aafire

Display ASCII fire animation in the terminal

$ aafire

$ aafire -driver curses

$ aafire -driver slang

$ aafire -width [80] -height [25]

aafire [aalib-options]

aafire displays an animated fire simulation rendered entirely in ASCII art characters. It is a demonstration program for the aalib library, which converts graphical output into text-based representations.
The animation renders flames that flicker and dance in real-time using only standard text characters, creating a visually interesting effect directly in the terminal or in an X11 window. The program demonstrates aalib's ability to represent complex visual information using nothing but ASCII characters and their brightness levels.
By default, aalib may attempt to use a graphical driver. To ensure output stays in the terminal, use the curses or slang driver explicitly.

-driver name

Select output driver (curses, slang, X11, etc.)

Set display width in characters

Set display height in characters

Enable bold font for brighter output

Use dim characters for darker appearance

Use reverse video mode

Use normal rendering mode

Use extended ASCII character set

Use eight-bit ASCII characters

Display available options and drivers

The default driver may attempt to open an X11 window rather than display in the terminal. Use -driver curses or -driver slang to force terminal output. Performance depends on terminal emulator capabilities and may vary across different systems.

aafire is part of the aalib (ASCII Art Library) created by Jan Hubicka in the late 1990s. The library was developed to enable ASCII art rendering for various applications and became popular for its creative approach to displaying graphics in text-only environments. It gained wider recognition through projects like MPlayer which used aalib to play video as ASCII art.

bb(1), aview(1), asciiview(1), cmatrix(1), sl(1)