Galaxy Formation

I took a lot of artistic liberties with this, so I wouldn't say it's scientifically accurate in any respect.  I am calculating gravity between every one of the 20,000 stars in this simulation though, and it still runs interactively at 30 fps. I'm astonished my computer didn't melt.

This is an experiment visualizing early galaxy formation - it's created from 20,000 particles interacting via gravity. The physics is only loosely accurate, but even with approximate equations of motion I found the images and movement compelling. I had to try many combinations of world scale, black hole density (there's a black hole in the middle), mass, as well as a "dark matter" factor to start getting compelling structures. However I strongly suspect my Verlet integrator isn't good enough to conserve energy which is causing the rockets of mass that you see shooting out of the system occasionally. Runs in real time using Direct X 11 compute shaders in Unity.