[HN Gopher] Nightdrive
___________________________________________________________________
Nightdrive
Author : GeorgeHahn
Score : 1262 points
Date : 2022-09-23 02:29 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (incoherency.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (incoherency.co.uk)
| willhinsa wrote:
| This reminds me of the movie Drive (2011), in particular the
| first song on the soundtrack, Kavinsky - Nightcall
|
| https://youtu.be/MV_3Dpw-BRY
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Seems to be a popular aesthetic for synthwave compilations on
| YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICcFMBzOnYs
|
| I wonder if Drive originated this aesthetic or if it's just
| coincidence.
| Bakary wrote:
| I can't tell you what originated the aesthetic, but it's not
| Drive because some songs on its soundtrack were already part
| of the established aesthetic.
|
| It's definitely one of the major works in that world,
| however.
| qkls wrote:
| It's "Outrun" aesthetic, for example
| https://www.reddit.com/r/outrun
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I was thinking of this song exactly before I turned on the
| music; thought it might even be the same song for a second. I
| wonder why the (visual) aesthetic is evocative of this song?
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Real human bean. Love this movie.
| keyle wrote:
| Wow Drive is from 2011? Man... I feel like it's a new movie. I
| loved it, maybe that's why.
| Bakary wrote:
| I think we get that "goddamn years are going by" feeling with
| movies especially because they are connected to a specific
| year yet are disconnected from other memories (unless you
| brought your crush to one of them maybe)
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well it is a new movie, at least by period standards.
|
| Broadly speaking you've got the B&W era until the 70s, the
| "old classics" recorded in colour on actual film up till the
| 90s, then the period of questionable CGI and campiness up
| till somewhere like 2005 when what we feel like is new/recent
| cinema starts. The ongoing era of decent invisible CGI,
| quality digital cameras, and post-9/11 hopelessness.
|
| It's why I still watch a lot of 90s/early 2000s movies,
| there's just something different about that era that feels
| nice.
| uhtred wrote:
| the period of questionable CGI and campiness is over? Have
| you seen the never ending churn out of marvel "movies"?
| TOGoS wrote:
| Having grown up with the crappy "Jurassic Park somehow
| pulled off what no other movie of the time did" CGI of
| the 90s, the effects in the Marvel movies look pretty
| seamless up to the point where people's fingers start
| shooting green lightning or whatever. The nature of their
| plot holes and overall dumbness feels different, also.
| Much more polish, to the extent that I can almost ignore
| how stupid the whole thing is when I'm watching one.
| Almost.
| jcynix wrote:
| Very nice! I instantly recognized the tune but from a
| completely different event, namely
|
| https://youtu.be/wkF9w86XXKU
|
| That's the cover by band London Grammar and TIL about the
| original one. Didn't know about the movie which now is on my
| todo list, thanks.
| nickkell wrote:
| I remember Alt-J performing a cover of "A Real Hero", another
| song from the Drive soundtrack, at Glastonbury festival years
| ago. The film and soundtrack were really cool.
| mckirk wrote:
| Incidentally, that song was written with Chesley
| Sullenberger in mind, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549,
| which he glide-landed in the Hudson River.
|
| That guy is a real hero, and apparently a real human bean.
| dm319 wrote:
| I love this cover by Natalie McCool:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtpAVTPJaJQ
| ElectroSlayer wrote:
| Great song! I personally hear this track from Kavinsky when
| watching that demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErQNRwH-Hmk
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I wanted to do the same for the train feeling:
| https://qewasd.com/train
| TOGoS wrote:
| Hmm, some of those trees appear based on parallax to be farther
| away than the shoreline that they're painted over. Otherwise,
| pretty nice.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Love this, including the music, but here's an old favorite track
| of mine that would also fit:
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=zkQaLv7mEcI&feature=share
| franciscop wrote:
| > "It's hard to classify what it is [...] Maybe it's a "demo"?"
|
| Exactly, those are demos, and while I believe it's slightly
| different there's a whole culture around it that I've never been
| aware until recently called "demoscene"! I even have a small
| "Demos" section on my website with a bunch of those, not to the
| same level of quality though since for me it'd be a bit more like
| "self-contained small experiments that resulted in something cool
| so I put it together as a demo":
|
| - "Zoom", hyperdrive-like effect: https://francisco.io/demo/zoom/
|
| - "Tree generation", specify a JSON/HTML structure and it'll
| generate a tree: https://francisco.io/demo/tree/ (disc: it was
| inspired by a broken demo I saw from someone else)
|
| - "Stereo Depth", calculate depth of a couple of stereo images
| using JS: https://francisco.io/demo/depth/
|
| - "Terminal player", specify a bunch of commands in plain text
| and they'll be "played" like a video:
| https://francisco.io/demo/terminal/
| Ruarl wrote:
| I would have classified it as a "simulation". Which is what the
| author calls it, but then tries to find other things to call it
| too. Simulation is fine.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Im not sure the cars and lights need to be anymore than floating
| orbs, its quite a nice minimalist aesthetic with just the lights.
| I'm not sure it needs to be a game either, maybe the ability to
| steer the car would be good but any more than that might seem
| forced (and I'm not even sure it needs that). The only real
| problem I see is that cars pass through you from behind (the only
| time the floating orbs effect becomes an issue), but even that
| seems minor for what it is.
| jstanley wrote:
| Yes, the "self-driving cars" logic needs a lot of work. That's
| the part I am least fond of currently.
