About
Bulmeong is a site where you can watch a fire or listen to the rain straight from your browser. The name comes from the Korean word 불멍, which means gazing into a fire with an empty mind. It was made for the days when you cannot go camping and the places where you cannot light a fire.
What kind of site is it?
- There is nothing to install and no account to create. Just open the page.
- The flames, embers, smoke and raindrops are not a recorded video. They are drawn in real time in your browser, so nothing ever repeats exactly.
- The sounds — rain, thunder, wind, waves, a stream, crickets, crackling wood, white and brown noise — are also generated live, and each has its own volume control.
- You can choose between ten scenes: five rain scenes (rainy window, window at dawn, grey afternoon, rain in the forest, neon rain) and five fire scenes (campfire, fireplace, fire pit, rainy campsite, snowy night).
- It includes a sleep timer, brightness control, a clock and a fullscreen mode.
How was it made?
The site uses only standard web technology (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), with no video or audio files. The flames are computed frame by frame by a small program that runs on the graphics card, called a shader. It pushes an irregular pattern upward so that the fire sways and splits like a real one, colouring the hot core white and yellow and the outer edges orange and red. Embers, smoke and the glow on the surroundings are layered on top. The sounds are made by shaping noise with the browser's audio engine. Because there are no media files to download, the page stays light and opens quickly.
Who runs it?
This site is operated by bigadmin.org. To cover running costs, advertisements may appear on some pages. No advertisements are shown while you watch a scene in fullscreen.
Read more
- Guide — how to use the site and ideas for using it
- Frequently asked questions
- Privacy policy
- Terms of use