What is sSmog
SSMOG is a web visual experiment that simulates smog effects in every major city in the world, a protest against the overly generalized and apathetic rhetoric of western media when covering smog problems in China. We want the SSMOG to evoke empathy in its viewers by raising the question, what would it feel like if your hometown is also filled with smogs? You can visit SSMOG (Please Launch it in Firefox or Safari) here
Development
The idea of SSMOG comes from my first-hand experience with smogs and the interactions I had with all the people living in the smogs everyday especially with my family, during my 2016 Winter break in Chengdu, China. After I got back to US, I contacted my friend Dave and we put up a team to develop this website. In the team, my role was developing visual effects of smogs spreading in cities. Based on the open-source project by Einar Öberg, I used normal map to project the street view images from Google Map API to a 3D sphere and used Three.js’s particle system to generate smog effects inside of it. You can access the source code here.