A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome
phoenix120
226 points
72 comments
August 18, 2026
Related Discussions
Found 5 related stories in 41.5ms across 4,128 title embeddings via pgvector HNSW
- Show HN: A desktop fly drawn to the scent of vibecode kulikov0 · 19 pts · August 21, 2026 · 63% similar
- Show HN: SpinWin – A macOS menu bar app to visually rotate or spin any window dbm5 · 35 pts · July 25, 2026 · 46% similar
- Turn And Face The Strange: Fly.io is betting on computers for AI agents whitlock · 19 pts · July 24, 2026 · 46% similar
- It's an Apple Lisa, on a FPGA austinallegro · 14 pts · July 24, 2026 · 45% similar
- Show HN: AI Pulse a fake LED strip beside the macOS Dock that shows agent status leog_me · 11 pts · August 10, 2026 · 44% similar
Discussion Highlights (15 comments)
actionfromafar
Now this is real AI.
uniq7
No demo video?
aperrien
Interesting work! There's NeuroMechFly ( https://github.com/NeLy-EPFL/flygym/ ) available, you might try using that to simulate the fly body in real time as well.
pavel_lishin
Ah, Mr. Acevedo, nice to see you.
a1o
> What's modeled vs. measured > Honesty section: I wouldn’t mind an human written README
causal
I appreciate the open source approach over the startup's sensational claims. This is more transparent. That said, I think it still presents itself as if the fly is being controlled by the connectome, when (if I'm reading the source correctly) it's more accurate to say scripted behaviors have been hooked up to be triggered by the connectome. Put another way, you might as well have the "escape" trigger open a YouTube video of a fly flying away. That would probably be less misleading too.
logicallee
This is absolutely astounding. What an implementation. A connectome is like a full brain scan! I am asking Claude to port this to the browser and I'll host it, so you can try it without installing anything. Some details about the port: Claude is able to do porting tasks like this. I'll put up a link when you can try it in your browser. I was able to get it to port the complete BitNet b1.58 2-billion parameter model several versions ago (in February, so this would have been Opus 4.5) to browser, so it can do so. This will run on the browser. I'll have it make it so that on mobile you can tap the fly or turn on the camera and it sees you, and same on desktop actually. Since the connectome is only 668 neurons, this will run super fast. Actually I'll make it allow for several flies, and let you drop food. I did something like this before here[1] but using the real connectome is something very different and very amazing. I'll have it add an experimental 3D mode with threejs, I'm not sure if that is also possible or not, we'll have to see it. This size of task usually takes Claude a few hours, so check my comment in the morning for the implementation, I'll reply here once it's done and hosted. [1] https://stateofutopia.com/papers/1/evolving-brains-cull-long...
DaiPlusPlus
I have no exposure to connectomes - or really anything quite like this (as opposed to good ol’ fashioned perceptrons) - so forgive my following uninformed question: Can someone explain if this software is ethical?
kypro
Oh nice, might use this to create some art for my home. https://www.instagram.com/p/DMfi-9Vsl-u/ > Infinite Pain is a computer running a deterministic neural simulation of a microscopic nematode worm’s brain (c. elegans), subjected to regular pain stimuli.
_def
next up: https://openworm.org/
dekhn
It's weird to write MacOS specific software in this era.
qingcharles
At some point in the future would it be possible to simply download a DNA sequence of an entire animal as a "ROM" and boot it into a virtual "reality"? What detail level of reality would we have to emulate for an egg to grow into an adult animal?
lp4v4n
Would we be able to have a "digital human" when we reach the level of creating this kind of brain mapping for the human brain? Honestly I think we're still discovering how powerful neural networks are and certainly they can do computations that sound very close to intelligence in some contexts, but I still find it hard to think that we can simplify the whole reality of an incredibly complex chemical machinery down to a bunch of matrices multiplications.
ecto
Things like this are why I come to HN! Cool hack :)
sgt
This has to be some of the coolest stuff I've seen on HN in a while. I'm running 3 flies on my desktop right now, all powered by realistic brains.