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Paper Planes
- knowaveragejoe 10y agoThis is really neat. I wonder who is behind this?
- lucideer 10y agoGoogle, according to the info popup bottom right
- ForHackernews 10y agoDo you think it's an attempt to gather location data from users? Or just a fun gag?
- bowmessage 10y agoProbably Google, I get redirected to download Chrome when I visit without WebGL :)
- settsu 10y agohttps://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 10y agoThat is some impressively terrible UX for a website.
- sotojuan 10y agoDisagree. 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 10y agoAll 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.
- lucideer 10y agoAgree that it's a generally different use case, but I'm trying to click through to examples of work and I went through three or four times to what seemed a blank page, returned to the homepage, and started over, before figuring out how to access them. There are still slight UX requirements even for showy contexts like this.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lucideer 10y agoSeems to repeatedly show a plane with one stamp from Mountain View...
- reimertz 10y agomade by http://activetheory.net http://activetheory.net paid by google.
- sotojuan 10y agoHow does one learn to make sites like these (particularly the "see work" link)?
- reimertz 10y agoI know, right? seems to be a group of highly skilled people, for sure. I assume they have a very good match between good front-end engineers, webgl and designers to make these kind of magic happen.
- franciscop 10y agoThe "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 10y agoTympanus/Codrops is such an amazing resource to learn and use stuff from there. Glad to know people know about this site.
- franciscop 10y agoI 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
- sjclemmy 10y ago> a buttery smooth animation engine. Looks great, would love to know how it works.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pcl 10y agoI 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!
- phsource 10y agoSome 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 10y agoI caught this one, which is almost completely filled: http://imgur.com/a/H58J4 http://imgur.com/a/H58J4
- vpresident 10y agoNot completely.. I can see from here a few sweet spots^^ Nice one!
- bennettfeely 10y ago> Planet Earth, Planet Earth Wonder if this is a geolocation failure that produced that stamp.
- Karliss 10y agoI have seen "name of city, Planet Earth". What kind of geolocation service contains city names but not country?
- Symbiote 10y agoA cheap/free one? Or maybe cities in disputed areas, like Jerusalem or Sevastopol.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoI didn't know I was supposed to allow location at first and got just "planet earth." it's a default.
- calsy 10y agoIsnt that whole idea?
- 10y ago
- Blaaguuu 10y agoMaybe 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.
- dEnigma 10y agoYou can't interact with it on your PC (as far as I know) but it works on my phone. There should be a little button with a plus sign or paper plane on it where you can create a new plane. Might take some time to appear on first start.
- Blaaguuu 10y agoYeah, it took a good 4-5 minutes for it to start doing anything on my phone... Would be nice if there was some fallback for when it's loading, so I'm not just staring at a 'blank' screen, wondering if anything is happening.
- eridius 10y agoI just tried it on my phone and it only took a couple of seconds before it showed me the button.
- libeclipse 10y agoLoaded instantly and worked flawlessly on my 6P.
- pyedpiper 10y agoyeah but that ambient synth/string music sure is pleasant.
- exolymph 10y agoIt'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.
- dEnigma 10y agoIt 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.
- wehadfun 10y agoWhat does it do?
- dEnigma 10y agoTo 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
- alexrigler 10y agoThis 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.
- jaredandrews 10y agoVery 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 10y agoI 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.
- lucb1e 10y agoDon't have a phone handy. Can anyone fill me in on what this is supposed to be beyond an animation?
- maaaats 10y agoYou stamp a paper with your location, "fold it" and then throw it using the accelerometer of the phone. Then you can catch other planes, see who else has stamped it, add your own stamp and throw it back with the others. Quite neat.
- Blaaguuu 10y agoBasically, 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 10y agoAyup. 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. :)
- azaxacavaba 10y agoChrome -> Developer Tools -> Device Toolbar is your friend to send some paper planes :)
- thebspatrol 10y agoAnd hit space to open them.
- greenpizza13 10y agoThis 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-took-10-days-to-win-my-heart/ https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/airendipity-the-app-that...). Looks like it's no longer on the app store. It was, and still is, a fun idea.
- kevboh 10y agolol hi aaron
- colept 10y agoReminds me of those dollar bills that are stamped with codes to see where they've been. Very cool.
