Tonight's @FieldFX shader jam, I am casting rays out against an infinite field of the Game of Life.
https://github.com/canmom/jams/blob/main/bonzomatic/canmom-2025-10-13-game-of-life-raymarched.glsl
Each pixel essentially owns its own game of life cell on a toroidal play area which tiles the plane. A noise texture is added based on the music FFT (one bin for low-frequency noise, another for higher-frequency noise).
The advancement of the automaton is also based on the FFT, it ticks only when the music in that bin passes a threshold.
Rays against the plane are calculated analytically and then I march forwards if I don't hit a living cell until I hit one or run out of iterations, which creates the '3D-ness'. This could be extended to add shading.
Right now the noise mostly creates big solid blobs which immediately melt away into oscillator ash. I'd like to find a more interesting way to seed it which would generate some of the more interesting structures, all ears if you've got ideas!