Fire Simulation
Watch GPU-simulated flames rise and flicker in real time. Drag to fan and shape the fire, then tune turbulence, force, and dissipation.
Space for a burst, P to pause.Why Use This Fire Simulation?
A GPU-powered fire playground where flames rise, flicker, and glow entirely in your browser
The fluid solver runs on your GPU through WebGL fragment shaders, delivering smooth 60 fps flames without taxing the CPU.
A heat source at the base feeds buoyant flames that climb and flicker, with a warm palette that glows from red through orange to yellow.
Push the fire from a gentle candle flame to a roaring blaze. Tune splat force, curl, density dissipation, and radius in real time.
Full mouse and multi-touch support. Fan the flames on your phone, tablet, or desktop — the canvas adapts to any screen size.
No server, no uploads, no tracking. The whole simulation runs in your browser — it even keeps working offline once loaded.
Works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Prefers WebGL 2 and automatically falls back to WebGL 1 on older hardware.
How the Fire Simulation Works
This fire simulation solves a simplified version of the Navier-Stokes equations entirely on your GPU using WebGL shaders. A heat source at the base continuously injects warm dye and an upward buoyancy force, so the flames rise and flicker on their own. Dragging across the canvas adds extra velocity, letting you fan and bend the fire in real time.
The warm palette maps the dye from deep red through orange to bright yellow, mimicking how real flames glow hotter toward their core. Vorticity confinement (the Curl control) reintroduces the small-scale swirling that gives fire its restless, flickering edges instead of a smooth, static glow.
Density dissipation controls how quickly the flames burn out as they rise. Raise it for sharp, fast-burning tongues that vanish near the tip, or lower it for taller, lingering flames. Velocity dissipation and splat force change how forcefully the fire climbs and how far it reaches.
The simulation prefers WebGL 2 for native half-float textures but gracefully falls back to WebGL 1 with the OES_texture_half_float extension. That means it runs on virtually every modern browser on desktop and mobile — no plugins, no installs, and no data leaves your device.
Frequently Asked Questions
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