A little window / an endless city

Somewhere,

Hello

City options

City Chronicle

FROM ABOVE · Original
Only what happened in this roll.

People drowned: 0
Vehicles collided: 0
Junkyard arrivals: 0
Helicopters flew: 0

The page is still quiet.

Preparing city workers…

City notebook & extras

600 × 600 · made as you fly
no footage. no map. just a passing moment.

Analytics is off in local previews.

Read the local paper (entirely made up)

ENTIRELY MADE UP · LOCAL SATIRE · ZERO VERIFIED FACTS

The headlines and poet titles are invented jokes, not real reporting, public offices or real writers.

Click a lane for a randomly painted vehicle. Each shuffled pair adds one car and one motorcycle.
Traffic keeps its distance; crowded clicks can cause chaos.
Keyboard: L finds a lane · arrows aim · Enter adds.

Traffic governor · checking roads

A rule-based controller, not a trained traffic engineer.

Junctions checked nearby: 0
Closed road approaches: 0
Drivers waiting at signals: 0
Safety interlocks active: 0

Coordinated green / amber / all-red phases, separated corner signals, marked stop lines, four connected corner crossings wherever the land supports them, keep-clear exits, two-second following gaps, no U-turns, legal-side lanes, residential speed limits, accident closures and alternate home routes. Mini-roundabouts use circular paths, give-way markings and priority for circulating traffic; left-driving cities circulate clockwise, right-driving cities counterclockwise. Clearance uses real simulation seconds, never the accelerated town clock.

Checked roads with no safe exit stay closed. Occupied junctions and crossing pedestrians hold new entries. The oldest eligible waiting driver is considered first, without overriding a red signal, a circulating vehicle or a blocked exit. Wrecked approaches close until recovery. Collision detection covers the entire active fleet, including the edges of the print, so player-created overlaps cannot remain hidden from rescue. Camera-neighborhood audits refresh twice per simulation second.

This miniature models two-way residential streets and single-lane mini-roundabouts, not every modern road type or local law: no motorway merges, dedicated cycle lanes, rail crossings, weather-dependent braking or emergency-vehicle priority. One vehicle reserves a junction or mini-roundabout at a time, after checking its full path and exit. Pedestrian intervals hold entry until the crossing clears. Governor diagnostics describe only the modeled streets.

About the films & places

Official heritage / visitor reference

The downtown clock starts at 30 city minutes per real second: a full day in 48 seconds. The buttons are stacked to its right: >> above doubles the time rate; << below halves it, clamped at 1 city second per real second and 2 city hours per real second. The unavailable direction is disabled at either limit. These controls affect the clock and daylight, not car speed or signal clearance. Drag around the clock face to wind forward or backward (one revolution is 12 hours), or scroll by 15 minutes. Automatic clock movement pauses while dragging. Arrow keys adjust one minute; Shift + arrow adjusts 15 minutes; Page Up/Down adjusts one hour. Home selects sunrise at 06:00, End sunset at 21:00. The analog control exposes exact 24-hour time to assistive technology, without a separate digital display. Winding changes daylight and daily routines, not the physical history of cars. Original city-branded dials and architectural cases evoke local town clocks, architecture and music; they are not Rolex products or replicas. Paris is atelier classic, Munich traditional Rathaus, Istanbul Bosphorus ornament, Seattle industrial punk, New York Art Deco, London Westminster and Ibiza Balearic modern.

The analog clock grows to 176 px wide on desktop by stacking both speed buttons on its right, within the 440 px control pane. The clock scales down on narrow screens while keeping its speed buttons beside it. After a speed change, a purple multiplier fades in below the analog dial for a couple of seconds, then fades away without moving the layout. Rates use plain multipliers such as x1, x2, x16 and x1800, not thousands notation. Fractional rates use at most two decimal places; the clock-speed controls expose the exact rate. The second hand is shown through 5× time and the minute hand through 300×; faster hands disappear. The hour hand stays visible. Slow down to restore the other hands. System reduced-motion preference starts playback paused.

