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Comparison · Analytics
forrel vs simlandr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of forrel and simlandr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
forrel vs simlandr: at a glance
What is forrel?
forrel is getting faster at the simulations forensic kinship work actually spends its time on.
forrel handles forensic pedigree analysis: kinship likelihood ratios, profile simulation, relationship checking, and missing person calculations. Version 1.9.0 synced with pedtools 2.11.0's loop handling, which the release notes credit with enabling complex pedigrees that were previously intractable, and moved profileSim() to mirai for parallelism. It also added fEstimate() for inbreeding coefficients and parentChildLikelihood() as a fast path for the simplest case.
What is simlandr?
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
simlandr builds potential landscape plots from simulations of dynamic systems, with barrier-height calculations and batch simulation grids. Its three substantive releases are all consolidation: parameters renamed, functions renamed, defaults removed. By 0.3.0 the bespoke accessors had been replaced by ggplot2's autolayer() and base summary(), and the package carried print, summary, and plot methods for its own classes.
forrel vs simlandr: editorial side-by-side
forrel
0.0ANALYTICS
forrel is getting faster at the simulations forensic kinship work actually spends its time on.
◆ Current state
forrel handles forensic pedigree analysis: kinship likelihood ratios, profile simulation, relationship checking, and missing person calculations. Version 1.9.0 synced with pedtools 2.11.0's loop handling, which the release notes credit with enabling complex pedigrees that were previously intractable, and moved profileSim() to mirai for parallelism. It also added fEstimate() for inbreeding coefficients and parentChildLikelihood() as a fast path for the simplest case.
◆ Where it's heading
Two long threads run through the window. One is making the common operations cheap: faster simulations through reorganized likelihood calculations, a dedicated parent-child path, dropped map attribute preservation, log-likelihoods to avoid underflow in kinshipLR(). The other is making relationship checking presentable, with checkPairwise() growing ggplot2 and plotly output, verbal relationship descriptions, and bootstrap p-values. Reference data is maintained alongside both, with the FORCE SNP panel completed and an X-chromosomal counterpart added.
◆ Prediction
With profileSim() on mirai and the loop handling synced, the next likely step is extending mirai parallelism to the other simulation-heavy functions such as exclusionPower() and the bootstrap in checkPairwise().
simlandr
0.0ANALYTICS
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
◆ Current state
simlandr builds potential landscape plots from simulations of dynamic systems, with barrier-height calculations and batch simulation grids. Its three substantive releases are all consolidation: parameters renamed, functions renamed, defaults removed. By 0.3.0 the bespoke accessors had been replaced by ggplot2's autolayer() and base summary(), and the package carried print, summary, and plot methods for its own classes.
◆ Where it's heading
Every release trades a package-specific name for a conventional one - var and par became arg and ele, get_geom() became an autolayer() method, get_barrier_height() became a summary() method, hash_big.matrix became hash_big_matrix. The one methodological change, an adjusted minimal energy path algorithm, arrived inside a release otherwise full of renames. Removing default values for barrier calculation because they were often unsuitable reads as the maintainer deciding the defaults were doing harm.
◆ Prediction
The feed stops at 0.3.0 in late 2022, mid-consolidation; these entries give no indication of what followed, if anything did.
Alternatives to forrel and simlandr
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either forrel or simlandr.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
healthyR.data
From a bundled hospital dataset to a live CMS API client.
See all forrel alternatives → · See all simlandr alternatives →
Recent activity from forrel and simlandr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoforrelmirai parallelism and faster profile simulation
- 1y agoforrelFORCE SNP panel completed and X-chromosomal set added
- 1y agoforrelrankProfiles() and access to special lumping
- 1y agoforrelacrossComps argument and readFam() unexported
- 1y agoforrelcheckPairwise() overhauled with p-values and new plot backends
- 2y agoforrelFamilias interoperability split into pedFamilias
- 3y agosimlandrAccessors replaced by autolayer and summary methods
- 3y agosimlandrroxygen2 updated for HTML5 compatibility
- 4y agosimlandrBatch simulation arguments renamed; energy path algorithm adjusted
- 4y agosimlandrManual improved and a test function added
- 5y agosimlandrPackage cleaned for CRAN compatibility
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between forrel and simlandr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. forrel and simlandr are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is forrel better than simlandr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. forrel and simlandr are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to forrel?
Top forrel alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "forrel alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/forrel for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to simlandr?
Top simlandr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "simlandr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/simlandr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.