anemotaxis(6x)

✨ anemotaxis — a little hottie of a manpage ✨

okay so bestie, you're reading the anemotaxis(6x) page from the XScreenSaver manual and honestly? it's giving science. like, actual research paper energy but make it a screensaver. let's get into it 💅

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

anemotaxis — a directional search, but on a plane. (not the airplane kind, the flat-surface kind, bestie. keep up ✨)

---

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

anemotaxis [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
[--root] [--window-id number] [--delay number] [--distance number]
[--sources number] [--searchers number] [--fps]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so this program is literally a demo of a search algorithm designed for locating a source of odor in a turbulent atmosphere. yes, odor. we're sniffing, but mathematically. 🫶

here's the vibe: the odor gets convected by wind, and the wind has a constant mean direction plus fluctuations around it. the searcher? it can sense the odor and determine the local instantaneous wind direction. the whole goal is to find the source in the shortest mean time.

some animals literally face this exact task — finding mates, food, home, etc. — and they exhibit very particular, zigzagging search trajectories. iconic behavior honestly. 😭

this is modeled as a search on a discrete two-dimensional lattice. the source releases particles that drift with constant velocity in one direction and walk randomly in the other direction. the searcher knows if it hit a particle, and if so, it knows the particle's position one time step earlier (that's the local wind direction, bestie 🧚).

the program paints sources and the particles released by them, as well as the trajectories of searchers who are trying to capture the sources. main character energy: the searchers. ✨

---

💖 OPTIONS 💖

• --visual visual — specify which visual to use. legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual. no cap.
• --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, so you literally don't have to do anything. 🎀
• --root — draw on the root window.
• --window-id number — draw on the specified window.
• --delay number — per-frame delay, in microseconds. default: 20000 (0.02 seconds.).
• --distance number — max initial distance to the source. range is 10 - 250. default: 40.
• --sources number — max number of sources. default: 25.
• --searchers number — max number of searchers. default: 25.
• --fps — display the current frame rate and CPU load. slay, numbers. 🔥

---

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
• XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
• XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.

---

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

X(1), xscreensaver(1)

---

⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

Copyright © 2004 by Eugene Balkovsky. permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. no representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. it is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

like, it's free, just keep the notice, and don't come for anybody if it breaks. that's the deal. 💀

---

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Eugene Balkovsky

---

that's the whole thing, bestie — X Version 11, 6.09 (07-Jun-2024), and this page is anemotaxis(6x). go forth and find your odor source. 🦋💖🌸