Nocturne

A whole product-launch page whose top is a story told by the product itself. The page is night, and the only light on it is light the sensor sent out: a street ray-cast from a roof-mounted lidar — 128 lasers, 2,048 firings each — drawn as its real returns in three.js. Scrolling slows the light down: the sweep's pulses leave together, and the street exists only as far as they have come back from. Five measurements carry the story — the road back first at 31 ns, a person at 21.9 m, rain's early echoes dropped, a truck 7.1 seconds away at the edge of the lit street, the whole street in plan. A clock gives the light's time and range and locks onto each beat's measurement; tap or click anything in the street to range it, or use "Range one" from the keyboard. The camera follows storyboarded poses and leans toward the pointer; the copy scrolls over the scene rather than animating in, and the returns behind it are held under a brightness ceiling so it holds AA.

After the story the page is the category's standard order in plain type and hairlines — the sensor as a dimensioned drawing and a spec sheet that points back at the story, developers, pricing, FAQ, and a close drawn as the story's first image — so it's easy to use and the light is what's remembered. The scene draws its returns in one call, stops whenever it's still or off screen, casts the sweep a few milliseconds at a time so nothing waits on it, and under reduced motion cuts from still to still.