
Paper Planes - reimertz
http://paperplanes.world
======
cyberferret
My first thoughts when I visited the site was "This all looks very silly. Who
would even do this?"

15 minutes later, having launched and caught a bevy of paper planes, I am
rocking in my seat with delight like a schoolboy again.

Thank you for making me remember the simple delights of making, discovering
and connecting. Activities that filled my childhood days...

~~~
zodPod
Same exact experience here! I was like "What is the point?" but I've caught
and released 5 so far and I'm excited to keep going!

~~~
omginternets
>What is the point?

I know right? I'm playing. I'm a few months shy of 30, and I'm literally just
_playing_.

Just when I thought I was getting jaded. Well played Active Theory, LLC. Hats
off.

~~~
danvideo
Super simple, really like it.

Reminded me of thatgamecompany's games (Flower, Journey) and how they make a
simple experience/world you join for imaginative moments.

------
Yhippa
Incredible that this is all done in the browser. I much prefer this to
downloading yet another app for my phone. Good clean fun.

~~~
speg
And it works fully on mobile!

~~~
ubernostrum
I haven't tried it on mobile, but...

Chrome (latest) on Mac (Sierra): blank page, dev console shows it tried to
write to local storage and never caught the exception when that failed (I
restrict local storage and cookies based on whitelists; unsure why this would
need local storage).

Safari (latest): partial load followed by a message telling me to "get a
modern browser" and a redirect to download Chrome.

Firefox (latest dev edition): page actually loads, but doesn't seem to do
anything and tells me to use my phone to throw planes.

At that point I gave up trying.

~~~
cr3ative
> I restrict local storage and cookies based on whitelists

Similar to people who block all Javascript, you should expect things to break
if you do this.

~~~
ubernostrum
Thing is, I can understand how something might just not work without
JavaScript. And cookies I'm prepared to accept the tradeoff with.

But local storage? It consistently _astonishes_ me to find sites which
completely refuse to even load any visible content unless they get access to
local storage, when there's no reason whatsoever to need it. And I don't just
mean sites that use it as a proxy for detecting incognito/private windows (who
are, obviously, trying to force acceptance of tracking in order to view
anything), I mean JavaScript demos which should run perfectly fine without
needing to store anything client-side but still get built to use local
storage, and to fail not at all gracefully when it isn't available.

~~~
jazoom
I prefer to use localStorage over cookies. I'm not sure why you'd prefer to
have cookies in your browser.

------
danso
Smart design choice to not allow arbitrary user input, just
location/timestamps. Reminds me of the Smule apps (such as the Glee branded
app [0]) in the early iOS days. The real-time component could be mostly an
illusion, but there was something really charming in the idea that you could
"pluck" something created by someone else in the world and view/listen to it.

[0] [http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/glee-
iphone/#lm4kDm3YDmqG](http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/glee-
iphone/#lm4kDm3YDmqG)

~~~
macandcheese
Ahhh Smule. Ocarina is still installed on my phone
[http://www.smule.com/ocarina/original](http://www.smule.com/ocarina/original)

------
WildGreenLeave
Does anyone know a nice guide about how these things are made? Real code
examples aren't really necessary, I'm more interested in the setup and choices
made. (Like, how is the world made, how are the planes flying, what is the
server side technology behind it, how is the 3d effect created, library or all
plain webgl stuff, and so on)

~~~
mattdesl
I've written a few blog posts and articles on WebGL. Not the same sort of
projects, but some similarities in the rendering techniques.

[https://mattdesl.svbtle.com](https://mattdesl.svbtle.com)

[https://github.com/Jam3/jam3-lesson-webgl-shader-
intro](https://github.com/Jam3/jam3-lesson-webgl-shader-intro)

~~~
hurricaneSlider
You've got some awesome tutorials Matt, they were some of my first exposure to
the graphics pipeline

------
greenpizza13
This is very very similar to an app my Cousin made a few years back called
Airendipity ([https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/airendipity-the-app-
that...](https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/airendipity-the-app-that-
took-10-days-to-win-my-heart/)).

Looks like it's no longer on the app store. It was, and still is, a fun idea.

