

Rain simulator for pluviophiles - verbilis
http://pluvior.com/raindrops.html

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deathanatos
Oh man, as a southerner stuck in California, I cannot tell you how much I miss
rain. And especially thunderstorms[1].

(if you want a few recommendations) I love how the drops wipe away the
moisture on the "window"; in my experience the droplets won't fall perfectly
straight: they get perturbed by the smaller droplets on the window (what
they're wiping away). Subsequent drops in the "tracks" left by earlier drops
will fall faster, since there aren't any smaller droplets to hold them up.
They also speed up as they get bigger, and wind will cause them to move
together.

Can I get a thunderstorm?

Also, thank you — I'd long forgotten the name of the song and the artist; I'd
been looking for "Primavera" by Ludovico Einaudi [2] for a while now. (another
Ludovico Einaudi piece was on the page)

[1] I would have never guessed that a place "couldn't" have thunderstorms;
I've been in Silicon Valley for four years now, and there's been barely
anything that passes for a thunderstorm. (For anyone in the bay area going "we
have thunderstorms, sometimes!"… it isn't the same.)

I've occasionally wondered if people in the south aren't more religious
because the weather (the south has thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, the bay
area has… lots of sun.) isn't literally putting the fear of God in them.

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmxFAT581T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmxFAT581T4)

~~~
inklesspen
Boodler [1] is an open-source system for generating soundscapes. It comes with
a hour long thunderstorm soundscape [2] that grows and then fades away.

The author of Boodler also has an iOS app [3] specifically for the
thunderstorm.

[1]: [http://boodler.org/](http://boodler.org/) [2]:
[http://boodler.org/package/com.eblong.ow.storm/](http://boodler.org/package/com.eblong.ow.storm/)
[3]: [http://zarfhome.com/pocketstorm/](http://zarfhome.com/pocketstorm/)

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xiaq
The switches are really confusing for me: white = on, cyan = off, which the
opposite as I expected. The night/day toggle also seems broken - "Night"
always get underlined.

Firefox 38.0 here, if that matters.

Nice stuff otherwise :)

~~~
verbilis
My fault, thank you for notifying us, kind regards

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schoen
Maybe ombrophile (Greek ὄμβρος 'rain storm') is a more sensible derivation
than pluviophile (Latin pluvium 'rain') -- although it looks like people on
the Internet mostly use it in a technical sense to describe plants or forests.

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krylon
Very nice!

It would be even nicer - although none of the ambient/white noise generators
I've seen so far does that - if one could control the intensity of the rain or
make it do that little thumping sound when rain drops hit the window.

Don't get me wrong, though - this _is_ very nice! Especially as it's a cold-
ish, rainy day outside where I live.

~~~
xenadu02
That's why I built Storm Sim. It's in the App Store.

It dynamically generates the audio based on the samples you select and in
advanced mode you can adjust the variance, frequency, looping, etc.

I made two huge mistakes based on bad assumptions (it was my first iOS app)

1: that you wouldn't want to edit the storm while it was playing. I have the
code working now to do live updates and should be releasing it soon.

2: that people would care more about the audio than a fancy UI since you spend
the vast majority of the time listening (not looking). Boy was I wrong! I
still haven't gotten a good designer to help me tidy it up.

If you like it don't buy IAP in the free version - you can get the same stuff
for $4 cheaper in the paid version.

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gluelogic
This is really cool. I love rain. The droplets are great. Consider
desaturating the Manhattan at night photograph some to make it look more
"rainy." Example:
[http://i.imgur.com/apg5CwK.png](http://i.imgur.com/apg5CwK.png)

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jimmydddd
Sounds good. I am a pluviophile. Is this any different than, for example,
rainymood.com, rainycafe.com or rain.simplynoise.com, among others? No offense
meant. Just curious.

~~~
verbilis
Made for fun, choose your favorite one.

~~~
jimmydddd
Cool. Thanks. Again, nice job.

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cshimmin
Can you go into more detail about the raindrop "simulation" on the window? I
love the idea, but it seems like they larger drops are just moving random
distances at random times, clearing a path as they go.

That's a nice first approximation, but it would be cool to put some real
dynamics in there. For instance, I noticed they are not "absorbing" droplets
as they fall; if a smaller droplet rolls over a bigger drop, the bigger one
just disappears. Also, the movement for smaller drops should be initiated when
another small drop randomly falls into the surface. This should be a poisson
process, and I could be wrong but I feel like that's not what's being used
here. Lastly, the distance a drop will roll should depend on how "dry" the
path is that it travels, although that one seems pretty hard to simulate!

