Nature Study
Drift
Watch a living flock drift beneath an ever-changing sky.
The conductor. Sets the mood and the hour; every system leans to it.
Whether the Director is shaping the experience.
How strongly the Director biases everything.
How fast the Director’s cycles run.
How long one full dawn-to-dawn cycle lasts.
The flock’s visual language — the beautiful shapes it makes, and how it holds them.
How strongly the flock speaks in ribbons, veils, arcs and columns.
How committed the flock is to its decisions.
Average minutes between the larger visual events.
How readily the flock travels far away and returns.
How much the flock favours quiet, held moments.
The solitary birds living their own lives across the wider sky.
How busy the sky is with birds that are not part of the flock.
The ceiling on how many may cross at once.
How many birds, and how they hold together.
How many birds are in the flock.
How tightly the flock packs together.
How far the flock departs from a plain cloud.
How often the flock divides into two, in events per minute.
How much each bird does its own thing.
How a bird moves through the air.
The speed a bird settles at.
How gently the flock changes course.
How steeply a bird rolls into its turns.
How much thickness the flock has toward the camera.
The air the flock moves through, and your hand in it.
How strongly the broad rivers of air carry the flock.
The size of the air’s features.
How the flock is framed against the empty world.
How firmly the flock is kept within the frame.
The size of the whole spatial envelope.
How far back the camera sits.
The passive field of colour and light behind the simulation.
Draw the idealized field of light behind the flock.
How much colour the air keeps.
How soft the transitions between masses of colour are.
How much the atmosphere tints the light the birds fly through.
Persistent suspended moisture carried by the flock’s wind field.
Reveal the shared atmospheric density field.
How readily suspended moisture becomes visible.
How visible suspended condensate becomes.
How gently the flock reorganizes the air it occupies.
How strongly moisture softens sunlight into sky light.
