I sometimes make use of ambience videos when trying to get to sleep. A video of a train driving through snow, a car driving in the rain, or a space ship with a low hum. It seems to help. The problem is some of these are low quality, looped, or have obvious flaws. For example the digitally added rain image has inaccurate drop sizes or physics, or the starlight isn't properly reflected off the ship interior. Or worse the audio is on a loop.

This computer program would be designed not only to generate highly random noise but random and realistic environmental effects. Candles that flicker realistically. Smoke effects. Realistic rain. Various environments would be included such as:

A space ship (generate a video from any room in it, and appropriate space-ship-sounding sounds)
A train (generate weather and scenery)
A view from a cabin in the woods (generate scenery, wildlife, and weather)

It wouldn't be a game, just a generator of ambience.
-- Voice, May 31 2022

Audio only https://www.fastcom...ckground-music-apps
But it's a start [not_only_but_also, May 31 2022]

It's odd that predictable, looping audio is so annoying. It produces a lack of sleep.

This leaves me wondering if the random nature of good sleep noises works because our brains begin to fight wakeful attentiveness to novel sounds with sleep. Just as snoozing an alarm brings on the deepest and most luxuriant sleep.
-- not_only_but_also, May 31 2022


Assuming the loop is seamless, presumably there's some length which isn't distracting. If the sound is very 'samey' like constant even rain, I'd have thought five minutes would be enough.
If you want a bit more variation, you'd probably want several different sections of sound which could be interchangeably inter-cut. I'd imagine a decent sound engineer would be more than capable of generating more than enough of these from an hour or two of audio track.

And if the objective is to fall asleep, having images seems unnecessary, if not counter-productive.

Since the program is then almost trivial, you probably want a decent variety of tracks to persuade people to buy it, if it were to be commercial. There's not much to it otherwise.
-- Loris, May 31 2022


I'm not sure if I could sleep to a candle flickering, or smoke effects. When I'm headed for La-La Land I don't want a raging house fire to be on my mind. Plus, smoke is silent.

But the other sounds I approve of. And I like this idea. I do guided meditations when sleeping, or Binaural Beats.
-- blissmiss, Jun 02 2022


I guess I wasn't very clear. The idea is to also generate a video image.
-- Voice, Jun 02 2022


Why do you want a video, if you're trying to sleep?
Don't you shut your eyes at that point?
-- Loris, Jun 02 2022


Yes, but it helps me get there. You've never gone to sleep looking out a window or watching a brook or a fireplace?
-- Voice, Jun 02 2022


I don't usually have any problem falling asleep.
Usually, I fall asleep if I sit down and do nothing for too long.

But if I can't sleep, I just close my eyes and think about something interesting - then even if I don't fall asleep quickly at least I've got something to do.
-- Loris, Jun 02 2022


[-1] No “midnight trickling stream” for me...
-- ShawnBob, Jun 05 2022



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