I am wondering about the Conway game of life here, if it is in theory played out on an infinite plane how can it be truly modelled, i can see that it is a simple program to write but surely if you reach the edges of your model then the states of some cells cannot be tested correctly according to the rules, i mean because they are not surrounded by the full complement of neighbour cells, so their state will change in a way they might not have otherwise and then these changes are going to filter back down into the rest of the model.
having not written a version i can only assume that the patterns often assume steady state or that you could assume that model grows indefinitely if rapid expansion continues after a defined number of iterations.
But then, in the case of Mandlebrot set if you allow for more and more iterations, more and more fine detail emerges.
