It is very fun and it will help me a lot in some physics demonstrations at college. Beats drawing circles on the blackboard and pretending that they're being affected by gravity.

lordshippo

WOW! I wish I was still a kid, I would be having so much fun with it by the looks of that video.

easy2panic

This is like one of those relaxation vids or something you would see in a art video or on the old Sci-Fi channel "art" breaks before FTL newsfeed. I could just watch that animation over and over.

Git Em SteveDave

this is so cool I have been playing with it for a while

superbryant88

It reminds me off an old PC game titled "The Incredible Machine." Does anyone remember that? It was awesome, just like this program.

VestedFox

Yes, now I don't have to wait for Crayon Physics to be ported to mac!

Unseen Ultra

Holy crap! This has the potential to become the next Linerider!!

marksman7328

@VestedFox

DEFINITELY!! "The incredible machine" was my favorite game of all time! I remember playing it all the way back in 4th grade!
I don't remember what happened to it.. there were a couple of versions, and I think either the original developers or a 3rd party was trying to translate the game into a 3D version ALA mousetrap in real life.

Regarding this game, I think it is great. I've actually been thinking for the last few years about interactive software education for highschool and college level classes to teach advanced concept of Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, etc. It is difficult for many people to learn scientific and math concepts the traditional way without having direct visual applications/interactions. I think this fact extends from pre-school all the way to advanced degrees in college. There is no reason why education should n't be more visual and interactive!
Think 3D scientific animation meets the incredible machine meets MATLAB. I've looked all over for this and have not found anything that was very good, especially for the highschool/undergrad levels. There is a very bad misconception that once you mention "visual/interactive" education, people think you are talking about children or people with learning disabilities. For some reason, people equate these things.
I for one want to break that nonsense, and bring this type of education into the mainstream. Computer technology has helped education immensely, but I think there is much that hasn't even begun to be envisioned yet.

winterspan

@redxeth: @meowsqueak: @VestedFox: @Unseen Ultra: @marksman7328: @lordshippo: @easy2panic: @Git Em SteveDave: @superbryant88: After playing this "game" for a while - I have discovered A LOT of glitches. For one, the second "Options" menu, with Advanced options doesn't always show up - secondly, a lot of what I draw is DISAPPEARING about a couple of "inches" above the plane. I've restarted it, reinstalled it several times, I have lots of ram, good cpu, great graphics card and this thing keeps messing up - plus running on XP SP2. So, I am giving this game a thumbs down until these bugs can be fixed.

TheManator

It's not Open Source if the Source isn't Open.

meowsqueak

This is so going to be bought up by Google! This is right up their alley! Imagine version 2.0!

redxeth

This is a great program. I have a tablet PC and this program is great fun on it. Nice to just pass around with some friends and see what people come up with.

math0ne

@lordshippo: I've seemed to isolate the disappearing glitch. If you clear the entire screen, and create a plane that is really REALLY REALLY low, objects like boxes, circles, chains or anything else will disappear, except it does allow me to create at least two objects before it does it...weird.

TheManator

@TheManator:

Really, nothing happened while I was playing with it. And i did check it twice to see if I found the glitches you talk about, but nothing again. And I also have XP SP2 with the difference that my computer isn't that good. It's just a matter of time to see if anyone else experience the same glitches.

@Unseen Ultra:

Yes, this game reminds me of Crayon Physincs also.

lordshippo

i can't think of an app more suited to the multi touch tables being developed these days.

sure looks like fun ^_^

Gonzie

"@redxeth: @meowsqueak: @VestedFox: @Unseen Ultra: @marksman7328: @lordshippo: @easy2panic: @Git Em SteveDave: @superbryant88: After playing this "game" for a while - I have discovered A LOT of glitches. For one, the second "Options" menu, with Advanced options doesn't always show up - secondly, a lot of what I draw is DISAPPEARING about a couple of "inches" above the plane. I've restarted it, reinstalled it several times, I have lots of ram, good cpu, great graphics card and this thing keeps messing up - plus running on XP SP2. So, I am giving this game a thumbs down until these bugs can be fixed."
@TheManator:
Used it on Linux, it was flawless, worked just as I needed it to. And I only wish you could play the game with an actual objective!

abhiroop

Going to download this when I get home from work, looks like fun. Great find!

sdmdj

"It reminds me off an old PC game titled "The Incredible Machine." Does anyone remember that? "
@VestedFox: Yeah, I used to play the DOS version! I got to level 50+ before I got my hands on Win3.1 and moved on to other stuff. Sierra was such a great company then.

I saw this program recommended on Tablet PC Forums a while ago and played with it a little while. Haven't touched it since then, but yes it is awesome with a tablet PC.

kureshii

That does look like fun. I'll stick with the example video, though. I'm getting just as much enjoyment out of watching what the app can do, without having to spend a lot of time playing around and making things that I'm sure would be far less cool than what's in the demo.

Popstar Dave

@VestedFox: O man I love that game.....I played it last week actually

superbryant88

Looks fricken amazing, but too bad it doesn't apply all that Calculus stuff which I NEED for my Physics class next term

animemecha

@kureshii: Sierra was my childhood.

@winterspan: I like you idea with the interactive software for biology chemistry..etc.

My undergrad physics course had a program like this one but it wasn't as fun and colorful.

VestedFox

...up til 3 am last night having Phun!
[yawn]

BlogsOfSteel

We used a program called Interactive Physics in my physics class. I'm not sure if it's still around, since, even just last year, it would only run on NT computers.

NikP

Like some others, I've been playing around in Phun for a couple months now. Its like Crayon Physics, but better.

My favorite thing is using the liquid. Its really CPU intensive, but when you can get it to work at better than 10fps its awesome. I spent one day creating a speedboat that I can drive around in a pool of water. Then I drop big-ass circles in the water and create huge tsunamis that I can jump and ride on with my speedboat.

In some ways, games... "Toys" they are better called, like these (LineRider, Crayon Physics, Tower of Goo, Phun) are much better than all the big studio 3-D graphic games out there.

LastVigilante

@abhiroop: You can play Magic Pen at [magic.pen.fizzlebot.com] Very similar in look and feel to Phun, but with an objective.

Great game, but gets real tough by the 7th or 8th level.

TechTalk WRLR 98.3FM

@VestedFox :It reminds me off an old PC game titled "The Incredible Machine." Does anyone remember that? It was awesome, just like this program.

OH MAN! Thanks, now I remember the name. I remember playing it when I was 4 or 5 (I'm 14). Love it.

Danny

@TheManator: Yeah I just played with it again to see If I saw and of these glitches and didnt really see any of them Ill take a closer look at it when I get home. peace~

superbryant88

Also, if you like this, you'll LOOOVVEEE the new Wii game, "Boom Blox."

I described it to a friend as "Jenga with evil monkeys and bombs."

His reply: "Isn't that what Jenga always needed?"

It's a whole lotta fun of exactly this type.

TinkerX

"Holy crap! This has the potential to become the next Linerider!!"

Phun is way better than Linerider. Bonus points for a Linux native version. Also it actually runs under my crappy ATI graphics card.

Daniel

@VestedFox: Yeah, I loved TIM!!

hutchwilco

It's very cool, but *not* open source.

First of all, I can't find the source code. Even if it's somewhere, the website says:

"Phun is free **for non-commercial use**"

(Open source|Free) software has no limitations for use and distribution.

But it's really, really cool.

lucastx

@NikP: We used that too, and it worked on my XP system a while back.

Busybyeski