A real-time 3D thunderstorm for focus, calm and sleep. Watch rain fall on an open ocean under volumetric clouds, with procedurally generated rain, wind and thunder that never loops — and visuals that react to the sound.
An interactive scene rather than a video: a storm rendered live in WebGL over an open ocean, with volumetric clouds, branching lightning and Gerstner-wave water. You control rainfall, wind, lightning frequency, cloud cover and swell, and each control drives both the visuals and the soundscape together.
- What is Cloudfall Studio?
- Cloudfall Studio is a free browser-based ambient experience: a real-time 3D thunderstorm over an open ocean, with rain, wind and thunder generated live in your browser. It's built for focus, relaxation and sleep.
- Is the rain and thunder a recording?
- No. Every sound is synthesized in real time using the Web Audio API — filtered noise layers for rain, wind and ocean swell, and a physically-modelled thunder synth. Nothing loops, so the soundscape never repeats.
- Why does thunder arrive after the lightning?
- Because that's what happens outdoors. Light is effectively instant but sound travels about 343 metres per second, so a strike three kilometres away is heard around nine seconds later. Cloudfall models that delay, along with the way air absorbs high frequencies over distance — distant strikes arrive as low rumble, close ones as a sharp crack.
- Do the visuals react to music?
- Yes, when the audio is reachable. Local files you load and tab audio you share are analysed live with a real FFT, and the ocean, clouds and lightning respond to it. SoundCloud playback happens inside a cross-origin iframe that browsers do not allow pages to read, so in that mode the motion is clearly labelled as simulated rather than measured.
- Can I use it with Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube?
- Yes. Play music in any other tab and use the 'React to any tab' button to share that tab's audio with Cloudfall. The visuals then respond to the real signal, so it works with Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Bandcamp or anything else that plays in a browser. Tab audio sharing is available in Chrome and Edge on desktop. Cloudfall never receives your account details and does not play or store the music itself — it only reads the sound your browser is already producing.
- Can I watch a video without leaving the storm?
- Yes. Paste a YouTube link or playlist into the video window and it plays in a small floating panel over the scene, which you can drag anywhere and resize. The storm keeps running behind it, so you can have a talk, a lecture or a long mix going without stacking another window on top. Starting a video pauses the music player, since both are foreground sound. It is YouTube only: nearly every other site refuses to be embedded, and the only way around that would be routing their pages — and your logins — through us, which is not something worth building for convenience.
- Can I save my settings, and do they sync between devices?
- You can save any combination of rainfall, wind, lightning, cloud and swell as a named scene, and it will still be there next time you visit. It is saved in that browser only, though: saved scenes do not sync to your other devices or browsers, do not appear in private windows, and are removed if you clear site data. There is no account, so nothing is stored on our side. To carry a scene somewhere else — or send it to someone — use Share, which copies a link with the settings encoded in it. Opening that link anywhere restores the scene exactly.
- Do you track me, or use cookies?
- Only if you say yes. Cloudfall asks once whether anonymous usage statistics are allowed, and nothing is stored on your device or sent anywhere until you agree — the analytics library is not even started before then. If you decline, or if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, you are never asked and nothing runs. What is measured is which scenes and features get used, and which tracks from the built-in library get played; there is no account, no profile and nothing is sold. Audio files you load from your own device are never named, and neither is any location you look up. You can change your mind at any time from the control in the bottom-left corner, which also deletes the identifier that was stored.
- Can the storm match the real weather where I am?
- Yes. In the storm panel you can share your location or type in any city, and the rain, wind, cloud and lightning are set from the conditions actually being reported there, checked again every few minutes so the scene changes as the real weather does. Sharing your location is entirely optional — searching by name works without any permission — and the place you choose is remembered in your browser only. It is the one feature that sends anything off your device: the coordinates go to Open-Meteo, a free weather service that needs no account, and nothing else about you goes with them.
- Is it free, and do I need an account?
- It's free and there's no account. Everything runs in your browser, and any audio files you add stay on your device — nothing is uploaded.