Meteor Shower
X-ray · layers
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How this effect works
A meteor is a point moving along a straight diagonal — and its tail is drawn, not remembered. Each frame we stroke one line from the head backwards along the direction of travel, painted with a linear gradient that starts white-hot at the head and fades to nothing at the tail's end. No canvas trails, no frame blending: the streak is an honest gradient recomputed every frame, which is why this stays crisp at any speed.
Meteors spawn from a Poisson-style dice roll — random() < RATE × dt — so gaps and clusters happen naturally, the way real showers surprise you, instead of a metronome tick. Each one also rolls its own small speed and size variation. The star field behind is a hundred static dots with a slow twinkle; it exists so the meteors have a sense of depth to fall through — switch it off and they're marks on a blackboard.