| rezmason wrote:
| I'm amused that we share initials and a passion for this kind of
| project! Mine's https://rezmason.github.io/drivey .
|
| One key difference: this guy built his demo from scratch, whereas
| mine's a port of someone else's work. It's great to see another
| implementation, with its own techniques and features.
| [deleted]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Was yours based on "Drivey"?
|
| EDIT: never mind, it looks like it was, very cool.
| rezmason wrote:
| Yep, my third attempt in ten years!
|
| The original was written in "JujuScript", with strong types
| and novel operators. I pretended it was Haxe, and ran around
| fixing compiler errors it till it compiled to JavaScript. I
| built out a small Three.js project to hook it to, built up
| the features, then refactored it into something I felt was
| maintainable. I tried preserving the organization of the
| original script as best as I could.
|
| Sidenote: I belong to the "port it" school of software
| preservation. My friend who runs the BlastEm project belongs
| to the "emulate it" school. I've seen both approaches have
| been employed to preserve Glider, which I think implies how
| important that game is to people. :)
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| That is amazing, I remember seeing an early version of this on
| Windows, its so great to see it revived and with source!
| mhd wrote:
| Oh, I think I remember the original Drivey and was following
| the dev blog for a while back then. But I think in the end, it
| didn't go anywhere (no pun intended).
| smrtinsert wrote:
| This is beautiful.
| zulu-inuoe wrote:
| That's really cool, but I wonder why on my machine is maxes out
| all the cores on my CPU and still runs at something like 1 FPS
| on high If I turn it to Low it runs okay but looks.. not great.
|
| But I don't see anyone else having issues so, is it just me?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sounds like a lack of hardware acceleration. My i7-1185g7 is
| sitting at 20% but my Intel Iris Xe GPU is maxed. Runs smooth
| though.
| [deleted]
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Same here. I've also experienced it with other JavaScript
| simulations. I suspect it has something to do with Chrome's
| hardware acceleration because it works smooth as butter on
| Firefox.
| tomcam wrote:
| Gorgeous and hypnotic.
| [deleted]
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| That is amazing, I remember seeing an early version of this on
| Windows and being impressed. It is great to see it revived and
| with source!
| breck wrote:
| Wow that's gorgeous. Is there a link to the source?
| latchkey wrote:
| His username is rezmason and it is mounted under /drivey. so,
| rewrite the url a tiny bit and you get:
|
| https://github.com/rezmason/drivey/
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| interesting that this is running very slow (like 1 frame per
| second) on Chrome, but runs very smooth on Firefox. I'm on the
| latest version of both for Mac.
| sprkwd wrote:
| Yeah. That is awesome.
| syndic8_xyz wrote:
| This person is really incredible. Just check out their work:
| https://www.rezmason.net/projects.html
| mandeepj wrote:
| _Copied fromhttps://www.rezmason.net/projects.html
|
| Through the nineties, Microsoft software engineers carried on
| a tradition of writing clever and distinctive software
| projects alongside the software they were primarily tasked
| with writing-- this is where Solitaire and Minesweeper came
| from, for instance. These engineers also wrote "easter eggs"
| into their primary software, such as the beautiful flight
| simulator hidden in Excel 97._
|
| Amazed by reading the above. I'm a sucker to read and learn
| from that clerverness.
| jmiskovic wrote:
| Amazing to see you in comments; your version was inspiration
| for this project:
| https://twitter.com/j_miskov/status/1490358867104083972
|
| The video didn't generate much interest so unfortunately I
| didn't release anything playable.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Among "features it would be neat to add", fading timelapse
| smeers as in your photo of the curve would be luvly.
| rezmason wrote:
| That's really neat! I like the tunnels under the giant
| trapezoids, they make me think of those enormous trapezoid
| buildings in Blade Runner.
|
| I can't take credit for Drivey's aesthetics, I'm just honored
| to have carried it to HTML5 ;) Somewhere out in Australia is
| the original programmer who I'm sure would love to see this,
| but who also loves avoiding the spotlight.
|
| I just did a quick scroll of your Twitter feed and jeez
| you're prolific, this stuff is really cool. I'll try Hexpress
| this weekend.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| I do not like how your city planners put pedestrian crossings
| on blind curves. That's really bad design that could lead to
| accidents.
|
| P.S. It's a joke. This is a really well executed demo.
| rezmason wrote:
| I agree, but the original creator put them in and they add
| some spice to the environs.
|
| I like to joke that Australia (where Drivey originally comes
| from) has a low enough population that the pedestrians are in
| no real danger ;)
| jstanley wrote:
| Neat! I like that this is kind of the opposite effect
| (obviously Drivey is way more polished).
|
| Drivey shows objects as their silhouettes on top of a light
| background, whereas Nightdrive shows objects as their lights on
| top of a dark background.
| rezmason wrote:
| Pleased to meet you! ^_^ Nightdrive is a jewel.
|
| Some people are making a strong case (I think) for calling
| these types of projects "demos", but also, I think the
| inability to fit them in the arbitrary structure of existing
| nomenclature is a good quality for a project to have. :D
|
| Have you considered using a small bokeh image in place of
| circles in your renderer? Their size is based on the (usually
| unchanging) optical properties of the eye, rather than the
| eye's distance to the light, so you'd fade them rather than
| resize them, and if you round their position to the nearest
| pixel you might be able to draw them with 2D canvas context
| speedily.