Each destination starts with its own film and automatic frame-rate tier: Original / Classic Chrome / 30; Paris / ASTIA / 30; Munich / PROVIA / 30; Istanbul / Nostalgic Neg. / 60; Seattle / ETERNA / 30; New York / REALA ACE / 60; London / Classic Neg. / 60; Ibiza / Velvia / 24; Tokyo / REALA ACE / 60; Mexico City / Nostalgic Neg. / 30; Singapore / PROVIA / 60; Barcelona / Velvia / 30; Amsterdam / Classic Neg. / 30; Lisbon / Nostalgic Neg. / 30; Kyoto / ASTIA / 30; Bruges / Classic Chrome / 24; Dublin / Classic Chrome / 30; Dubrovnik / Velvia / 24; Antalya / ASTIA / 30 FPS. Automatic mode checks visible vehicles every two simulation seconds: at least 35 requests 30 FPS, at least 100 requests 60, never below the city's starting tier. It steps down only below 25 or 80 vehicles to avoid flickering between rates. Choose a numeric FPS to keep manual control, or select Auto again; choosing another city restores its defaults. The number is a requested rate, not a claim about measured performance.

Each new roll chooses a stable paper tilt between −2° and +2°: Original, Paris and Seattle lean left, Istanbul, New York and Ibiza lean right, and Munich and London can lean either way. The city keeps its object scale; only the paper rotates. Full-screen mode remains level. The handwritten paper footer is deeper than the top border, like an instant print.

Sunrise is fixed at 06:00 and sunset at 21:00 for this miniature, with twilight on either side. The sun travels east to west (world east is right before camera rotation), casting long opposite shadows near the horizon and shorter shadows at midday. This is an idealized summer day, not date-, latitude- or weather-specific astronomy. Household lights gradually go out toward bedtime; streetlights remain on for safety.

Drivers and riders use a hand-coded driving policy informed by official guidance, not a trained model or a real driving qualification. They keep a two-second following gap, observe signals and pedestrian phases, reserve clear junction exits, signal turns, and plan legal routes to their own family homes. Blocked roads trigger another route at a junction, never a pavement shortcut or an oncoming-lane escape. These two-way streets have only one lane per direction, so passing and motorcycle filtering are conservatively disabled in every city. Bikes accelerate briskly but share the same modeled residential speed ceiling. Night arrivals park at home while fewer new journeys begin.

Driving references: Highway Code: junctions, clear exits and turning; Highway Code: spacing and residential driving; Washington motorcycle lane rules. Conservative shared rules are used where local law varies; this is not a complete legal model of any city.

Only the selected choice is shown at rest. Drag freely and release to snap to the nearest option; scrolling commits after a brief pause. Previews do not resize or regenerate the city. Escape cancels an unfinished selection. Click city, film or FPS to shuffle, or use arrow keys to choose. The size dial grows by 100 px from 100 to 1000 px, followed by Full screen. Home selects 100 px; End selects Full screen. Each page load picks a random destination from all 19 cities, including Original, with its own film and automatic frame-rate tier. Repeats are possible; New roll and Revisit keep the selected city. The default print is a 600 px Polaroid in Close up. Wide prints scroll inside their frame on smaller screens. Full screen uses the available browser window, not browser F11. Choose a numeric size or press Escape to leave Full screen. Notebook extras and governor diagnostics are below the Chronicle, collapsed by default.

The figure holds the city image and an original handwritten-style poem in its existing paper footer, signed on the right with an absurd, invented honorary title. Each destination has imagery drawn from local places and everyday culture, with distinct daylight and evening endings. New rolls avoid repeating the previous couplet; revisiting keeps it. Small prints use a compact couplet and title. The city-specific local paper in City notebook & extras is entirely fictional satire; it does not replace the page background. Neither headlines nor poet titles describe real reporting, offices or writers. The black-and-white local greeting sits beside the clock, aligned with its bottom, and flips like a station board on city changes. Each city uses one selected local greeting, including English for multilingual Singapore; poems are original English text, not quotations, translations or imitations of real writers. Reveals are brief, respect motion settings, and settle when the page is hidden. The paper reserves the full supported tilt range so random slants do not shift the layout.

