What Is It?

PARTICULATE is a VR physics sandbox and creative tool that simulates millions of tiny particles simultaneously using GPU compute shaders, allowing users to sculpt, attract, orbit, distort, and stir immense particle systems with a set of ten tool types. Built entirely from scratch by solo developer Mike Turitzin using a custom C++ engine, it was developed between 2017 and 2019 with the explicit goal of creating "the ultimate VR particle experience."

It is not a game with objectives. It is not a lesson. It is an instrument: a physics-powered creative environment where the interaction of forces, fields, and particles produces visual behaviour that ranges from meditative to spectacular to genuinely surprising. Users can create and save scenes, record and loop tool motions, view curated featured scenes, and activate audio reactivity to make any music animate the particles in real time.

The XR School lists PARTICULATE under Physics — which is technically accurate — but it sits in a different category from every other app in this series. The closest analogies are generative art software and physics visualisation tools, not educational simulations. What it offers to education is the experience of particle physics as something felt, beautiful, and emergent — and that has genuine value when framed well.

Mike Turitzin — An Extraordinary Solo Developer

PARTICULATE was designed and developed by Mike Turitzin — and his background is worth knowing. Turitzin began programming with Quake modding as a teenager, then published computer graphics research at Stanford University, worked on the search indexing system at Google, and founded WorkFlowy — a popular note-taking and organisation app used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. He started VR tinkering during the Oculus DK2 developer kit era, initially experimenting with music visualisation, before pivoting to what became PARTICULATE.

The decision to build a custom engine — rather than using Unity or Unreal — reflects both professional capability and a specific technical vision. With full control over data layouts, render passes, and compute shader architecture, Turitzin could achieve particle counts and rendering techniques that would be difficult or impossible within a general-purpose game engine. He describes the rendering technique in PARTICULATE as one he has not seen done elsewhere in VR, and has published a technical blog post explaining it.

Ten Tools — Ten Ways to Shape Millions of Particles

Each of PARTICULATE's ten tool types manipulates particles in a distinct physical way — together they create a vocabulary for sculpting particle behaviour that ranges from gentle and meditative to dramatic and chaotic.

Audio Reactivity & Featured Scenes

The Physics Behind the Beauty

Despite being primarily an experiential tool rather than a didactic one, PARTICULATE demonstrates real physical phenomena. Each tool maps to a recognisable physical concept:

What to Be Aware Of

XR School Scores

Mike Turitzin explains: "With a custom engine, you have 100% control over data layouts, render passes, and so on." In PARTICULATE, particle spawning, simulation, and rendering all use compute shaders — including a rendering technique Turitzin describes as one he has not seen elsewhere in VR. He wrote a technical blog post explaining it at miketuritzin.com.