| latchkey wrote:
| Great work on this though! Super impressed. Would be fun to
| clean it up and convert to typescript.
| luismedel wrote:
| Honest question. What do you see "not clean" in the original
| code?
| latchkey wrote:
| Good question. The honest answer is that I don't know and
| that's the problem.
|
| A compiler would tell me what all the types should be and
| if they are being respected. I'd also write a lot of unit
| tests to make sure that the code is doing what it is
| expected to as well as enable refactoring more easily. The
| code isn't formatted consistently, so that also makes it
| hard for me to read, I'm kind of OCD about that and having
| tools like eslint/prettier, which do it automatically,
| makes this super easy to fix. Linting the code would also
| point out other issues that the compiler misses. Putting it
| into CI would ensure that all changes get checked and
| builds would fail, if there are issues.
|
| So I guess that is what I mean when I say 'clean it up'.
| neilparikh wrote:
| Would be neat to have eye gaze be literally controlled by where
| you look using webcam tracking! Not sure how accurate it would
| be though.
| nolok wrote:
| Only tengentially related but eye tracking + foveated
| rendering is the thing that makes me the most excited about
| PSVR 2 !
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| As a fan of vaporwave this is
|
| aesthetic Ke puki
| S-E-P wrote:
| I'm vibing
| aerovistae wrote:
| > The biggest flaw is that the cars are totally transparent,
|
| This seems easily fixable, no? Just make cars opaque black and
| assign progressively decreasing z-index to each spawning light.
| (Unlikely anyone will leave page open long enough to reach min
| value, and you could just reset at that point.)
| rezmason wrote:
| Someone with your level of optimism has an advantage.
|
| The tricky thing is, this project's renderer is currently a
| queue of circles to draw to a canvas. It's under 100 lines of
| JavaScript. So any increase in complexity will require
| substantial changes, like abstracting over types of drawables.
| Joeri wrote:
| There's probably a simple but effective way to do it, like
| drawing the body itself as a few black circles.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Exactly. Whenever drawing a pair of red circles for
| tailights, draw ~10 overlapping black circles between them.
| Bam. Done. I don't think this requires naive optimism, just
| 5 minutes of additional effort. Maybe less.
| twright0 wrote:
| Only five minutes! - Here's the source, show us.
| https://github.com/jes/nightdrive
| upwardbound wrote:
| I'm not the previous poster but thought this would be a
| fun challenge. No way it was 5 min though; took me at
| least 20 min to understand what to change.
|
| Anyways, run this in your browser inspector to hot-patch
| the live demo so that each car has an opaque black circle
| as its body/chassis: for (let i = 0; i
| < cars.length; i++) { console.log(i);
| cars[i].headlights = cars[i].headlights.concat([ {xy: new
| V2d(0,0), z: cars[i].headlights[0].z,
| r:cars[i].headlights[1].xy.x, col: "black"} ]);
| cars[i].rearlights = cars[i].rearlights.concat([ {xy: new
| V2d(0,0), z: cars[i].rearlights[0].z,
| r:cars[i].rearlights[1].xy.x, col: "black"} ]); }
| aerovistae wrote:
| Well done, nice job rising to the challenge! I definitely
| did not care enough to do it myself, so I applaud you. I
| just tried it out and it's perfect.
|
| To be clear, since of course this is the internet and one
| must be precise or else get nit-picked and "outplayed," I
| obviously meant 5 minutes _for the author who already
| knows the layout of the code._ Obviously. Any charitable
| interpretation would have taken that as a given. 25-40
| minutes sounds more appropriate for a newcomer examining
| it for the first time.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Oh yeah I totally get you, I just added the disclaimer
| about it taking me 20 min because I didn't want people to
| think I was trying to brag/flex about doing it in 5 min,
| which I didn't do and don't want to try to claim any
| credit for.
| jstanley wrote:
| Really nice! I hadn't considered making the opaque car
| bodies out of circles too :).
| skykooler wrote:
| hmm, this doesn't seem to change anything on Firefox.
| windows2020 wrote:
| transform: scalex(-1);
|
| It's beautiful art. The code too. Great work.
| fiat_fandango wrote:
| Does anyone have good resources for creating "generative assets"
| like this?
|
| I have a decent handle on js but I have no idea where to start in
| terms of tooling. For now, I've been trying to build basic eye
| tracking to apply a "block" of color over eyes with an animation
| in said block on top of a real-time video stream.
|
| Elsewhere, automating mouth animations from audio / even moving a
| character in a random motion when audio input is provided.
|
| Any advice where to start would be greatly appreciated!
| BasilPH wrote:
| I've done fun things with p5.js, which might have the
| primitives you need to do what you described.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Related: tutorial for writing something similar with ShaderToy -
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGmrMu-Iwbgs0H9va0DlopOGy...
| mft_ wrote:
| That was that I immediately thought of, but the shadertoy link
| is probably more gratifying:
| https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdfBRX
| OzzyB wrote:
| Yes, it's a demo, welcome to the Demoscene(tm)
| altacc wrote:
| So realistic that it hogs the middle lane when it could move to
| the left ;)
| AnthonyUK wrote:
| The red line indicates the hard shoulder but yes, even after
| the law change here in UK I have not seen much actual change on
| the road tbh regarding middle-lane hogging.
|
| People are either ignorant, lazy or don't care as there is very
| little chance of being caught.