First play is just a hand tapping a legal, visible road, not a guide panel. It never clicks, scrolls, changes settings or overrides pause for you. Successfully adding a vehicle completes the hint and is remembered in this browser when storage is available. Focus the city, press L and then Enter for the keyboard equivalent. UI/system reduced motion keeps the hand static. Show road-click hint in City notebook & extras replays it.

The city wheel replaces the second title line in the right pane, with the clock beside the title and the version picker inside City notebook & extras. City options starts collapsed above the Chronicle and holds playback, sound, camera view, print format, size, film, frame rate and the Junkyard. The clock's three buttons select daylight at noon, faster and slower; daylight preserves speed and playback, and there is no clock-reset button. Polaroid selects the large 600 px print; Instax returns to your last small 100, 200 or 300 px print. The format wheel shows the current selection and stays in sync with the size dial. Print size and camera zoom are independent: a larger print reveals more streets at the same scale; Close up doubles the Drone scale, while Space view shows 1.5 times the Drone extent in each direction. Drag, scroll, click or use arrow keys on either wheel. Zoom keeps the current roll, clock and existing journeys. Size and zoom changes show brief notices rather than persistent status text; safety and error messages remain visible. Frame rate and view size do not change simulation speed; actual frame rate depends on your browser, hardware and the amount of city visible. Version 14 preserves the previous control layout.

The paper proportions use a documented square-window approximation: a 79 mm image on an 88 × 107 mm print, with 4.5 mm top/side borders and a 23.5 mm footer. The footer is 47/9 (about 5.22) times the header, and about 29.75% of the image width. Borders scale with the visible picture width; full-window mode caps their height while preserving the header/footer ratio. The simulation stays square and retains its selected pixel size. These are approximate display proportions, not a precise cutting template: Polaroid's official dimensions specify an 88.47 × 107.52 mm print and 76.801 × 78.94 mm image, without separate top/bottom measurements. The square-window border breakdown comes from Collage Recipes' measured print guide.

The Junkyard is hidden on a fresh roll. A rescue reveals it and expands City options; the bay fades in and gently shakes until delivery. Every wreck stays queued: the intake conveyor feeds the hydraulic crusher, and an output conveyor carries each compacted pack to a large scrap container. After all cars are packed and no delivery is pending, five real running seconds pass before collection. New rescues reset that wait; city-clock speed and manual winding do not affect it. Playback pauses and hidden tabs freeze the machinery and timer.

Multiple crashes can be recovered at once. Each gets the nearest available helicopter; busy crews keep their current job. If all crews are busy, calls queue in arrival order and their wrecks continue blocking the affected roads. A crew can take the next call immediately after delivery, from its current location. An empty fleet receives one backup crew. The Junkyard keeps receiving while any recovery remains, counts every delivery once and displays the latest eight vehicles. Disabling new collisions does not cancel queued rescues; changing the city or roll does.

Helicopters without another call depart toward a stable random screen edge. A straw-hatted, long-necked guard wakes in his chair and sneezes once per roll with an AH-CHOO! text effect. He guides arrivals onto the intake belt and dodges dropping cars, but never carries them. The steam locomotive appears beside the yard with its flatcar at the pickup point, hoists the packed container in 0.8 seconds, then drives forward offscreen along the shortest map-avoiding spur in at most 1.8 seconds. It never reverses, and the last carriage clears the screen before cleanup. Tracks reveal and fade behind its movement; black smoke and original whistle/chuff sounds remain. New deliveries belong to a separate container and resume processing after loading. Recovery totals never decrease. Sound obeys mute and playback, reduced motion suppresses decorative animation, and a new city or roll clears all yard state.

