Sky Radio

Two sparks. Matt Schroeter's Weather Synthesizer won “Most creative” at Figma's Makeathon by turning Vancouver's weather into music. And Daniil Chebotarev's Quack, a tiny farm that lives on your desktop: a real 3D world with proper lighting, finished to look like pixel art, where day turns into night and seasons change.

I've lived in Moscow, Argentina, South Africa, France and now London. Weather apps tell me it's 11° and cloudy somewhere I used to live, and it means nothing. I wanted a way to sense what it's like there right now, without reading a single number.

Give each place a tiny floating world: a slice of ground with a few things that say where you are, lit by the real local time and weather. Then turn the same weather into ambient music. Every reading gets exactly one job, so once you know the rules you can see and hear that Cape Town is windy tonight.

1. 01

   One reading, one job

   Temperature picks the key and register, wind the tempo, cloud cover a low-pass filter, rain the high droplet notes. Each card shows its mapping (“10°C → key of F dorian”), so the system explains itself.

2. 02

   Never loud by surprise

   Nothing plays until you press the button. Sound fades in, sits at a gentle level and fades out on pause. Ambient music only works if it's polite.

3. 03

   Honest about the data

   A small status says “Live from London”, “Tuning in…” or “Sample weather” if the forecast can't be reached. The piece still works offline, but it never pretends.

4. 04

   A world, not a wallpaper

   Each place is a small 3D island with a hint of its landmarks: a clock tower and terraces, onion domes and birches, an obelisk and jacarandas, a flat-topped mountain. It's lit by a sun or moon placed for the local hour, so London at 10pm really is dark, with lit windows.

5. 05

   Weather you can watch

   Clouds drift and trees sway in the real wind direction and speed, rain or snow falls when it's actually raining, and chimney smoke leans with the wind. Every note the music plays sends a little spark up from the island.

6. 06

   Pixel finish, on purpose

   The scene renders at low resolution and scales up crisply, like Quack. It hides the simple geometry, adds warmth, and keeps it light enough to run on a laptop. A switch turns it smooth if you prefer.

• Weather from the free Open-Meteo API, fetched in the browser for the selected place.
• A small Web Audio synth: a detuned pad, a random walk through the scale, filtered white noise for wind and a feedback echo for space.
• A Three.js scene (through React Three Fiber): an orthographic camera, real-time shadows from a directional light placed by the local hour, small speckled textures on the ground, and instanced particles for rain, snow, smoke and note sparks.

• “Play tomorrow”, using the forecast instead of current weather.
• Record a 20-second clip to send to a friend who lives there.
• A text description of the sound for people who can't hear it.