| jcynix wrote:
| That might be realistic, cf. a female's view of the autobahn:
|
| https://ww3.cad.de/foren/ubb/uploads/NoIdea/perscheid32.jpg
|
| by the late cartoonist Martin Perscheid.
|
| What irritated me a bit instead, where the cars passing on the
| right side, until I realized that it was made by someone from
| UK ;-)
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > What game can we make where the premise is that you're a
| passenger on the motorway at night time? It shouldn't be a
| particularly taxing game, I think the main experience should
| still be that you're just enjoying watching the lights, but it
| would be cool if there was some interactivity and some sort of
| goal.
|
| If you wanted to make it interactive, maybe a Pokemon Snap like
| functionality where you try to capture photos of random
| environment features or creatures.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| A man running alongside your car window, jumping over
| obstacles. Technically this game already exists, but it would
| be interesting to combine with this demo.
| err4nt wrote:
| It's hard to classify what it is. It's not a video, because it's
| generated dynamically. It's not a game, because you just watch.
| It's not a screensaver, because it's not the 90s. Maybe it's a
| "demo"?
|
| It's an animation.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It might be nice to have something like this with very, very
| limited interactions to run in the background while programming
| or whatever.
| toss1 wrote:
| Very cool. One 'flaw' that immediately strikes me as cool is that
| the cars are transparent -- so, for instance, when a car passes
| you between you and the oncoming traffic, you see the taillights,
| but also the oncoming headlights/streetlights are not obscured by
| the car. So it's sort of disembodied headlights and taillights,
| which makes the effect even cooler... fun!
| skrebbel wrote:
| Tbf I think that's the point
| z3t4 wrote:
| Would be a nice "game" experience with VR googles
| megalomanu wrote:
| Beautiful, congrats! This reminds me the final shot of Playtime
| (not a spoiler! at 2:07: https://youtu.be/anvhVINSFnE?t=127 )
| masswerk wrote:
| BTW, while we may think that driving is a universal thing, I
| instantly found it amazing how North American this is. From the
| integrated indicators, to cars passing on your right, to the road
| lights and even how the road undulates. Having said that, great
| project!
|
| Edit: Well I got this entirely wrong and missed that this was
| meant to be lefthand traffic. (I caught a segment that looked
| more like there was an independent road passing an interstate
| crossing a city, rather than being opposite lanes.)
| jstanley wrote:
| What do you mean by "integrated indicators"? Don't cars have
| integrated indicators all over the world?
| berkut wrote:
| Erm, the cars are driving on the left (red taillights on left
| side of motorway, white headlights on right)... wouldn't North
| America be the other way around, with cars overtaking on the
| left?
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| He means cars overtaking you using the lane to your right. In
| Europe this is against the rules.
| berkut wrote:
| Yes, but the cars are driving on the left in this demo
| (like in the UK), so on the right is where you do overtake
| legally - in the faster lanes. I haven't noticed any
| "overtaking" on the left, where it would be illegal in some
| countries that drive on the left in the few minutes I've
| watched it.
| masswerk wrote:
| I happened to watch a segment where the cars on the opposite
| lanes looked more like passing on an independent road, so I
| missed that this was meant to be lefthand traffic. And it
| really looked more like an interstate passing through a city.
| - My failure.
| mbrameld wrote:
| I think it's from the UK or somewhere else that they drive on
| the left. Opposing traffic is on the right.
| jansan wrote:
| Also, the co.uk domain may be a hint.
| hugginn wrote:
| Isn't this left hand traffic though? As in, not what you'd find
| in America? It feels very Swedish to me, except for the traffic
| direction.
| masswerk wrote:
| You're right. Still, cars passing on both sides was so North
| American to me that this blended in this specific impression.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| What do you mean Swedish except for the traffic direction??
| hugginn wrote:
| Depends on where you are of course, but reminds me of
| approaching Stockholm, just before it gets so thick that
| people start loitering in the left lane. Perhaps Salem, if
| traffic isn't too heavy.
| netsharc wrote:
| If it's Sweden before 3 September 1967, even the traffic
| direction is correct...
|
| http://realscandinavia.com/this-day-in-history-swedish-
| traff...
| skrebbel wrote:
| > Maybe it's a "demo"?
|
| Yep!
| pacoverdi wrote:
| In a similar vein, check out the js1k 2013 winner entry, "Strange
| crystals" [0].
|
| Also check out the author's detailed explanations.
|
| [0] https://js1k.com/2013-spring/demo/1459
|
| [1] http://ehouais.net/2015/03/js1k-2015-part-1-introduction
| Melatonic wrote:
| Reminds me of the San Mateo bridge
| devsatish wrote:
| Really cool . Reminds me of the VR collaboration project (Dance
| Tonite) by Google Data arts team and LCD Sound System
| https://tonite.dance/
| DecoPerson wrote:
| Beautiful. This is something I've thought about too. Thanks for
| making it!
|
| One of the most beautiful light effects I've seen while being a
| passenger in a car is the reflection of oncoming headlights on
| the underside of powerlines, whether they be mains power or for
| electric trains. It's a dazzling pattern, reminiscent of the
| wormhole scene in Interstellar.
|
| Perhaps something to add to your "more" list? :smiling-emoji-
| with-eyes-closed-and-sweat-bead:
|
| Edit: At first I thought there were also stars, but it was just
| dust on my phone...
