Side project · TypeScript

Ocean

The sea at a real buoy, right now. Ocean reads the latest wave record from one of 15 CDIP buoys off Hawaiʻi and the US coasts and rebuilds that water in the browser: the long swell is phase-resolved from the buoy's own measured motion, so the sets arrive as they were recorded, and the shorter chop is synthesised from the same buoy's directional spectrum. The sun and moon sit where they were at that place and minute, the weather comes from the forecast at the buoy, and the land on the horizon is the real coastline.

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Details

three.js r186 on WebGL 2 with custom GLSL: four FFT cascades (Tessendorf) from the measured spectrum, plus a phase-resolved swell window that follows the camera
Buoy data over OPeNDAP from CDIP's THREDDS server, weather from Open-Meteo, and terrain from open elevation tiles with the sea clipped at the shore
Steerable boats that heave, pitch and roll on the same surface, with bow spray and a wake; Float, Orbit, Fly, Helm, Chase and Tour cameras
Sun and moon from an almanac ephemeris, synthesised sea, wind, rain and engine sound on Web Audio, and quality presets that adapt resolution to hold the frame rate