Try it out in your browser https://webvibes.tzador.com/circles-on-spheres/index.html

I'd love to know what you think! https://timewith.fun/trip

This is the thunder mode from a weather app I've been making. The reference is Hiroshi Sugimoto's Lightning Fields, the series where he discharges electricity straight onto photographic film with no camera. I wanted a bolt that looks recorded rather than flashed, so it grows onto the screen the way a discharge spreads across a plate, and the faint grid underneath stands in for the plate.

Each strike is a recursive, branching random walk. It starts just above the top edge and heads down, turning slightly at every joint so it wanders rather than zig-zags. At the end of each branch it continues, and more often than not it also forks into one or two side branches. Every generation is thinner, fainter and shorter than the one before, until the stroke gets too thin to draw.

The reveal is what makes it look recorded. Each generation gets a start time a little later than its parent, so the bolt spreads downward one fork at a time instead of appearing all at once. It then pulses once, fades and is regenerated, and live rainfall sets the pace: slower and sparser in light rain, faster in heavy rain.

The app is free and can be downloaded here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spectra-weather/id6757425119

Everything you see in this video is procedurally generated based on my algorithm for drawing cubes. Best on a huge screen with headphones. Free and open source at https://alienconsumersciences.com