~~~
kevboh
lol hi aaron

------
phsource
Some of these planes are just filled with stamps! Got this one:

[http://i.imgur.com/zTN5ERk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/zTN5ERk.jpg)

~~~
m-app
I caught this one, which is almost completely filled:
[http://imgur.com/a/H58J4](http://imgur.com/a/H58J4)

~~~
vpresident
Not completely.. I can see from here a few sweet spots^^ Nice one!

------
nbrempel
The best feature of this site is that the music pauses automatically when you
switch to a different browser tab.

~~~
wamatt
That's a nice touch and yet it takes additional attention detail and time to
implement. Which sort of makes one wonder what it would be like if browser
defaults were inverted.

IOW tabs, by default, would become muted if they lose focus. With an optional
flag to keep background audio playing, settable through JS.

------
lucb1e
Don't have a phone handy. Can anyone fill me in on what this is supposed to be
beyond an animation?

~~~
Blaaguuu
Basically, you just put a 'stamp' on a piece of digital paper, which shows
what city you are in - then you 'fold' the paper into an airplane and make a
little 'throwing' motion with your phone, being careful not to let go and
fling your phone across the room, and the plane flies off. Then everyone can
make a sweeping motion with your phone to catch other people's planes
(seemingly random) to view the stamps, and add your own, then throw it back.

~~~
paulirish
Ayup. Here's a video teaser where you can see it in action:
[https://twitter.com/active_theory/status/778646571206385664](https://twitter.com/active_theory/status/778646571206385664)

I sent out a few planes on Thursday and they've already been stamped in
Thailand, Italy and Massachusetts. So cool. :)

------
reimertz
made by [http://activetheory.net](http://activetheory.net)

paid by google.

~~~
sotojuan
How does one learn to make sites like these (particularly the "see work"
link)?

~~~
franciscop
The "See work" link it's trivial for anyone with their fair share of CSS. The
projects inside their works are what look really awesome and complex.

To see more demos like that button, I highly recommend Tympanus/Codrops:
[http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CSSMaskTransition/](http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CSSMaskTransition/)
(keep clicking on the arrow to see them all).

~~~
scottydelta
Tympanus/Codrops is such an amazing resource to learn and use stuff from
there. Glad to know people know about this site.

~~~
franciscop
I have a small facebook group with a couple of friends where we used to post
css stuff and half of the links are from there. I/we just love that site

------
andrepd
Obligatory comment on how rendering a couple thousand polygons in HTML5 maxes
my high-end CPU and GPU usage, for a measly 8fps.

~~~
throwanem
Much to my delighted surprise, it renders very smoothly in Firefox 45 on this
rather resource-constrained machine, in a way that stuff like this almost
never does.

~~~
tehwebguy
I was also surprised at how it appeared to run at full frame rate on my aging
iPhone 6

~~~
dwaltrip
iPhone 6's are considered old these days? Yeesh. I thought they were still
fairly powerful for a mobile device.

~~~
rtkwe
If they got it when it was originally released it's 2 years old now which is
pretty old for any electronics in terms of where it'd sit on the performance
curve.

~~~
andrepd
It's in the top end of the performance spectrum still.

------
JoeDaDude
Strange... I keep catching airplanes from Mountain View, CA, over and over
again.

~~~
mattybrennan
+1 =/

~~~
vwcx
I'm in DC and am catching planes with stamps from all over. Cairo, Copenhagen,
Tokyo.

------
qwertyuiop924
Apparently it's buggy, but it's one of those especially whimsical web things
that shows up every once in a while, that makes me happy.

~~~
qguv
/r/InternetIsBeautiful

------
alexrigler
This just brought a huge smile to my face! Reminded me how connected we all
are in this world. Curious to know how many of the 260K + users that were on
as I was came from HN. Perhaps incorporate a visualisation of where users are
from.

------
unknownzero
I'm sure this is really cool, but autoplay music with no visible volume
control, not cool.

~~~
milesf
You don't have volume control on your phone?

------
dEnigma
It keeps saying "You've made 0 planes" no matter how many I make. Apart from
that it's a nice little project, it's fun looking at all the stamps and
thinking about our connected world.

edit: Ok, after reloading the site it shows some of my planes. Might be a bit
overcrowded and slow at the moment.

