Show HN: Fly.exe – An EON systems like virtual fruit fly uploaded to computer
Fly.exe is a new simulation project that models the brain of a fruit fly using the complete connectome of a male Drosophila. The system runs 12 virtual flies in a physics-based environment, simulating neural activity and behavior without relying on traditional optical sensors.
Why it matters
This represents a significant milestone in computational neuroscience and biological emulation, demonstrating how complex neural graphs can be integrated into physics engines.
A Drosophila brain simulator that runs the whole Traced universe of the released male CNS connectome — 165,122 neurons and every one of the 25,563,197 edges between them — inside a physical fly body, in closed loop, on one GPU.
That universe is 165,122 of the 166,700 bodies the MaleCNS paper annotates: the runtime graph is the subgraph induced by annotation status Traced , a decision recorded in ADR-2026-002 . Widening it to Traced+Assign+Anchor would add 2,443 bodies (1.48%) and 60,281 edges (0.24%).
It is not a recovered copy of the imaged fly, a complete biological emulation, or a digital twin. What it is, and the evidence behind every number on this page, is set out in What is and is not claimed .
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