- dEnigma 10y agoWhen 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?
- unknownzero 10y agoI'm sure this is really cool, but autoplay music with no visible volume control, not cool.
- milesf 10y agoYou don't have volume control on your phone?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- volent 10y agoWow it's blinking like crazy on my Android phone using Chrome. Impossible to use. It looks neat on a computer though.
- TheAceOfHearts 10y agoI 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
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoIt runs fine on my S5...
- yownie 10y agodoesn't run fine on my S5 mini (firefox)
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoWell, I'm in Chrome. If only mobile browsers had some sort of debugging tool, so we could see why...
- carc1n0gen 10y agoNexus 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 10y agoI'm running it on a 5X and it ran just fine.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoApparently 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 10y ago/r/InternetIsBeautiful
- 1337biz 10y agoSTOP THE MUSIC. Please.
- kpwagner 10y agoBeautiful 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 10y agoAre you trying to make people cry?
- andrepd 10y agoObligatory comment on how rendering a couple thousand polygons in HTML5 maxes my high-end CPU and GPU usage, for a measly 8fps.
- throwanem 10y agoMuch 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 10y agoI was also surprised at how it appeared to run at full frame rate on my aging iPhone 6
- mattdesl 10y agoIt sounds like GPU acceleration has been disabled or blacklisted. Maybe try another browser?
- hayksaakian 10y agoStuck here http://i.imgur.com/xMVXDUv.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xMVXDUv.jpg
- throwanem 10y agoHow utterly adorable!
- morinted 10y agoIf 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.
- hackerews 10y ago+1. curious about how they linked desktop + mobile. i think you just see all the ones launching nearby by ip address.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y agoYeah, I'm curious as well... I'm trying it and it doesn't seem to work for me :-(
- scottmf 10y agoSounds like coincidence. My window has planes continually flying from my direction, and throwing one from my phone doesn't seem to change anything.
- bobajeff 10y agoThis is definitely going to break at least one phone
- simplemath 10y agoThis is so cool. What a nicely done little project!
- WildGreenLeave 10y agoDoes 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 10y agoI'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 10y agoYou've got some awesome tutorials Matt, they were some of my first exposure to the graphics pipeline
- scottydelta 10y agoHere is a very detailed article/tutorial about creating a very similar game: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2016/04/26/the-aviator-animating-basic-3d-scene-threejs/ http://tympanus.net/codrops/2016/04/26/the-aviator-animating...
- libeclipse 10y agoLove the cute "don't let go of your phone" message.
- Capira 10y ago1
- cyberferret 10y agoMy 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 10y agoSame 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 10y ago>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 10y agoSuper 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.
- paulddraper 10y agoYeah, doesn't seem viable. What's the plan for monetization?
- CM30 10y agoDoes everything need to be monetised? Cause this seems like the kind of app that could work just fine as a passion project or a typical free game.
- paulddraper 10y ago
- danso 10y agoSmart 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 10y agoAhhh Smule. Ocarina is still installed on my phone http://www.smule.com/ocarina/original http://www.smule.com/ocarina/original
- dleslie 10y agoYet another reason to replace my BB Classic. Er, no, forget it, I don't need a spyphone.
- chrisbennet 10y agoYou 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 10y agoAlmost 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.
- cloudjacker 10y agoand sitting right next to you is somebody that will argue tooth and nail about why a .com tld is important
- capote 10y agoI'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 10y agoSame 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 10y agoSame here, FF on Linux, with WebGL enabled (at least I couldn't find an invalid setting in about:config). Weird.
- Yhippa 10y agoIncredible that this is all done in the browser. I much prefer this to downloading yet another app for my phone. Good clean fun.
- speg 10y agoAnd it works fully on mobile!
- ljf 10y agoShocked it preformed sp well in the Amazon Silk browser, its Normally pretty lame,but got by come with this. Even if typing this is a pain...
- jzymbaluk 10y agoButtery smooth in the embedded browser on the Hews app too. I'm very impressed
- NoPiece 10y agoExcept that fourth fold took me right back here to the comments. But really impressive overall.
- ubernostrum 10y agoI 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 10y ago> 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.
- jfreeman7 10y agobrowser 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.
- nickysielicki 10y agoI 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.
- nbrempel 10y agoThe best feature of this site is that the music pauses automatically when you switch to a different browser tab.
