Mountain Cable Car
A quiet cable car over an alpine valley: a lake under the mist, dark firs below, and the next tower ahead. Set the pace, thin the mist, and listen to the cabin glide.
A slow glide
The view moves slowly toward the tower ahead, near slopes faster than the far ones. About once a minute the car passes through cloud and the view turns white for a few seconds. Nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Set the pace
- Glide goes from a car hanging still over the valley to a steady crossing. As it moves, the firs and the slope right below you slide by, the lake and the far ridges hardly change, and the tower ahead stays where it is with its cables, because that’s where you’re going.
- Pass through the cloud
- Once each span the car runs into a bank of cloud and the windows go white for a few seconds. When it clears, you’re at the start of the next span.
- Thin the mist
- Move the pointer over the valley and the drifting mist nearest it thins out. Mist sets how many loose wisps float between the slopes; the mist lying on the lake flows slowly along the valley whatever you choose.
- Try the handle
- Tap the window handle at the lower right. It gives a little, springs back and settles with a click. The window stays shut.
Use it as your wallpaper
Press F for fullscreen and M to turn the sound off and on; the volume and your sound choice carry over to every wallpaper. The sound keeps playing if you switch to another tab.
Live link
https://whitescreen.tv/interactive-wallpapers/mountain-cable-car/#wallpaper- On a computer desktop
- Some wallpaper apps can show a web page behind your desktop icons. Give one the live link above and the scene runs there on its own: no page around it, no ads and no sound.
- On a TV or a spare screen
- Open this page and press F, or use Fullscreen. While it’s in fullscreen we ask the browser to keep the screen from going to sleep.
- On a phone or tablet
- Save image downloads exactly what’s on the screen as a picture. Set it as your wallpaper from your photos; the phone will crop the sides.
A live wallpaper keeps a page running all day. Through the live link the scene draws at most 30 frames a second and stops while the screen is covered, but on a laptop it still costs some battery.
Why near things pass faster
Moving forward, everything in view spreads out from the point you’re heading for, and the closer something is, the faster it spreads. That is called motion parallax, and it’s most of how you sense depth from a moving car or train. The firs below the cabin rush past while a mountain twenty miles away doesn’t seem to move at all.
About mountain cable cars
A car like this hangs from a wheeled carriage that rolls along fixed track cables, pulled by a separate haul rope, while the towers carry the cables over the valley. They move at a walking-to-jogging pace and slow down at each tower, where you feel a gentle bump as the carriage rolls over the saddle.
About the sounds
Two recordings and one quiet layer: the cabin gliding along the cable, the window handle settling, and the faint hum of the cabin’s air. There’s no wind sound: the windows are closed.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