Each steam pickup chooses a random entry, exit, direction and rounded route around the visible map. The locomotive, tender and wagons turn individually. Tracks appear just ahead of the engine and fade over two train lengths behind the last carriage. Route-length-based travel and a two-second loading stop use running time, not the town clock rate. The route adjusts to scrolling and resizing without choosing a new random seed; the map is also clipped out of all train, smoke and rail drawing. Where the viewport has no safe margin, the route stays offscreen rather than crossing the city. The entire rail tail leaves before the collection ends.

Launches, ferries and coastal cargo boats follow the waterways with gentle course changes and trailing wakes; bridge decks conceal passing boats, and moored dock boats stay put. Coastal scenes occasionally reveal a whale or beluga: an underwater shadow rises, a brief breath blooms above its blowhole, then the tail lifts and the ripples fade. These are rare, stylized cameos, not a local wildlife map. Sightings last about 14 seconds, with opportunities spaced two to five running minutes apart after an initial 75–135 seconds. Water life freezes with pause, hidden tabs or reduced motion and resets with the roll.

Custom action tooltips replace native title bubbles. Hover or focus a control for 500 ms to reveal its explanation. Moving between controls while a tooltip is visible, or within half a second of its dismissal on leaving, reveals the next tooltip after 100 ms. A tooltip automatically dismisses after five seconds without pointer movement. Leaving or blurring the control waits half a second before a short fade; Escape dismisses immediately. Tooltips follow the active theme, stay within the viewport, preserve keyboard descriptions and respect reduced-motion settings.

The page opens in Gamified pastel with Light Paper. Open the separate Same city. A different frame. section below City notebook & extras to change interface, appearance or UI motion; both sections start collapsed. Compare Original film and Gamified pastel without resetting the city. Gamified adds dotted paper, pastel tickets, bold headings and tactile controls; Dark Ink and device appearance remain available. UI motion controls decorative feedback, independently of city playback. System reduced-motion always disables decorative movement. Consecutive Chronicle events of the same kind share one entry with an accumulated count and the first timestamp. A different event starts a new entry. Totals count affected people or vehicles, not repeated messages; the latest 120 grouped entries are retained.

City lettering follows each clock's character: Original uses Fira Code; Paris, Bodoni Moda; Munich, UnifrakturCook; Istanbul, Cinzel; Seattle, Barlow Condensed; New York, UnifrakturMaguntia; London, Libre Caslon Display; and Ibiza, Pacifico. New York's blackletter evokes a newspaper masthead, not the actual New York Times typeface. These are expressive choices, not official city identities. The selected name and neighboring reel previews each use their city's font. Fonts load from Google Fonts with local fallbacks so the city remains usable offline.

Dublin replaces Annecy in the current edition: Liffey quays, Georgian brick courtyards, green squares and left-hand traffic. Its IM Fell English lettering and dark, cream-and-gold brewery-inspired clock are original styling, not the Guinness wordmark or an official branded clock. The Guinness Storehouse motif includes its industrial shell and rooftop glass Gravity Bar; the remaining landmarks are Ha'penny Bridge, Custom House, the Spire and Trinity Campanile. References: Guinness Storehouse architecture and Visit Dublin attractions.

Every fresh roll, including the first page load, uses its random seed to choose an opening landmark from the selected city's complete set. The notebook names that starting landmark; Revisit landmark returns to the same seeded choice. Random choices can repeat. Wheel scrolling previews continuously and commits after 350 ms without input; interrupting a snap resumes from the visible position rather than jumping back to a whole option.

Traffic is automatically tuned: a 25% motorcycle draw, personal cruising paces and a soft original generative score. New insertions forecast four seconds ahead; crowded clicks can still overwhelm braking. Crashes block nearby lanes, not the whole city, and only then dispatch a rescue helicopter. Homes and nearby journeys are procedural and recycled outside the camera's neighborhood; the homecoming count records arrivals actually simulated this roll.

