Experiment 018 · cinematic WebGL

Take the wrong turn.

A mountain flyover. An engine behind you. A town that should be empty.
Six takes on the Ghost Road idea, now including Gemini 4 Argon. Same destination, very different ways to make the journey feel real.

New arrival · Gemini 4 Argon

Another engine. Another wrong turn.

A new Gemini interpretation joins the original five. Its director strip lets you move straight from the mountain flyover to the chopper reveal, forest ride or church approach.

Gemini 4 Argon’s Ghost Road: a black-and-chrome chopper and rider on a forest road in golden light.

▶ Begin the journey

Cinematic → exploration

Gemini 4 Argon

Actual browser capture

A fresh road into the same mystery: eight cinematic chapters, a chrome chopper and a frontier town at dusk. Jump between shots or step off the bike and approach the church.

Shared road / terrain coordinates · instanced forest · procedural sky & engine sound

Controls & quality

Ignite & Begin Journey starts the film. Use the bottom chapter strip or keys 1–8 to revisit a shot; Playable or 9 jumps to the church approach. WASD or arrows move, mouse drag or pointer lock looks around, Shift moves faster and E opens the doors. Esc pauses; Resume continues. Sound On mutes audio and the quality menu offers Low through Ultra.

Astra’s Ghost Road: the motorcycle on a forest highway.

▶ Begin the journey

Cinematic → exploration

ChatGPT 6 Astra

Actual browser capture

A long descent from the mountains into Mercy Creek. Follow the chopper through the forest, then take over on foot at the church.

Domain-warped ridges · procedural asphalt · mood-driven grading

Controls & quality

Begin the journey starts the film. The interface offers pause, skip, replay and Picture & Sound settings. After arrival: WASD or arrows to walk, mouse to look, Shift to move faster and E to interact. Esc pauses and releases the pointer.

Sonnet’s Ghost Road: a chopper and rider on the wooded road.

▶ Begin the journey

Cinematic → exploration

Sonnet 5.5

Actual browser capture

A carefully directed ride: road-level anticipation, close passes and a town that slowly loses its warmth. The cinematic gives way to exploration and a final encounter.

Route-focused terrain LOD · directed depth of field · weathering shaders

Controls & quality

Begin starts the film. Esc opens the pause menu with Resume, Restart and quality options. After arrival: WASD to walk, mouse to look, Shift to move faster and E at the church. Choose a lower quality preset if the ride stutters.

Opus’s Ghost Road: the rider and motorcycle framed against the forest.

▶ Begin the journey

Cinematic → exploration

Opus 5.5

Actual browser capture

A widescreen trip from mountain grandeur to a very unwelcoming doorstep. Dense forest, a detailed motorcycle and an engine synthesized from its firing rhythm.

Baked tree impostors · AudioWorklet V-twin · filmic post-processing

Controls & quality

Begin starts the film. Esc pauses and offers Skip to the church or Restart. After arrival: WASD or arrows to walk, mouse to look, Shift to move faster and E to interact. Click the scene to capture the pointer; Esc releases it.

What made the journey work

The road is geometry. The tension is timing.

The impressive bit is not just drawing a forest. It is making terrain, camera, engine sound and a playable handoff agree about where you are—and what you should feel next.

← Back to Notes

01 / Astra · landscape & surfaces

Let the shader do the weathering.

Domain-warped ridged noise shapes the massifs. The highway gets aggregate, worn markings, seams and tire wear through material shader hooks. A mood parameter cools and desaturates the grade as the ride turns uneasy.

02 / Sonnet · detail & direction

Spend detail where the camera will go.

Quadtree terrain tiles refine around the road and aerial route; skirts hide the joins. Depth-aware, half-resolution depth of field follows the director’s focus. Procedural wood and stone shaders supply flaking paint, splits, mortar and grime.

03 / Opus · forest & engine

Fake the far trees. Simulate the firing rhythm.

Detailed trees are baked into multi-view impostor atlases for the distant forest. Up close, the sound has its own machinery: an AudioWorklet synthesizes uneven V-twin firing pulses and an exhaust waveguide instead of looping an engine recording.

04 / Argon · one shared route

Make the mountain agree with the motorcycle.

The highway curve, terrain corridor and town plateau share analytic coordinates. Instanced trees fill the valley while shader-driven sky and mist shift toward dusk. A chapter director ties those changes to the ride, before handing the church approach to the player.

Also part of the experiment

Not every road got us there.

The earlier Gemini 3.8 Flash and Grok 4.7 builds are included with their visible problems. These are separate outcomes from the new Argon build above, not a verdict on a model family.

Gemini’s Ghost Road: a view from the current, visibly rougher terrain sequence.

▶ Inspect rough build

Rough experimental outcome

Gemini 3.8 Flash

Actual browser capture

The same journey, with conspicuous terrain and camera occlusion problems in the current build. Included to show where the brief did not translate cleanly into an experience.

Rough outcome · visible terrain / camera issues

Controls & quality

Start the cinematic from the title screen. The intended handoff uses WASD or arrows, mouse look, Shift and E. Esc releases the pointer. Expect visual defects; this is an experimental snapshot, not a polished release.

Grok’s Ghost Road: the highway and landscape in the current experimental build.

▶ Inspect rough build

Rough experimental outcome

Grok 4.7

Actual browser capture

A recognizable take on the route, but terrain artifacts and a road-material shader error weaken the result. Worth inspecting as a rough interpretation, not a finished showcase.

Rough outcome · terrain artifacts / road shader failure

Controls & quality

Choose a quality preset and Begin. After the cinematic: WASD or arrows to walk, mouse to look, Shift to move faster and E to interact. Esc pauses. The road shader has a known compile error in this snapshot.