TITLE Wheat, Before Rain PROMPT An ambient scene: a wide field of ripe wheat under a heavy sky, a few minutes before a summer storm. Wind moves through the field in visible waves; each of thousands of stalks bends individually. Full-bleed Canvas 2D. Concept: the sight of wind made visible by a crop; golden light against slate cloud. Mood: expectant, golden, vast, tender. Palette: ripe wheat gold #E9C46A, shadowed straw ochre #B8862B, hedgerow/field-margin olive #5B6C3A, storm-cloud slate blue #6E7F91 (sky, and the cornflowers), and pale straw-cream #F7EFD6 for highlights, the sun-break and type; darker tones are mixes of these. Light, warm page: the field fills the lower two-thirds and glows; the sky is slate but luminous near the horizon, not dark. Scene construction: the field is drawn as many rows of stalks from the horizon (tiny, dense, pale, hazy) to the foreground (large, detailed, darker at the base), ordered back to front; about 8,000 stalks on desktop, about 3,400 on phones, with the nearest 120–270 drawn in detail: a curved stem (quadratic curve), a dry leaf, and an ear with paired grains and fine awns (bristles) splaying out, which sway with extra delay. Middle-distance stalks carry simpler spindle ears with awn hints; far stalks are single strokes. Each stalk bends according to a wind field sampled at its ground position: the bend is a curve whose tip displaces downwind, with per-stalk stiffness and phase variation and a spring so stalks overshoot and recover. The wind field: large travelling gust fronts (bands of higher wind speed that sweep across the field in perspective from one side, at varying angles), layered with smaller turbulence noise; where a gust front passes, stalks lean over and their colour shifts lighter (the silvery underside/sheen of bent wheat), with a darker shoulder just ahead of the front: this produces the famous dark-and-light waves rolling to the horizon. The same field tints a soft ground layer under the stalks. Cloud shadows also drift across the field independently, dimming the gold in soft patches, and one patch of sunlight breaks through and travels with the gap in the clouds. Faint paired tramlines converge on the vanishing point. Sky and details: layered storm clouds built from soft shapes with flat-ish shading (a graphic, slightly painterly treatment rather than photoreal: stacked rounded cloud forms in three slate tones with a bright rim where the sun is behind, and light shafts falling from the sun-break), slowly advancing; a distant rain curtain as fine slanted lines under one cloud on the horizon; far hills, a line of far trees with a small church spire, and one lone oak; a telegraph line with a few swallows that take off when the gust hits and later return to the wire; poppies (small red dots, #C8402B, used very sparingly) and cornflowers among olive grass at the near margin; chaff and a few seed heads blown across the foreground in strong gusts; a red kite wheeling. A fine paper grain lies over everything. Over about four minutes the storm approaches: a dark cloud bank moves in, the light narrows, gusts strengthen, the first heavy drops fall as sparse long streaks and darken spots, a low thunder with a soft sheet-lightning flicker (thunder audible if sound is on), then the cycle eases back to bright wind: an endless five-minute loop with weather. Interaction: watch-only is complete. Moving the pointer/finger across the field sends a gust in that direction and with that speed from that position (a brushing hand through the wheat: the stalks beneath part and spring back); a quick swipe makes a strong squall line that travels to the horizon: the signature moment: a single dark-light wave racing away across thousands of stalks into the distance. Click/tap startles a skylark out of the wheat: it rises vertically, singing (a rising trill if sound is on, drawn as small fading arcs either way), hovers, and parachutes back down. Keyboard: G sends a squall, L raises a lark. The pointer is a small cream ring that sheds short wind streaks. Typography: almost none: a small caption block in the top-left of the sky in an old-style serif italic (Garamond-like stack/Georgia italic), cream, 13–14px: "Wheat, before rain." and beneath in tiny tracked caps a slowly updating line of observations, beginning "STILL AIR" and then "WIND SOUTH-WEST, FRESHENING · 4 MINUTES TO RAIN", counting down with the cycle through "ANY MOMENT NOW", "FIRST HEAVY DROPS", "RAIN PASSING EAST" and "LIGHT RETURNING". That line is also a quiet button ("hurry it on" appears on hover/focus) that runs the weather forward to the edge of the rain, or on past it. A one-line italic hint about the gestures fades in after the entrance and fades away. A minimal designed sound toggle (off by default) drawn as a wheat ear that lifts, fills gold and