------
nverba
This would have been fun if I was able to catch more than MountainView
California stamps. I was going to share this with the kids, but as it is,
there's very little return on investment. Also, using the view my planes
showed me nothing. :( Nice concept, with some rough edges.

~~~
eric-hu
I made three planes in Singapore but it keeps saying I've made zero.

~~~
kbeckmann
Same here, no matter how many planes i make, it always says 0 planes.

------
kpwagner
Beautiful magic, wondrous to behold...

"It was a student who gave me Francis. One Spring afternoon I discovered a
bowl on my desk, just a few inches of clear water in it. Floating on the
surface was a flower petal. As I washed, it sank. Just when it reached the
bottom, it transformed into a wee fish. It was beautiful magic, wondrous to
the behold. The flower petal had come from a lily, your mother. The day I came
downstairs, the day the bowl was empty, was the day your mother..." ~Horace
Slughorn, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

~~~
brennebeck
Are you trying to make people cry?

------
deepakkarki
In case anyone is interested, there is an app version of the same website.
Yes, it's open source!

[https://www.androidexperiments.com/experiment/paper-
planes](https://www.androidexperiments.com/experiment/paper-planes)

------
capote
I'm being told I need a modern browser for this, then redirected to the Chrome
download page.

I'm using the latest version of Chrome.

~~~
luc4sdreyer
Same here, version 53.0.2785.143 m (64-bit), which is the latest according to
Wikipedia. Also my webGL is enabled according to chrome://gpu. Running on
Windows 8, no other GFX issues. Firefox works though. :/

~~~
annnnd
Same here, FF on Linux, with WebGL enabled (at least I couldn't find an
invalid setting in about:config). Weird.

------
djrogers
Very cool, but here's a tip - if you're going to use Geolocation based on IP,
don't be more precise than your dataset is accurate. My stamp shows me as
being in a city ~1hr and bridge and county away from me. Something less
precise like Northern California would be much more useful than presenting
that everyone who's on a Comcast Business line lives in South SF.

~~~
yincrash
According to the MaxMind dataset[1], I'm correctly in WY according to my IP.
I'm not sure how the Paper Planes geolocation could be so wrong, but it places
me in Seattle, WA.

[1][https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-
demo)

------
lucideer
Seems to repeatedly show a plane with one stamp from Mountain View...

~~~
paulirish
The four planes I threw aren't helping. Sorry :)

~~~
lucideer
oh hi paul

~~~
paulirish
hey buddy. good to see you. :)

------
ChuckMcM
I visited on my macbook on chrome and just see a globe with airplanes flying
around and no way to interact with it.

~~~
crobertsbmw
I think you need to be on mobile.

~~~
sluggg
you are right, you need to be on mobile

~~~
Anasufovic
Chrome developer tools can help with that.

------
120bits
This is incredible!! Great work!

Don't know why the stamp was showing Los Angeles, CA when I'm in Salt Lake
City, UT. Switching to wifi was much accurate.

Edit: Will it be a good feature to add, where user can randomly pick paper
planes on desktop browser as well? Just to see what's going on.

------
daveheq
I made a plane and threw it, then tried to catch some and the net wouldn't
catch anything, then I tapped See Your Planes and it said I've made 0 planes.
I'd say this was a resounding success.

~~~
crottypeter
You have to make a sharp jerk motion with the phone to catch (same as that
used to throw - as far as I can tell).

------
dEnigma
When you click on the small info button the second paragraph says "Visit
paperplanes.world on your computer to throw planes into your screen". Is this
actually a working feature? I did try it and it actually seems like a plane
with the same colour appeared shortly after I launched it with my phone. That
might still be coincidence though since there are a lot of planes.

edit: I've tried it about 20 times or more now, and I'm pretty certain that it
actually works. I'm guessing all planes that are being launched at the moment
are displayed live with their correct colour?

------
saganus
Wow. This is stupidly beautiful.

Can't believe the amount of time I've spent here. I even found a stamp from a
small city in Mexico! (anyone in Chilpancingo right now?) Never thought
someone would be using this there.

Very nice.

------
samfisher83
In case anyone is wondering I think this was made by google since all the
assets seem to be on google servers:

[https://storage.googleapis.com/at-
paperplanes/assets/meta/ic...](https://storage.googleapis.com/at-
paperplanes/assets/meta/icon-192.png)

------
skc
I keep catching planes from MountainView California

~~~
f137
so do I

------
bobajeff
This is definitely going to break at least one phone

------
knowaveragejoe
This is really neat. I wonder who is behind this?

~~~
settsu
[https://activetheory.net/work/paper-planes-
io](https://activetheory.net/work/paper-planes-io) for Google I/O 2016.

It featured prominently at the beginning of the video stream.

