I recently read an article (here), that walked through the process of how rain is made in video games. While it discussed some technical aspects and ideas that are only applicable in video game development, it also discussed one great, yet simple, change the developers made regarding the rain that is analogous to our daily lives.
With any technology, there is a limit to its capacity. As we continue to evolve the tech we use, the capacity increases, but often so does its demand. We now have more powerful systems than ever, but these systems also run more powerful programs than ever, occasionally still not being able to keep up with the demands we place on the machines. In the world of video games, this happens quite frequently, as games can theoretically develop far beyond what machines are capable of displaying to their players (without the players having to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to play games).
In open-world games, games in which players can explore and interact with an entire world built out for them and are not limited to one series of actions predetermined for them, developers often face challenges regarding the complexity of these worlds. Players can make an infinite number of decisions, and the worlds have to be able to adapt to these decisions. One simple decision that caused a lot of trouble for these developers was the decision to walk in the rain.
When a player walks in the rain, one might expect it to act like the real world: it’s raining in an area and the player walks around in the raining area. However, in the game, each raindrop is an individually coded object, and thousands of objects at once across digital miles of land would bog down any gaming system, causing developers to struggle in adding the reality that is rain. They made a simple fix, however, by attaching the rain to the player and having it only rain wherever the player moves and looks, significantly reducing the number of objects needed to be rendered.
While the decision to have rain exclusively where it will be seen is a very intelligent move for the games, if one were to become able to exit the player and view the world from a bird’s eye or third-person view, it would look quite strange. This single individual is walking around miserably with a personal rain cloud, while everyone else is unaffected. Despite it sounding so silly and completely implausible, many people actually do have their own, personal rain cloud that they walk around with.
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”
Epictetus, Greek Philosopher
Many miseries in our lives become joys when compared to those of others, and many struggles and stressors simply cease to exist when we look at our lives from an outside perspective. One ability we have that the player in the game doesn’t is that we are actually able to examine ourselves with a third-person view: self-reflection and metacognition can allow us to recognize when we have a personal rain cloud. By seeing the sunshine that exists outside our singular viewpoint, we can often dispel the weather and be freed of the misery that is constant rain.
Admittedly, not every rain cloud is a personal one, but any additional moment of sunshine is worth examining every rainstorm and asking, “Is it raining, or do I simply see rain?”. For the times it is raining on everyone and not just you, however, don’t forget your umbrella; if we prepare for the storm, we still can come out the other side fairly dry.
“we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed;” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NASB)
What's Luke Thinking? 
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