification 0.8–18×, fine focus −100 to 100, dark/bright field (set values)
Desmid division: new semicells grow between the two old ones (0–82%), then the two cells part (82–100%). A shared model compressed to about 18 s (set value)
Drawing at most 25 times per second, pixel ratio capped at 1.6, specimens outside the view are skipped
Static files with no build step (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), no external libraries
No LLM

None. No real micrographs or observation data
Stored user input: the specimen drawer (seed, form, the name you give, time saved; up to 36 per room) in this browser’s localStorage only. Nothing sent to a server, no personal information
Record files (JSON) are exported and imported on your device only

Condition: Node built-in tests and headless Chromium
6 automated tests pass: same seed → same specimen, seven unique specimens per slide, kept specimens restore, zoom anchor and limits, division stage order, record-file validation, no missing English strings
About 61 frames per second at 5–14× zoom (original standalone package: about 13). Measured in headless Chromium at 1280px
No training, so no train/evaluation split

An observation model inspired by real forms. Not species identification, true size, or optical simulation. Magnification is relative to the screen
Colors, patterns, and focus are reinterpreted for viewing. The water motion is a visual effect

Data: none
Background only (no photos or figures copied): Diatoms of North America. What are diatoms? link
Background only (no photos or figures copied): Florida State University, Molecular Expressions. Desmid Algae. link