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Re:WebGL: 80,000 particles by ashleyw on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @01:31PM (#4008846)
It's actually 30,000 particles, not 80,000. See the source: "numLines = 30000".

If you set a breakpoint at that line (28), then you can edit the variable in the console to whatever you want. You can make it smaller without setting the breakpoint, but any higher results in a "attempt to access out of range vertices" error.

I can get it to ~40,000 on my iMac's 6970m 2GB without noticeable slowdown (this is w/ Chrome 20 dev.)

Re:WebGL: 80,000 particles by ashleyw on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @05:20PM (#4010061)
UPDATE: It turns out the slowdown at 40,000 was due to the Web Inspector being open (I have no idea why!) It's actually still pretty damn smooth at a MILLION particles! Crazy!
Re:WebGL: 80,000 particles by schwa on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @02:45PM (#4009229)
Vertex indexes are 16 bit. It's probably set to 30000 for a very good reasons.
Re:WebGL: 80,000 particles by boblemarin on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @03:26PM (#4009475)
Please, check my post below for the truth about the numbers http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4009469