- keyle 10y agoAnd with a fade out / fade in. Small details like these make for a great experience.
- wamatt 10y agoThat'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.
- coob 10y agoDesigning 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
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI visited on my macbook on chrome and just see a globe with airplanes flying around and no way to interact with it.
- crobertsbmw 10y agoI think you need to be on mobile.
- sluggg 10y agoyou are right, you need to be on mobile
- Anasufovic 10y agoChrome developer tools can help with that.
- Latty 10y agoYeah, it's mobile only to interact, all gesture based (of course it could be done without that, but it somewhat looses it's charm, it's only a small demo, so it's mostly about that little moment).
- djrogers 10y agoVery 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.
- tobyjsullivan 10y agoHad the same issue. City was nearby - but definitely wrong.
- KiDD 10y agoMy Comcast business IP was previously determined to be in NJ.... I am in Northern California. Seems pretty darn accurate otherwise
- yincrash 10y agoAccording 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
- rtkwe 10y agoHah mine took me from Durham NC to Atlanta GA 383 miles by car. I'm guessing that's where my AT&T cell service joins the wider internet or just where this block of IPs is registered to.
- Thriptic 10y agoNot as insulting as being confused for being in New York when I'm in Boston ;p Jumped on wifi and was fine.
- darrenkopp 10y agoYou can turn on GPS location in the settings
- meej 10y agoI 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?
- tychuz 10y agoOpen the tab - sounds starts playing, take a quick glance over page - no clear mute button, close tab. 1/10
- J5892 10y agoCool
- xapata 10y agoAmazing. I caught one that had been thrown 10 days ago from the same nowheresville town I happen to be passing through.
- plan6 10y agoFlew 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 10y agoNot all games are about competition. Some games are simply about connection.
- Anasufovic 10y agoYeah, this is really just about leaving your mark on the world. No frills.
- lewi 10y agoIm 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 10y agoHow does that work? I assume anyone that resolves to the same geo ip will see the plane?
- saganus 10y agoWow. 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.
- deepGem 10y agoNice! I almost threw the phone, despite the warning.
- r-w 10y agoInteresting 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?
- 120bits 10y agoThis 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.
- PudgePacket 10y agoDoesn't seem to work on firefox mobile even after giving plenty of time to load.
- jerkstate 10y agoCan this game be made to work left-handedly? You're losing out on the best 10% of users :)
- markingram 10y agoSo cool!!! love it. the idea is so simple but so brilliant. This can be the next dating site ? :) all random encounters?
- markingram 10y agoJust 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
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dingo_bat 10y agoAutoplay sound warning. It was quite loud.
- trymas 10y agoThat's what I call useless, but impressive.
- aslammuet 10y agoSo it's all about WebGL?
- enterx 10y agogreat idea! please add a message feature.
- andreasv1634 10y agowhy only on mobile ?
- andreasv1634 10y agowhy only on mobile?
- JoeDaDude 10y agoStrange... I keep catching airplanes from Mountain View, CA, over and over again.
- jtinder 10y agoyeah me too.. 8 planes, all from Mountain View, CA
- mattybrennan 10y ago+1 =/
- vwcx 10y agoI'm in DC and am catching planes with stamps from all over. Cairo, Copenhagen, Tokyo.
- avar 10y agoIt's like an unintended microcosm demonstrating how these types of neat mobile apps get little traction outside the Silicon Valley echo chamber.
- notatoad 10y agoSame here. ~15 planes caught, the only time I caught one that had a stamp other than mountain view, it had one of my own stamps on it :(
- sarah2079 10y agoThis appears to be a bug. It was working last night when I tried it, but now I just get the same Mountain View plane over and over again. Also the planes I made have stopped accumulating stamps. When it was working I was surprised how few of the stamps were from the bay area.
- skc 10y agoI keep catching planes from MountainView California
- f137 10y agoso do I
- nverba 10y agoThis 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.
- daveheq 10y agoI 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 10y agoYou have to make a sharp jerk motion with the phone to catch (same as that used to throw - as far as I can tell).
- deepakkarki 10y agoIn 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
- samfisher83 10y agoIn 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/icon-192.png https://storage.googleapis.com/at-paperplanes/assets/meta/ic...