Itinerant – a fuzzy weather forecast app(brutalism.rs)
brutalism.rs
Itinerant – a fuzzy weather forecast app
http://brutalism.rs/project/itinerant/
33 comments
I see your point. The article doesn’t explain everything, inside the app there’s a “helper menu” that you can summon by tapping the screen and there you can see the actual exact temperature, precipitation, and wind intensity values (as numbers). They are sliders you can play around with, and are crucial in “training your eye” as to what the “brownish mass” actually maps to.
I don't know...I don't care much about the specific degree of weather(fahrenheit has a finer integer resolution than celcius, but celcius users manage just fine talking about the weather without going to fractions). It's really irrelevant to my life what the exact temperature is between 68 and 80 degrees. I may adjust my plans if the temperature is outside that range, but not if it is within that range.
I really like this. Reminds me of the difference between analog and digital watches: the former gives you a "fuzzy" time, but also a more visceral understanding of how "close" one time is to another. Maximum precision can be useful, but it also feels unnatural, more appropriate for machines than humans. It's important to remember that accuracy and precision are not the same thing!
Time is reckoned in quarters in many parts of the world, especially rural areas. At my computer job, I can always see the time in minutes, so I leave for meetings with the least amount of wasted time. Precision is both indicative and generative of action.
This is absolutely brilliant. The only barrier I see to these new visual languages is the initial barrier to learning the language. Either way, I hope more human interface research starts exploring this avenue.
This would be incredible as a live background, both because it's aesthetically stunning, and also for the information it can provide at a glance. I don't know enough about iOS to know whether (weather?) that's possible or not.
I'm not sure, although I developed this in Unity so I imagine it would be a lot of jumping through hoops to get there... (upvote for the pun :D)
The idea that vision is so powerful that it can recognize shapes to the point of building a language instantly reminded me of the language used by the aliens in Arrival (https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/14/dissecting-the-alien-lan...). I'm sure Itinerant won't go so far as create a whole new grammar but both the blurry, ink-like feeling and the reliance on patterns are interesting.
I think a free demo should be available, or at least some clear evidence of what information this app provides that a traditional one doesn’t. You have mentioned some of the shortcomings of traditional apps, but you have not demonstrated solving those. As of now, this app seems more of a beautiful art project than a pragmatic weather app, to me.
I like the app, it’s very intuitive, I’m considering making it my go-to weather resource. I think it could be improved by adding an hourly forecast - perhaps consider adding a slider for how the blob will change over the course of the next 24 hours?
Beautiful! Mapping data into raw-er perceptual forms feels like a rich area for exploration, plus you get to flex coding and design skill at the same time. Any plans for an android port?
Thanks! I would love to do an Android build but time and resources (e.g. devices to test on) are scarce. I haven't ruled it out though, let's see how the iOS version fares financially ;)
I like the idea of leveraging our already powerful sense of vision and pattern matching to communicate the weather but I feel like this does more to hinder understanding than it does to facilitate it.
If you're going to use a visual language, why not use one that people already know and recognize instead of introducing new patterns/symbols that you have to learn?
If you're going to use a visual language, why not use one that people already know and recognize instead of introducing new patterns/symbols that you have to learn?
That's a very valid point. One of the main reasons for introducing a new visual language (apart from purely artistic ones) was to intentionally inject a dose of ambiguity into the readings. Our existing visual systems (words, numbers) are implying preciseness which is not always there with weather forecasts (it is decreasing the further away you go from the current point in time), and I was trying to break away from that.
While I still want to see the actual data, I would love this as the background for my weather display. For the same reason I like analog/digital watch combos: if you're just walking by, you can get a useful approximation, but the very precise data is still right there when you want it.
I've been meaning to put something similar together for a while now. The visuals in this one are certainly more striking than what I had in mind. Neat!
Thanks! :) By all means do, we need more playful software if you ask me!
Can I ask what data source you use? I have yet to find one which covers my part of the globe, provides data for free, and gives some measure of confidence of the values reported.
I’m using DarkSky which gives you 1000 requests per day for free, and beyond that the pricing is quite reasonable.
quite amazing, would love this as a background on both phone and desktop
Looks great! Any thoughts on adding humidity?
Thanks! Yes I'm thinking about it!
Would it be possible for me to inquire as to what library you used to generate the smoke samples for your app? I have a project where I wanted to do something very similar (just not for weather), and I've been having the hardest time finding a good library for it!
No library, I wrote the SDF/raymarching shaders from scratch. But there are libraries out there...
Holy wow, that's pretty amazing! You should consider making it into a opensource library for others to use, it's truly beautiful! Thank you for making this project.
Thank you, I appreciate it! :) There's https://kev.town/raymarching-toolkit/ but I haven't tried it. Looks promising!
What does "cool", "warm", "warmer" mean in here?
That being said, the images look pretty nifty, so it has that going for it.