A little window / an endless city

Somewhere, above.

City Chronicle

FROM ABOVE · Somewhere
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

300 × 300 · made as you fly
no footage. no map. just a passing moment.

Click a lane for a randomly painted car or 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; London circulates clockwise, the other 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

The downtown clock starts at 30 city minutes per real second: a full day in 48 seconds. On its left, << halves the time rate; on its right, >> doubles 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 readout uses 24-hour time. 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 compact, subdued HH:MM:SS digital clock stays visible just beneath the analog dial. After a speed change, a purple multiplier fades in below the digital readout for a couple of seconds, then fades away without moving the layout. It shows the rate in thousands, rounded to at most two decimals: ×1.8k means 1,800 city seconds per real second. Rates below rounding precision read ×<0.01k, never zero; 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: Somewhere / 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 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°: Somewhere, 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.

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. The default is a 300 px print at 30 FPS in Drone view. 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.

Print size and camera zoom are independent. Two wheels sit to the right of the clock: City view above Print format. 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. 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. Playback and sound remain on the left. Frame rate and view size do not change simulation speed; actual frame rate depends on your browser, hardware and the amount of city visible.

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: Somewhere 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.

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.

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