Arcade Fire meets HTML5
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Once it started in with the street-level images, swirling around, it started to hit me though. That was my friend's house! I remember when they put in that stone landscaping in front. A whole lot of memories came rushing back, of feeling the dry desert heat, of playing basketball in my driveway with my friends, of rollerblading down that hill, of being a kid.
Along with the excitement though, a sense of longing. I can't help but notice that someone else's car is parked in front of "my" house now. I remember my dad packing up his stuff and leaving. I remember all those fights and tears as we moved out of that house and across the country. I keep up with friends from that time a little, but it's a little message here and there, I hardly see them anymore.
When the window popped up to write a message to my younger self, it felt like there was far too much to say. I settled on "It will be OK. Really."
This was unexpectedly beautiful and touching. Bravo.
Me too, and it was made even more powerful because coincidentally, the running character reminded me of when I used to be on my high school cross country team and would go for runs around the neighborhood at odd hours.
Yet this is clearly a portent of things to come: when everything I see is 'about' me.
For instance, when people cull Street View data (or something similar) to identify houses with wood siding, and send direct-marketed advertising with a "before" and "after" photos of the house with aluminum siding or fresh paint. I could potentially identify east/west facing houses and market shade trees or awnings.
My movies could be similarly contextualized: living in LA I get to see a lot of architecture I recognize since so many films are made here. So I see Fox Plaza in Die Hard or Fight Club. Why shouldn't Des Moines residents see 801 grand topple, instead?
And the ending, as trees 'reclaim' the space? I've often wondered what people might think if they were to return to this place following a catastrophic collapse of civilization. Now I have a visual inkling of what they might see.
There's something interesting going on here that more insightful minds will hopefully digest.
Check out the book "The World Without Us": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
If you manage to navigate away from the browser, good luck restoring the state.
Also why to spoil beautiful content by putting chrome (lowercase) around it?
Trying to cram everything in a single thread of execution seems like it would have been a mistake.
Though playing the demo with one eye on Task Manager shows only two processes (for the whole duration) - one hovering mostly around 50-60% CPU load, another at 0-5%.
Checking this with my CPU intensive demos, this looks like normal Chrome behavior (two processes, one with high load). New process seems to spawn only for new tabs.
So it doesn't seem like such optimization was used.
* You wait for a couple of minutes, wondering if the progress indicator will ever move
* The song starts and a couple of windows open.
* Video plays of a guy in a hoody running down a street
* More windows open, showing your address panning and spinning around, using street view and google maps
* Flocks of birds and trees appear in the video and then street view images. If you look closely you can see the running guy in there too.
Pretty good, although the window tiling didn't work great for me. Worth a look.
I especially liked how the birds flew in and rested on the drawn lines.
Also, this is a fantastic album.
Although I wouldn't say there's a best part. The experience were running smoothly on my system, so it all the pieces added up to something more. Tough the draw/write were a bit out of place, but I can imagine that they wouldn't want to leave it out because of the way stuff you made (the drawing) interacted with the automated stuff (the birds).
I always run my browser un-maximised at only about 1/3 of my monitor's size, so I like how the web-experience came out of the browser, but like others, fearing a bit that this might become more normal. I already hate how youtube videos are auto-starting; imagine some tab in the background spawning multiple windows simply because they are trying to make an experience.
So if nothing else this shows that we don't need Flash even for flashy experience-oriented art sites :)
PS: Totally agree about the album
Btw, it seemed to stall for me but eventually loaded after a couple of minutes (Chrome dev on MBP). Stick with it.
Anyway, I thought it was cool. The effect was somewhat lost on me, howerver, as the community I spent most of my childhood years in is what many people think of when you ask them to imagine a stereotypical redneck trailer park: dirt roads, "mobile" homes that should be condemed, broken down cars on cinder blocks, couches in the front yard, etc. I was still impressed though.
Tried London. Interesting, though the trees did apparently grow through cars. I certainly would be happy if there was more content like this.
It's amazing how far technology has come in 20 years. Gives a very different perspective seeing an area from up above. Trying to decide if I would have wanted this as a kid - I probably had more fun exploring in person.
I really like the idea of technology as art.
. . . and I really dig the latest Arcade Fire album.
I loved how the birds that flew off the letters were kinda synced with the other 2 popups.
They should have shot the video in daylight, Google street view is shot in the day.
is there any more detail on how they made it besides chromeexperiments.com?
Perhaps the author could add localized billboard ads in street view and makes some money that way.
If this is the best HTML 5 has to offer over Flash, color me not impressed.
EDIT: There seems to be something wrong with Firefox on my computer. It doesn't seem to want to update HTML canvas properly unless I'm actually moving the mouse around in the canvas. Might have something to do with it. Weird...