New vehicles start at their forecast cruising speed. If no accessible home is available yet, they continue along legal streets while looking for one instead of waiting mid-road. Red signals, pedestrians, blocked exits and traffic ahead still require yielding; paused playback stays paused. Wheel selectors have rose and teal hand-drawn lines above and below the selected text, distinct from ordinary action buttons.

The 18 real destinations each have at least five named landmarks; Original has five fictional civic places. Landmarks are randomized by block and roll seed, repeat consistently when revisited, and stay within dry blocks away from traffic lanes. The flight path favors landmark blocks; other neighborhoods can also contain them. Architecture uses original miniature motifs, not surveyed plans or exact replicas. City and regional highlights may appear together, including Ibiza's island sites. Large, medium and small are artistic density presets, not population statistics; smaller new-city presets have calmer traffic and lower roofs. Antalya includes Yivli Minare and Saat Kulesi. Istanbul and Antalya clock faces use modern 12, 3, 6 and 9 numerals.

The City Chronicle records actual simulated events, newest first, in an observer's voice. Its counters cover this roll: people drowned, vehicles involved in collisions, wrecks delivered to the junkyard and helicopter sorties begun. The journal keeps the latest 120 entries while counters continue accumulating. New roll, a destination change or revisiting the landmark starts a fresh journal. On narrow screens it sits below the print, or folds into the full-screen footer.

Four embedded Web Workers handle Chronicle aggregation, film-grain textures and WAV synthesis, terrain rendering, and sidewalk pedestrian movement and rendering. Terrain batches yield between groups of blocks so they do not monopolize graphics work. Terrain and pedestrian images are transferred back for composition; their queues retain one active job and the newest pending job. Old-roll results and superseded images are rejected. The main thread remains the single authority for vehicle movement, junction reservations, road crossings, collisions and recovery, keeping safety decisions consistent rather than racing between workers. It also owns input, final composition and journal DOM updates. Vehicle bodies and parked helicopters reuse palette-specific sprites. Workers require a modern browser with Web Workers and OffscreenCanvas; failures are shown beside the journal rather than silently moving heavy work back to the game thread.

Every road over a finite river has a connected bridge, including north/south roads. Oceanfront roads cannot bridge an endless sea. Exposed banks have depth; pedestrians and wrecks can fall. Falls use gravity, crashes use mass-based impulses and ground friction, and rescue flight accelerates and brakes. Splash particles and ripples are clipped to open water, never land or bridges. This is a small stylized physics model, not a real-world driving simulator.

All 20 X100VI film modes, including ACROS and Monochrome filter variants, are represented by original palette approximations. These are not Fujifilm's proprietary simulations. Film grading also colors the paper and interface.

The cities are endless, reseeded impressions, not navigable maps. Landmarks recur as the camera travels. Signal junctions alternate vehicle and pedestrian phases; mini-roundabouts use give-way entry and pedestrian priority. Corner crossings connect adjacent sidewalks rather than appearing only on one side. New vehicles enter roundabouts from an approach lane, never spawn directly on the circular lane or island. London uses left-hand traffic.

Each motorcycle is a tiny top-view interpretation of a 2023 Harley-Davidson Sportster S: fat tires, a randomly painted tank and rear fender, low seat and twin high-side exhausts. Bikes share the cars' paint palette. Courtyards, small plazas, stepped roofs and connected park walks vary the neighborhoods inside the street grid. All audio is original, synthesized locally. Enable sound with an interaction; pause or mute silences it.

References: Fujifilm manual; Louvre; Eiffel Tower; Munich gardens; Frauenkirche; Istanbul; Seattle waterfront; Space Needle; Central Park; London; Ibiza.

Same city. A different frame.

Click to shuffle · drag or scroll, then release to choose
Arrow keys to choose · Home/End to jump

Interface Appearance