opens its awns when on: wind through wheat (band-passed noise shaped by gust strength, with a dry rustle layer), a whoosh for squalls, rain patter, distant thunder, skylark trill. Entrance: the field at rest in still air for one beat, then the first big gust enters from the left and rolls through to the horizon within about three seconds. Performance: stalks stored in typed arrays; far stalks drawn as batched single strokes per colour bucket within depth bands; near stalks individually; wind field sampled from a low-res grid that is denser toward the horizon; clouds, oak and horizon pre-rendered as sprites; DPR capped at 2; adaptive stalk count; pause when hidden. Reduced motion: a gentle uniform sway at low amplitude, no racing gust fronts, flying chaff, rain streaks or lightning. DESCRIPTION A full-bleed painted landscape in gold and slate: two-thirds of the screen is a field of ripe wheat receding to a hazy horizon of hills, hedgerow trees, a spire and a lone oak, under stacked flat-shaded storm clouds with a cream sun-break and light shafts. After one still beat a gust enters from the left and the whole field comes alive: every stalk is its own spring, leaning and overshooting as bands of wind sweep through in perspective, turning the crop silver-pale where it bends and dark just ahead, so the wind itself becomes visible as waves rolling away. In the foreground, individual ears with paired grains and trembling awns nod above olive grass, a few poppies and cornflowers; swallows scatter from a telegraph wire when a gust reaches them and a kite circles. Over four minutes a dark bank slides in, the light narrows, the caption counts down, heavy drops streak and spot the wheat, thunder mutters, and the weather eases back into bright wind to begin again. The experience is meant to feel like standing at a field margin, expectant and tender, with the option of putting a hand out into the wheat. VISUAL TECHNIQUES - Canvas 2D scene of roughly 8,000 stalks in typed arrays, sorted back to front and drawn in depth bands, batched per colour bucket - Per-stalk damped spring driven by a wind vector field (travelling gust fronts, turbulence, pointer puffs, squall arcs) evaluated on a low-resolution grid with non-uniform rows and bilinear sampling - Tone field coupling wind strength to colour (sheen behind a front, dark shoulder ahead), plus drifting cloud shadows and a travelling sun patch, used both for stalk colour and for a smoothed ground image - Three levels of detail: single strokes far away, stem plus spindle ear in the middle distance, fully drawn ears with paired grains, leaves and lagging awns in the foreground - Pseudo-perspective depth mapping so fronts and squalls narrow, slow and thin toward the vanishing point; squall speed and width scale with depth so the wave stays legible to the horizon - Procedural cloud sprites: stacked lobe layers with clipped offset fills for three flat slate tones, and a separate sun-rim layer masked by a radial gradient around the moving sun-break - Pre-rendered horizon (hills, far fields, tree line, church), oak and rain-curtain sprites; telegraph poles and oak interleaved with the wheat rows for correct occlusion - Weather cycle driving sky gradient, storm bank, ambient colour ramps, rain streaks, wet spots, sheet lightning and the caption countdown - Animated birds: perching and flocking swallows, a banking kite, a skylark with rise, hover, parachute and plunge phases and drawn song marks - Field-margin layer of sprung grass blades, poppies and cornflowers; chaff and seed-head particles in strong gusts - Static grain canvas blended in soft light and a gentle vignette; SVG wheat-ear sound toggle with spring easing - Web Audio synthesis: filtered noise for wind, rustle, rain, squall whoosh and thunder, and a scheduled sine trill for the lark INTERACTION MODEL Nothing is required: the scene plays and loops by itself. Moving the mouse, or dragging a finger, across the field pushes a local gust in the direction and at the speed of the movement, so stalks under the hand lean away and spring back; the cursor is a small cream ring trailing wind streaks. A quick swipe launches a squall: one arc of dark then pale wheat that races from the swipe away to the horizon, flinging chaff and often lifting the swallows from the wire (G does the same from the keyboard). A click or tap puts up a skylark from that spot, which climbs, hovers singing and parachutes back into the wheat (L from the keyboard). The observation line under the title is a button that hurries the weather on to the rain, or past it once it has begun. The wheat-ear button in the top right turns sound on and off; sound is off until asked for. With reduced motion preferred, the field only sways gently and the racing fronts, chaff, rain streaks and lightning are omitted.