| pavlov wrote:
| _> 'Maybe it 's a "demo"?'_
|
| There's a long-standing tradition of people creating realtime
| graphics software on personal computers that doesn't offer any
| interactivity. They are indeed called demos and the community is
| called the demoscene. It goes back to the late 1980s and had a
| golden era in the mid-90s on Amiga and PC. (Pre-Internet,
| watching and making demos was one of the few socially and
| creatively oriented things you could do for free on a home
| computer.)
|
| To be pedantic, this isn't a full-blown demo. Small demos are
| called intros, and a category of them is the size-constrained
| intro (e.g. 1kB or 4kB). So this could be either a small intro or
| an effect as part of a bigger demo.
|
| It's worth looking up some of the small intros. People can
| squeeze entire GPU-raytraced universes with music into a few
| kilobytes.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Man...I need to get into the Demo scene. I have been
| disillusioned with the tech world because of just how
| utilitarian everything feels. I have been looking for something
| like this forever
| skrebbel wrote:
| IMO the author could very much submit this to a demoparty in
| the "demo" category (assuming they'd substitute the music with
| a fitting original work).
|
| These days, the only notable difference between demos and
| intros is file size. If it's bigger than 64kb, it's a demo. You
| can totally have a short, single-effect demo like this one, and
| there's plenty such demos out there.
|
| Ergo, I disagree, I think this counts as "full-blown" for any
| reasonable current definition.
| pavlov wrote:
| Fair enough. The definition of a demo in the '90s was
| definitely multi-part: multiple effects with usually still
| graphics in between (such as group logos or pixel art rip-
| offs from fantasy paintings). A single-effect demo that
| wasn't an intro would have been rare.
| soham wrote:
| Would love to see some small intros. Any links/sources you may
| suggest?
| pavlov wrote:
| I haven't followed the scene much in the past 20 years (after
| obsessing about it in my teen years), but Nano Gems seems
| like a good resource:
|
| https://nanogems.demozoo.org/
| skrebbel wrote:
| cdak (https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=55758 /
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCh3Q08HMfs)
| [deleted]
| djkoolaide wrote:
| 8-bit Guy has a great video on the history of the demo scene:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdh5I7F1oMs
| tsbischof wrote:
| A 256-byte music demo: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-
| is-born/
| developershrug wrote:
| nickdothutton wrote:
| This is art. If a pile of bricks wrapped in paper, or a lump of
| decaying meat in a box is art, then this is art.
| pnf wrote:
| No headlights?
| rippercushions wrote:
| This reminds me of Desert Bus, the legendary/notorious driving
| game by Penn & Teller. During the second half of the game, you're
| driving at night and the view is not dissimilar.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-b...
|
| Of course, because Desert Bus _is_ literally the worst game ever,
| the steering continually veers to the side and you have to keep
| nudging the wheel or you 'll crash.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Wonder if anyone has built an AI to drive the bus and get that
| sweet single point.
| rgovostes wrote:
| See also Martijn Steinrucken aka BigWings's The Drive Home:
|
| ShaderToy: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdfBRX [WebGL]
|
| Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrxZ4AZPdOQ / Making of:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKtsY7hYTPg
| jstanley wrote:
| This is fantastic, thanks for sharing!
| teddyh wrote:
| > _It 's not a screensaver, because it's not the 90s._
|
| XScreenSaver had its most recent release _two weeks_ ago.
| dghf wrote:
| > It's hard to classify what it is.
|
| "Synthwave multimedia project" would be how I'd describe it.
|
| It's very good. Made me think of the Jeff Goldblum / Michelle
| Pfeiffer film _Into the Night_
| (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089346/).
| jjslocum3 wrote:
| > It's hard to classify what it is. It's not a video, because
| it's generated dynamically. It's not a game, because you just
| watch. It's not a screensaver, because it's not the 90s. Maybe
| it's a "demo"?
|
| It's a simulation.
| [deleted]
| sillyapple wrote:
| If this is what most people see driving at night I'm jealous.
| Astigmatism makes every light source at night a big star-burst
| for me. Oncoming lights are near-blinding at some angles, the
| only way to cope is stare at the road lines on the opposite side.
| abitnegative wrote:
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I feel this isn't complete without mesmerizing shadow patterns
| from streetlights on dashboard.
| system2 wrote:
| If he spends more time on this project I bet he will turn it
| into a full-fledged pc game.
| soupbowl wrote:
| This is awesome, good job!
| mavu wrote:
| > It's hard to classify what it is. It's not a video, because
| it's generated dynamically. It's not a game, because you just
| watch. It's not a screensaver, because it's not the 90s. Maybe
| it's a "demo"?
|
| You know, even men are allowed to just make Art.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| Very cool. Of course the music is retrowave.
| Insanity wrote:
| Indeed, I very much enjoy the genre.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthwave
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| 5 years ago, after deliberately looking for new music, I
| realized that synthwave was the music that I had spent my
| entire life searching for.
| holoduke wrote:
| A good mix with synthwave music https://youtu.be/g6hY7dB54bc
| jen729w wrote:
| There's some starter stuff here too. I just discovered this
| genre the other week, it's terrific to work to.
|
| https://synthwave.fandom.com/wiki/Synthwave_Wiki
|
| Apple Music, and presumably the others, are good about
| recommending stuff in this genre. I started with Emil
| Rottmayer's 'Descend'. Timecop1983 is another good artist to
| launch from.
|
| https://music.apple.com/au/album/descend/1369485374
|
| Fun!
