Lights

[citricsquid]

So uh, not to cause a fuss but why was the title edited? I can understand removing the word "impressive" as that is an opinion, but removing the explanation (interactive html5 / webgl presentation built with threejs) seems silly? How are users who casually browse news.yc supposed to look at this and have any clue what they're clicking? Titles that are descriptive should be more important than... well I can't think why it was changed to just "lights"? Surely the title containing some sort of description about the content is a courtesy that users would appreciate.

(For reference the original title was "Lights -- impressive html5 / webgl presentation built with threejs" and is now "Lights")

[WalterGR]

How are users who casually browse news.yc supposed to look at this and have any clue what they're clicking?

Since there's no way to hide these links with uninformative titles, the no-addon solution is to get them to display as "visited". So I click them and then immediately close the tab.

Website owners: Sorry for throwing off your stats.

[watty]

I agree - the only impressive thing about this is the technology.

[SnowLprd]

For those on Mac OS X 10.7 with Safari and who are seeing a message saying that your browser doesn't support WebGL, that's only because WebGL isn't enabled by default. You can turn it on by first going to Safari Preferences > Advanced and then checking the box labeled "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Close preferences, and then under the "Develop" menu, choose "Enable WebGL". If you go back to the "Lights" page now, you should be now be able to check it out!

[Hoff]

The site also works with Safari running 10.6 with WebGL enabled, based on a test with 5.1.1.

[marcamillion]

This is SURPRISINGLY mesmerizing. Something about the music and the animation and interaction just hooked me.

Plus the fact that it wasn't in Flash was a major plus. But not sure what it was...but had me going for a while.

[alanh]

Plus the fact that it wasn't in Flash was a major plus.

On a lame Mac Mini, I noticed my CPU was only at ~20%. No jitters detected. Very cool.

Laptop users should enjoy the lack of a noisy fan kicking in 30 seconds into it!

[ck2]

It's amazing. At first I was like - oh shoot, how did they license the music but then I was "oh".

Try banking hard right (or left) and then when the sky starts to go technocolor pull up hard. Wow.

Works great in Firefox 7, unless I go full width (2048x1152).

Chrome seems to spaz out if I try to change the window size.

Opera fans with full OpenGL drivers can now use WebGL too http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2011/10/13/introducing-...

[ericb]

> At first I was like - oh shoot, how did they license the music but then I was "oh".

What does this mean?

[tonakai]

I tried with Opera Next (12 alpha) but it was stuck in loading phase, and the lights were a bit slower than recent chrome beta on the loading screen.

[moe]

Beautiful, but "interactive" seems a bit of an overstatement here. Unless I missed some interactivity other than popping those bubbles and steering.

[cshenoy]

From the landing page:

"Click to interact with the environment, keep the button pressed to fly faster."

Try clicking at different speeds and on different elements and you'll see the interactivity (works better with an external mouse). Contrast it to sitting back and watching it go.

[melvinram]

Moving your mouse would move the orientation of the light that was travelling across the landscape.

[5hoom]

WebGL is going to be huge very soon.

Developers that are fluent with the technology are going to be in high demand once more people know what you can do & stuff like this is what everyone wants.

Time to get reading!

[theroo]

Honestly, why would they be in more demand than Flash developers?

[ck2]

Try changing LIGHTS.releaseBuild = true to false.

Interesting debug data.

This must have been a beast to build, sync and debug.

I'd like to see the author post a "making of" entry.

[skeletonjelly]

I didn't get a lot of debug data (only Camera position written to console) but I did get a `Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'update' of undefined` every frame. Can I ask what I was meant to see?

[DrCatbox]

WebGL is a helluva drug.

Have they solved or answered the security considerations from letting a website issue graphics commands?

[spot]

yes: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/06/cross-domain-webgl-textures...

unless you mean something else...

[tsunamifury]

FYI, the Bassnectar remix of this song is very good.

[SeoxyS]

That's a matter of taste & opinion, but personally I find the original to be much better. Not a huge fan of dubstep, I must say.

[mikeknoop]

http://soundcloud.com/bassnectar/ellie-goulding-lights-bassn...

[skeletonjelly]

It's amazing. Great build.

For the lazy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imixg3jrJS8

[jahmed]

I forget that the remix is in fact just a remix

[parfe]

I think I miss the point. Do I control anything happening with the music or in the scene? This link reminds me of a Winamp visualization from 10 years ago, but now I can fly through it, in a web browser.

[nickfrost]

Seriously? You control the scene. The music is the ambiance that gives the scene life. Unless you can build something better, I'd say be impressed.

[navs]

I don't care much for the track but as the environment pulsated, I found myself smiling. Simply amazing.

Running perfectly on MacBook Pro 5th Gen with Google Chrome Canary (16.0.x.x).

[DanielRibeiro]

Guess it did not get enough traction yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102979

[nbashaw]

It's always interesting to me what makes it up and what never catches on. Apparently more HN people are intrigued by the mere title "lights" than a title with more explanation.

[matdwyer]

Not freezing on me. Wow, very interesting.

I didn't even realize I could control where it was going till half way through. Had a blast trying to avoid the spotlights. Nice job!

[ranza]

I love that none of the js code is minimized! Great use of Mr. Doob's Three.js library

For reference:

http://lights.elliegoulding.com/js/Config.js

http://lights.elliegoulding.com/js/Lights.js

[skeletonjelly]

Thanks for linking to them. They make for a great code reference. Makes me wish I was more motivated about learning Processing.

[voidfiles]

Feels static compared to what the arcade fire did with google.

http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

The web is a new medium, and browsers can be more expressive then pretty viz. Push the boundaries with this stuff don't just do your radio show on camera.

[droz]

Every change of medium results in the old being shoe horned into the new until people figure out the new for what it can be.

[gourneau]

Wow, the last few seconds of the video are so beautiful.

[taylorlb]

Really cool. I get that the Twitter usernames come in with the lyric "they're calling me" but it might be more sticky if the usernames show up sooner. Not sure everyone would want to keep flying around for so long.

[alanh]

In case anyone is wondering: In Internet Explorer (IE9 is the only desktop browser to not support WebGL, or will be once Opera 12 ships [1]), you get an error message that WebGL was not detected [2].

[1]: Source – http://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl

[2]: Screenshot – http://cl.ly/0b3W0p251C0A2t2X2934

[tomlin]

I am currently working on a project that indexes beats and sounds to a .json object tied with a JS library that dispatches events based on the timing of a media file associated.

Eventually, it would be nice to have all forms of equipment taking queues from the events dispatched. ie, stage equipment, lights, etc.

This example serves to show that these types of applications are coming soon.

[aiurtourist]

If you're interested in learning WebGL, a fantastic resource is http://learningwebgl.com/ — especially the weekly summary of "WebGL Around the Web." (I have no affiliation — I just found it useful.)