~~~
Vesther
Pretty sure this is just
[https://maroslaw.github.io/rainyday.js/](https://maroslaw.github.io/rainyday.js/)

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hughes
Looks good, but why do you limit the Night version to 10fps? The JS profiler
shows you're explicitly doing nothing on 5 out of 6 frames.

~~~
verbilis
You mean to make the motion more smooth?

~~~
hughes
I mean in `animateDrops` you check if `timestamp - lastExecutionTime < speed`.
You set `speed` to 100ms when you call `engine.rain`.

Because of this the motion is jittery, updating at about 1/3 the rate of
smooth video and 1/6th the rate our eyes can perceive.

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polyx
Can you please make a favicon, so people can delete the title of the bookmark
so that it takes up less space

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jergason
You can usually edit the titles of your own bookmarks.

~~~
joegreen
Yeah but favicon appears next to the bookmarked page's title in browsers. If
there's no favicon you can't say which page the bookmark leads to after
deleting the whole title to save space :-)

~~~
lkbm
I use the "I hate your favicon" extension for Chrome:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-hate-your-
favico...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-hate-your-
favicon/laggbmpbikikiablknnppgglelkncemk)

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altrego99
Very nice. Does anyone have a recommendation of a good rain in video game? The
genre - racing, shooter, RPG, or even a demoscene - I don't mind, I just want
good rains and thunderstorms!

~~~
secant
The video game that first came to mind was the opening segment of Metal Gear
Solid 2. Something about the rain in that first part of the game was done
perfectly. I've placed a video of the opening scene below.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukh7C9zkXGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukh7C9zkXGc)

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wgx
Note for rain-fans: a 'pink noise' generator can make a sound which, while not
quite like a recording, should make you feel the same rainy feelings. :)

~~~
lozf
If pinknoise will suffice, then sox[1], (free, cross-platform, opensource),
lets you generate your own (amongst many other things). The following will
play for 8 hours, but you can remove the time completely to run indefinitely:

    
    
          play -n synth 08:00:00 pinknoise 
    

[1]: [http://sox.sf.net/](http://sox.sf.net/)

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david-given
If you like this sort of thing, don't miss Andrew Plotkin's procedural
soundscape generator, Boodler; the one-hour summer storm is particularly epic.
(Pocket Storm is also now available as a standalone iThing app.)

It's at [http://boodler.org/](http://boodler.org/).

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StavrosK
Good job, although having everything blurred until a drop hits the window
makes me feel I'm in the shower.

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marshall-lee
First of all I should say that it's really a good thing!

But please fix a bug with fullscreen mode — It resizes incorrectly when I
press F11 (Chromium 42.0.2311.90).

It's also worth to add more photos! Or just change them periodically — every
week, for instance.

~~~
verbilis
From the next week, photos and sounds will be changed every day or two, thanks

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martinrue
If people are looking for similar things, there's also
[http://calm.com](http://calm.com) from Alex Tew of Million Dollar Homepage
fame.

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ahaltindis
It would also be great if we could have chance to see lightnings with some(I
don't know how) light effects on the picture when it is on. Just an idea..
Great job by the way!

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Faint
I've heard a couple of other sites like this, is there a googlable term for
them? A directory? Soudscape site? The rain sound loops a bit too often in
longer listening.

~~~
loarake
I've been using [http://naturesoundsfor.me/](http://naturesoundsfor.me/) as
they let you mix a bunch of sounds and control the relative volumes of each.
I've settled on 40% "Creek" and 70% "Rain" for sleeping.

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sho_hn
Reminds me of
[http://giant.gfycat.com/DaringMetallicBovine.gif](http://giant.gfycat.com/DaringMetallicBovine.gif)

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Uptrenda
If you listen to this when its already raining its like your roof has a leak.
True story.

~~~
verbilis
Sorry to make you feel uncomfortably)

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porker
I love the raindrops running down the fogged-up window :)

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verbilis
To change the sound of rain, choose the NIGHT mode.

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h0l0cube
Meh: asoftmurmur.com