| lstodd wrote:
| Try Welle: Erdball it'll blow your mind
| owlninja wrote:
| Strong agree for something to work to. I was into vaporwave
| a few years ago but really love the whole outrun,
| synthwave, %wave stuff for working. Darksynth if I am
| really having to get after it!
| toast0 wrote:
| Digitally imported has synthwave channel
| https://www.di.fm/synthwave
| zasdffaa wrote:
| See also this very natty shadertoy demo
| https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdfBRX
| jensenbox wrote:
| I suggest detecting the viewers geographic location and changing
| the left/right side drive.
| cnasc wrote:
| For something similar, I always liked this blog series:
| https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940
|
| Unfortunately it seems the author passed away a few months ago
| pelasaco wrote:
| nice, had a flash back of LSD, sweet old days.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Well, that's beautiful. I remember a procedurally generated night
| city skyline demo that was on HN years and years ago, this is a
| somewhat similar endeavor.
| edreismd wrote:
| This is real art! Much more than SD
| teddyh wrote:
| Reminds me very much of _Night Driver_ , the arcade game from
| 1976:
|
| https://archive.org/details/arcade_nitedrvr
| chclau wrote:
| That's also the first thing I thought when I saw the title
| imknewhere wrote:
| I remember playing this game one time when I was a kid! I still
| think about it, from time to time, for some reason.
|
| I found the entire experience so disorienting. I remember my
| dad laughing at me, I did so terribly at it (TBF I was probably
| 6 or 7)
| UberFly wrote:
| Love it. It gave me a bit of that early-internet "wow, this is
| really cool and new" feeling. Thanks.
| techas wrote:
| Very nice!
|
| I thought this would be about the Atari game with paddles... lol
| Keyb0ardWarr10r wrote:
| Please allow the lanes to be reversed, we drive on the right side
| tjungblut wrote:
| somebody already opened a PR for that:
| https://github.com/jes/nightdrive/pull/2
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| I love how this written. I've wanted to document how a personal
| project works, and this style's exactly what I was looking for.
| spookierookie wrote:
| Saw it for a min. Nice.
|
| Then I bumped into the car in front of me which was changing
| lanes. Not nice.
| jstanley wrote:
| Yes, sorry about that. The lane switch planning is incredibly
| poor!
| kenver wrote:
| This is wonderful, well done. The limitations you mention just
| add to the style.
| IMAYousaf wrote:
| This is really nice. I'd actually love it as a
| screensaver/background.
| [deleted]
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| >There are a few more things that I think would be fun to do:
|
| First off, it's beautiful! Second, just because you can, doesn't
| mean you should :)
|
| I think it's art, so be careful about adding more. The minimalism
| is beautiful. Just a bunch of moving lights, but they capture the
| feel of night driving! If you add everything mentioned as
| upgrades, it will be a simulation. An impressive engineering
| feat, but (I think) less as a work of art.
|
| I wonder, what does someone who's never ridden/driven in a car at
| night 'feel' when they see this?
| runxel wrote:
| It's superb! Only needs city lights now. Think of driving up the
| hill next to a city. And then less cars. That would be soothing.
| davidkunz wrote:
| As a German, it would have been more relaxing if cars on the left
| were faster.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| That was my first thought too. I was going to post "Tsk tsk,
| going slow in the middle lane, making people pass you on the
| right" but then noticed it was in the UK.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| _> It 's not a screensaver, because it's not the 90s._
|
| It may be 2022, but I would love a screensaver version of this.
| jcynix wrote:
| It would definitely fit into xscreensaver's collection, yes.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Depending on your OS it should just be a matter of starting a
| webview with the code as the default page and running it full
| screen. Then a small loop looking for mouse/keyboard events
| so it knows when to quit.
| manunamz wrote:
| It would be really neat to create a variation of this that
| simulates driving through mountain roads -- starry night sky,
| dark mountain silhouettes, the occasional cabin light...
| [deleted]
| hlandau wrote:
| Very nice!
|
| Not exactly the same thing, since it's a high-paced action game,
| but I was always fond of the DOS game Skyroads, which has a
| similar aesthetic. (I believe someone has now made a web-based
| version called OpenRoads.)
| radar1310 wrote:
| It would be great to have the car I am in have headlights:)
| kashif wrote:
| its art
| [deleted]
| gabesullice wrote:
| I enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed watching the demo.
| Both the demo and the writing style are simple and calming, I
| didn't even notice that the cars were on the wrong side of the
| road until I saw the TLD ;)
| jordemort wrote:
| I love this. I'd love an idealized version where nobody ever
| passes on the right even more.
| gavmor wrote:
| Notice oncoming traffic is also on the right? It's UK traffic.
| For peace of mind, try tossing a `transform: scaleX(-1)` on the
| <canvas /> element.
| svdr wrote:
| Is it legal to overtake on the right in the US? It's not in the
| country where I live (NL).
| blauditore wrote:
| This was made in the UK, so overtaking on the right is the
| proper way. Note the opposite traffing passing on the right
| too.
| 93po wrote:
| Yes, you'd basically be stuck going well under the speed limit
| otherwise, because you will 100% always find someone going
| really slow in the left lane and oblivious to blocking tons of
| traffic. Even when there's sign after sign saying "Unlawful to
| use left lane unless passing"
| caeril wrote:
| > It's not a screensaver, because it's not the 90s
|
| What's funny is that screensavers may end up coming back into
| vogue if OLED displays continue to have burn-in issues. Ray-
| traced flying toasters may be in our future.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Im into it
| kdazzle wrote:
| Thats's awesome. Kind of reminds me of this vector-y 80s game I
| had as a little kid - the Tomy Turbo [1]. I've been trying to
| make something similar myself but keep pushing it aside. Anyways,
| nice work - it looks great!