~~~
Strilanc
That is some impressively terrible UX for a website.

~~~
sotojuan
Disagree. It's not a website, but a portfolio. Agencies and designers have to
show off what they can do and a static site with screenshots won't cut it. I'm
personally very impressed.

~~~
andrewguenther
All the more reason to have a good user experience. How likely am I to work
with an agency that can't even show me their work in a functional way? Scroll
is broken, navigations are broken, weird looping behavior. It feels like an
old Dreamweaver site.

------
plan6
Flew two planes on my phone. Both normal designs. Didn't see the point.

Caught one and then put my stamp on it, too. That was neat.

Still, I think there is a missed opportunity here. If I could design the plane
however I wanted and compete with others, that would've been fun. But, I have
no reason to go back and do it again, because there is no challenge.

~~~
r-w
Not all games are about competition. Some games are simply about connection.

~~~
Anasufovic
Yeah, this is really just about leaving your mark on the world. No frills.

------
r-w
Interesting to see that none of my planes have been stamped yet, and yet most
of the ones I catch have been stamped multiple times before. Are more people
joining the site / creating new planes than catching and stamping existing
ones? Is there a higher chance of catching a plane that’s been stamped more
times?

------
xapata
Amazing. I caught one that had been thrown 10 days ago from the same
nowheresville town I happen to be passing through.

------
coob
Designing passport style stamps is so much fun! Put some together a while back
for a iOS 6 era language learning app of mine:

[http://image2.aving.net/2013/06/10/201306100944542610.jpg](http://image2.aving.net/2013/06/10/201306100944542610.jpg)

------
markingram
Just made a FPS mini-game for Hololens with a lightning spell, but I must
admit, it's nowhere near the paperplanes' coolness:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wp_LukLn3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wp_LukLn3c)

------
morinted
If you open it on your computer and your phone, you get to see your plane fly
out onto your computer screen after you throw it from the phone.

I wonder how they are doing that, must be by IP?

Or maybe the planes coming from the bottom of the screen are a realtime feed
of new planes world wide.

~~~
scottmf
Sounds like coincidence. My window has planes continually flying from my
direction, and throwing one from my phone doesn't seem to change anything.

------
nickysielicki
I keep getting stuck at "Tap to choose your location stamp". I tap, it stamps,
then nothing. Can't tap again to add a new stamp, and I don't get the prompt
to start folding.

Chrome Dev on a Nexus 5X running stock android N.

------
jaredandrews
Very cool. Does anyone know if the way you "throw" the plane actually affects
it's trajectory? I'm curious what level of detail they are using behind the
scenes for sending the planes around the world.

~~~
Blaaguuu
I suspect not... The first plane I threw pretty softy, because I wasn't sure
how much force was necessary, and in a couple minutes it traveled from
Washington State to Serbia.

------
pcl
I wonder if the direction or speed that I throw it with is used at all... I
guess I know what source I'll be reading through over lunch today!

------
lewi
Im thoroughly impressed that when you throw a plane on your phone you can see
it begin flying on the web browser (Same colored tail).

Really nice little touch.

~~~
statictype
How does that work? I assume anyone that resolves to the same geo ip will see
the plane?

------
deepGem
Nice! I almost threw the phone, despite the warning.

------
meej
I can't figure out why it seems to think I'm in SF when I'm actually in PDX.
Is there a way to force it to update location?

------
markingram
So cool!!! love it. the idea is so simple but so brilliant. This can be the
next dating site ? :) all random encounters?

------
volent
Wow it's blinking like crazy on my Android phone using Chrome. Impossible to
use. It looks neat on a computer though.

------
hayksaakian
Stuck here

[http://i.imgur.com/xMVXDUv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/xMVXDUv.jpg)

------
jfreeman7
browser version doesn't do anything except animation. Once installed the phone
app, you can follow prompt to create an plane and send it away. Or shake your
phone to catch one, and click to open, to see the list of cities where it had
been caught. that's all it does.

------
jerkstate
Can this game be made to work left-handedly? You're losing out on the best 10%
of users :)

~~~
ankey1
Yep, once the airplane is folded, a rotate button appears and then you can
throw the airplane with your left hand.

