Simulation Projects

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Simulation projects are projects that simulate something in reality. These can range from driving a car to demonstrating physics, among a few examples. They are also a popular project tag but do not appear in the explore tab.

Examples of Simulations

Life Simulations

Main article: Life Simulator Tutorial

Life simulations simulate one or more lifeforms (such as dogs, cats or humans) and their daily lives, usually involving the player to take part of it, usually as the main character.

A popular form of a life simulation is a virtual pet, which allows the player to take care of a pet, either real animals (for example, Nintendogs, Webkinz) or fantasy creatures (for example, Viva Pinata games, Neopets). A related form is a biological simulation, which allows the player to take control of one or many lifeforms and influence them with their natural environment (sometimes with even an option to alter the environment). Good examples would be WolfQuest and Spore.

Another popular form of a life simulation is a social simulation, which allows the player to observe and influence social interactions between virtual lifeforms in virtual societies. Examples include The Sims series and Animal Crossing series. Dating simulators count as social simulations too.

Vehicle simulators

A vehicle simulator is a simulation project in which the user may virtually control a vehicle, such as an airplane or a car. They are generally uncommon on Scratch due to fact that 3D is hard to make due to technical limitations.

Physics Simulations

Another genre is physics simulation, in which a project emulates the effects of gravity, collision, and/or other forces on objects. Complex physics simulations can be created quite easily with Scratch's graphics system, so these are quite popular and common.

Mathematical simulations

Mathematical simulations are another genre of simulation projects. Some examples include fractal rendering engines, 3D engines using trigonometry, and probability simulations. Projects which solve problems or simulate a mathematical concept are popular as well. Projects which iterate through the Collatz Conjecture, or draw the Lorenz Attractor, can also be found on the website.

OS Simulations

Main article: Operating System

These are possibly the most popular kind of simulation. They simulate a computer, phone, tablet, or other electronic device. Instead of trying to remake a popular OS, such as Windows or Linux, some users make their own. These are very widespread on Scratch.

Contrary to popular belief, these are actually simulators and not emulators; there is a large difference between the two.

Chatbots

See also: Creating a Chat Bot

Chatbots simulate talking to a real person. Some use "Ask" Blocks to create these, however many also use user scripts (for speech recognition) or customised ways of text input made by the chatbot creator. Sometimes these are implemented into Operating Systems. Often they are limited and can not detect common typos.^{[citation needed]}

Comment simulations

A comment simulator creates lists of comments automatically generated or from a pre-listed database. These are not especially common on Scratch, but are still fairly widespread. Some comment simulators also include 'themes' or 'genres' that the comments are based off.

These should not be confused with another type of comment simulators, which showcases humorous comments handpicked from a website.

Sandboxes

Main article: Sandbox

Sandbox projects allow users to change an environment. Several types of sandbox projects exist, but sandbox simulators involve an environment a user cannot directly interfere with, but can set conditions and observe the results. Many sandbox simulators have been made on Scratch.

External Links

• Simulation on Wikipedia