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1aCeg-EbOAI
| uhtred wrote:
| It's not just the driving on the left that gives away that this
| is not in the US, but also the fact that there are lights along
| the highway and reflectors dividing the lanes. Ha, safety
| precautions!
|
| I hate US highways at night, they are so dark, sometimes I feel I
| might as well have my eyes closed.
|
| Rant that no one asked for over.
| makach wrote:
| I just loved how the author explained writing code without using
| any specific code. That's clever, lovely done!
| dotancohen wrote:
| > What game can we make where the premise is that you're a
| > passenger on the motorway at night time?
|
| The same game passengers on the motorway already play. Punchbuggy
| yellow!
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| what an amazing concept. Thank you for making this!
| warmuuh wrote:
| As German, the thing that annoys me after 5 seconds is that the
| driver is overtaken on the right side and does so himself ...
| Hate it
| bnegreve wrote:
| The driver drives on the left, so over taking on the right is
| the proper way to do it.
| kleiba wrote:
| I wouldn't use the word "hate" but I also find it irritating,
| even though I'm not German.
|
| Admit it, though: you dislike even more that in that app,
| you're not zooming by everyone else on the left-most lane,
| right? ;-)
| breck wrote:
| https://github.com/jes/nightdrive
| aabbccsmith wrote:
| This is the sort of thing I'd leave on an unused monitor all the
| time or have on display somewhere. Really cool aesthetic
| holoduke wrote:
| I would love to see someone making a video of this and put it in
| stable diffusion to generate a even more synthwave experience.
| cooze wrote:
| i'm desperately mashing my keyboard hoping that some button would
| allow me to drive
| arduinomancer wrote:
| edit: nvm
| [deleted]
| pbronez wrote:
| Fun, but backwards! Wish I could toggle right-hand drive
| Lukesys wrote:
| This gentleman made a great web game for the UK TV show,
| Countdown. Been using it for years...
|
| https://incoherency.co.uk/countdown/practice/
| wging wrote:
| Also more recently, he made Protohackers!
| https://protohackers.com/
| BigJono wrote:
| Love it.
|
| Might be a good thread to ask. A few years ago I found a couple
| of sites that were like shadertoy but for 2D canvas shit like
| this. One I think was codegolf.tk (which appears to have
| disappeared), and I can't for the life of me remember what the
| other was.
|
| Does anyone know of any such sites?
| aeno wrote:
| https://www.dwitter.net/ comes to mind
| smallerdemon wrote:
| I love this.
| rvba wrote:
| I remember when I was very young I wrote something much simpler
| using PRINT and GOTO. Hand drawn formula car (drawn using /\ []
| and |) would scroll indefinitely in a simple loop.
| delronde wrote:
| > It's hard to classify what it is.
|
| It's generative art :)
|
| You should launch it on https://www.fxhash.xyz/
|
| You might find these interesting:
|
| https://lunarean.substack.com/p/solace
|
| https://mirror.xyz/0xF7E15015D31e1Be374c21E6F1dE91147C8B5db8...
| jstanley wrote:
| I am a cryptocurrency fan but never understood NFTs.
|
| Can you please explain what anyone would get out of buying an
| NFT as opposed to just looking at the web page for free
| whenever they want?
|
| Not trying to be dismissive, just trying to understand.
| delronde wrote:
| Why do people like to buy skins on Fortnite or Call of Duty?
| People like to own things to show status, taste or just
| express themselves.
|
| If the question rather is, "Is owning an NFT the same as
| owning a physical item?". It's not exactly the same, but it's
| close enough to feel the same emotionally (you and only you
| can decide whether you want to transfer, sell or even destroy
| it). And it's strictly better than owning any other digital
| license because it's on a neutral platform with deterministic
| rules.
|
| With respect to generative art in particular, it's a great
| fit because it allows a someone to own a unique instantiation
| of the algorithm. e.g. take a look at this collection:
| https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/take-wing you can
| create infinite variations on the same theme, but the artist
| has determined that they only want 250 pieces in total to
| exist. So when someone "buys" the art work for the first
| time, a completely unique piece of work is generated based on
| the random transaction hash. The algorithm still exists as a
| whole and anyone is free to view and enjoy it, but people
| still buy and trade the unique pieces because they enjoy it.
|
| In fact, there's an upcoming project that really leans into
| the idea: https://twitter.com/tylerxhobbs/status/157190867092
| 9133568?s... Anyone is free to create any number of outputs
| they like and share them. But only 999 NFTs will exist, some
| people people want to pay for the right to have their
| selection immortalized as one of the 999.
|
| I don't understand the visceral hate (not from you, just in
| general). People who want to just look at it are free to do
| so, people who want to pay and own it do so, and the artists
| are paid directly (and get perpetual royalties). Who's losing
| out?
|
| Anyway, my original comment was not even about NFTs, just
| wanted to bring attention to the fact that this is generative
| art, and other artists have similar posts about their work
| and how they use JS to replicate similar real world
| phenomena.
