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Popcorn made it possible for the filmmakers to control a 3D environment in WebGL, and then augment it with real time information pulled from  Wikipedia, Yahoo’s Weather API, Flickr and Google Maps. The result is a  unique viewing experience customized in the browser for each viewer.

Powered entirely by HTML5 and open source JavaScript libraries, One Millionth Tower is loaded with photos and information from all over the web, and exists in an online environment that is about as close to three-dimensional as something on a flat screen can get.

It exists in a 3D setting made possible by a tool called three.js, which lets viewers walk around the high-rise neighborhood. Moving through allows viewers to see the current state of urban decay, then activate elements to show ways the residents would change their world, like an animation showing where a new playground or garden would go.

The interactive movie is chock-full of photos from Flickr, street-views from Google Maps and changing environments fueled by real-time weather data from Yahoo. Everything is triggered by Popcorn.js, which acts like a conductor signaling which instruments play at what times

“What we’ve done with One Millionth Tower is not the future,” Cizek said. “It just points to it.