------
PudgePacket
Doesn't seem to work on firefox mobile even after giving plenty of time to
load.

------
colept
Reminds me of those dollar bills that are stamped with codes to see where
they've been.

Very cool.

------
libeclipse
Love the cute "don't let go of your phone" message.

------
dingo_bat
Autoplay sound warning. It was quite loud.

------
wehadfun
What does it do?

~~~
dEnigma
To quote Blaaguuu[1]:

 _Basically, you just put a 'stamp' on a piece of digital paper, which shows
what city you are in - then you 'fold' the paper into an airplane and make a
little 'throwing' motion with your phone, being careful not to let go and
fling your phone across the room, and the plane flies off. Then everyone can
make a sweeping motion with your phone to catch other people's planes
(seemingly random) to view the stamps, and add your own, then throw it back._

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12630637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12630637)

------
cloudjacker
and sitting right next to you is somebody that will argue tooth and nail about
why a .com tld is important

------
simplemath
This is so cool.

What a nicely done little project!

------
aslammuet
So it's all about WebGL?

------
throwanem
How utterly adorable!

------
trymas
That's what I call useless, but impressive.

------
enterx
great idea!

please add a message feature.

------
Blaaguuu
Maybe it's just because the site is getting hammered, but whether I view it on
my phone or computer, I just see a cool visualization of paper planes flying
around the world, but I see no way to interact with it at all... Nor is there
any explanation of what I am looking at. It looks pretty, but is rather
confusing.

~~~
exolymph
It's very silly that they didn't include a desktop experience or at LEAST an
explanation that you can only use it on your phone.

~~~
Zelmor
Bottom right corner says, join on your phone.

~~~
apple_fritter
Ehh, I don't know if that counts. Lots of sites want me to join on my phone or
download an app, even though they are desktop compatible.

I'm irked when companies go for this form of anti-documentation. It 1) makes
me feel dumb 2) wastes my time 3) I'll eventually figure out what you're not
telling me, so you might as well cut to the chase.

------
Capira
1

~~~
Capira
2

------
1337biz
STOP THE MUSIC. Please.

------
J5892
Cool

------
dleslie
Yet another reason to replace my BB Classic.

Er, no, forget it, I don't need a spyphone.

~~~
chrisbennet
You mean, _another_ spyphone?

Teasing yah, but the blackberry was _the_ government phone. I would imagine it
was among the very first phones hacked by NSA.

~~~
dleslie
Almost certainly!

But given that the NSA is recording _everything_, I am unlikely to be able to
avoid them. What I can avoid is the commercial sale of my private identity;
and to do that, I need to not sell myself to Google or Apple.

------
tychuz
Open the tab - sounds starts playing, take a quick glance over page - no clear
mute button, close tab. 1/10

------
TheAceOfHearts
I saw Paul Irish tweet this [0] a few days back. Hopefully this doesn't come
off as too negative, but I disagree with it being a "beautiful web
experience". I tried it on my Nexus 5X and it's not a smooth experience, and
that's with Chrome on a high-tier phone that isn't even a year old. With
Firefox for Android, my default mobile browser, it seems to struggle even
more.

With that said, I think it's an impressive demo. I'd love to look over the
unminified source.

It's worth noting that it doesn't appear to load properly if you're using
uBlock Origin; I had to toggle it off for the demo to work.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/781895377737756672](https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/781895377737756672)

~~~
carc1n0gen
Nexus 5x is not a high tier phone, but an entry level phone. Mine constantly
lagged just using Facebook, fb messenger, and Snapchat.

The 6p is the high tier one.

~~~
troebr
I'm running it on a 5X and it ran just fine.