|
| edit: I didn't realize you were the post author. Your work is
| amazing. I'm sure it will be appreciated by generative art
| collectors should you choose to publish it. Feel free to
| reach out to my username at gmail.com if you have any
| questions. I'm a serious gen art collector, and there's
| nothing I would love more than to introduce new folks to the
| space.
| danjoredd wrote:
| I miss seeing little projects like these that don't serve a
| purpose, but just _look_ neat. I love it! I hope to see more
| "demos"!
| btbuildem wrote:
| I'd call this a "demo" for sure -- harkening back to the mid-90's
| when people built things for fun / just because they could / to
| explore
| skrebbel wrote:
| People still do this.
| ffhhj wrote:
| This reminded me of Night Driver for Apple II:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=l0nkMGyfYO8
| mdswanson wrote:
| Me too...though in the arcade and on the 2600.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _The entire scene is created purely by drawing circles on a
| HTML5 canvas. It actually works a lot better than I expected. The
| biggest flaw is that the cars are totally transparent, so you can
| see lights from distant cars even where they should be occluded
| by closer cars._
|
| Hmm, why not just draw a black rectange around any pair of car
| lights? It should work for givimg the impression of a solid car
| within the context of the video...
|
| Edit: hmm, he does say this "This would be slightly harder than
| street light occlusion. Probably a first pass would be to render
| a black cuboid behind each car's lights, so that the cuboid
| blocks out anything that would be blocked by the car."
| jetbooster wrote:
| I somehow feel the simplicity of everything only being paired
| lights giving an _impression_ of something somehow adds to the
| charm
| system2 wrote:
| Music version is amazing: https://incoherency.co.uk/nightdrive/
| kitd wrote:
| Nice!
|
| It would be cool if it flipped from left- to right-side driving
| depending on host's IP address?
| felipelalli wrote:
| I don't know why, but this is so cool.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Nice but I usually turn my lights on when I drive at night :-)
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, unless they are riding their brakes then their lights
| are on.... It just happens that all the cars have their front
| bulbs out.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| It's 11 o'clock at night and this is absolutely perfect. Bravo on
| the music version.
|
| https://incoherency.co.uk/nightdrive/
| mageofpanthera wrote:
| Cool Work! Look into Digital Weaving for the 'Flow'
|
| Example: https://bit.ly/3BGRmyc
|
| https://www.deviantart.com/megather109/art/Dragon-Bites-the-...
| yakorevivan wrote:
| brazed_blotch wrote:
| Lay-by by Tennyson complements the simulation quite well
|
| https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=3FfOsXr9rvw
| aerovistae wrote:
| > if your browser runs JavaScript:
|
| I don't understand this remark. What browsers do people use that
| don't have javascript?
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| I think it just means "if you have JavaScript enabled". But to
| give a technical example, Lynx doesn't support JavaScript.
| rezmason wrote:
| Some people run their browsers with JavaScript turned off. Some
| folks disable CSS. Some even browse via Lynx, a text web
| browser. It seems like the author's met some of these folks.
| aerovistae wrote:
| I had never heard of Lynx, thanks!
| jstanley wrote:
| I don't like to presume :)
| Bakary wrote:
| For most people, this will mean Ublock origin settings. For a
| smaller number of people, stripped down greybeard-approved
| browsers
| abetusk wrote:
| I love this.
|
| It would be awesome to do this with a bladerunner theme. Like,
| sitting in a spinner going somewhere, with all the different
| cars, spinners and maybe buildings passing by.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Relaxing except the cars are driving on the wrong side, at least
| for me.
| mdtusz wrote:
| This reminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/WrxZ4AZPdOQ
|
| He does incredible work with shaders and explains them in very
| clear detail.
| ciaron wrote:
| I watched this video a couple of years ago and was blown away
| by what can be done with shaders.
| tempodox wrote:
| The music should be Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" :)
| kesava wrote:
| Was lot of fun staring at it for a long time. However, every
| driver using turn signals when they change lanes is not realistic
| :)
| ramshorst wrote:
| Kudos !
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Weirdly I had the idea to do the same thing, including doing it
| in js, a year or so ago. This is much nicer than what I'd
| pictured. Mine would've been set to Kamasi Washington's Clair de
| Lune.
|
| https://youtu.be/KqJJ-2cRR0M
| tsuujin wrote:
| Who else grew up playing Night Driver on the Atari 2600?
| pronlover723 wrote:
| I played it at the arcade (pre 2600)
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=night+driver+arcade&oq=night...
| Animats wrote:
| Night Driver (1976) was the first video game with a first
| person 3D mode.[1] It's about as minimal a 3D system as you
| can get. The picture of the car is painted on, not on screen.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/n5I2oh_ecvk?t=7
| axus wrote:
| First thing I thought of when I saw the title. Was using the
| paddle control less or more frustrating than the typical game?
| tsuujin wrote:
| The paddle was awful but it was also novel so young me loved
| it.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I loved using the paddle. Atari controls were not very
| durable, and the paddle's potentiometer degraded into a
| simple switch, which Night Driver handled perfectly too.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I was pleasantly surprised the article actually had something
| resembling Night Driver. Such a simple concept, but it was a
| game that stimulated your imagination. That and star Riders
| were brilliant for their time.
| swayvil wrote:
| Excellent vibe. Good art.
| foxbee wrote:
| Hugeeeeee vaperware vibes right now
| draw_down wrote:
| jdfx3 wrote:
| I love it
| fulafel wrote:
| In demo terms it's an "effect".
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