I have had a hunch about a particular set of clouds in the game (the ones far off on the horizon when looking anywhere, really. There is one spot in the sand dunes where the reflection of the clouds match up with the bottom of the clouds themselves, and it makes what appears to be a waveform image of an audio file. These are the clouds in question.

In addition to this, underneath the sand dunes in the reflective pools, there are concrete columns with water stains on them. When the water is high, they, too, form what appear to be waveform audio files. There are, well, a lot of them. Here is an album that I have taken with some of the stains in question. I have enhanced the brightness and increased the shadows on some of the images to make the waveform clearer.

I have done some research into how to playback audio from a waveform image, and I have downloaded a program called Image To Sound in order to do this, but I do not have enough know-how in this field to solve this myself. I also do not know how to use photoshop so as to change these colour images into black-and-white images for clarity of the waveform audio.

Could anybody help me with this?

My gut instinct tells me that those clouds and stains wouldn't form any sort of accurate waveform. While it does look like the general shape of one, i would guess that there's not enough audio information present to produce anything.

But nice attention to detail. This game demands a ton of it. =]

I don't have anything to offer regarding this puzzle, sorry. That does look like a waveform, but I can't tell you how to get anything meaningful from it.

The black cloud though. Have you noticed that one? You can choose between lighting it with a laser to make it white or pointing the laser at the mountain where it needs to go. That tradeoff seems somewhat significant for just a dumb thing.

I have a couple more meta puzzle theories, but I worry that there just aren't that many crazy hidden story secrets like the kind we are looking for in this game.

@doenut: regarding the black cloud, if you want a small hint: there definitely significance to it, but you just need to find the right perspective for it to matter

I do know about the clouds, and there's more than JUST the clouds. Keep your eyes peeled.

As for the water level: I'm pretty sure that they're not wave forms, BUT...

... if you can make sense of what's hidden in the clouds, you will know that same something is hidden in that water room.

If you want me to spell it out a little more clearly:

@ikabubu: Yes, I am well aware of that. I'm at +46 right now.

@folklorist: In that case, the black cloud is part of ONE of those.

@ikabubu: Yes, I know, I have that one solved. I'm not talking about the black cloud at all in my post. I'm talking about the line of connected clouds shown near the bottom of the image in my first post. The black cloud has nothing to do with those.

Without saying what it IS (if it's something different) can someone give me a yes or no on if the black cloud thing is just another one of those environmental pattern that shows up on those black pillars?

@ikabubu: Ah, I see. Thanks. Didn't mean to hijack Folklorist's thread with the black cloud.

That's my main disappointment with this game. Oh, you think you found a secret? It's just a +1. There's no dangling carrot to make me want to continue to look for these. I feel like there's a difference between being vague and not telling you at all whether you are wasting your time.

100 percenting The Witness doesn't feel fun to me. Just my opinion. Hopefully there's something when you get them all.

@bbalpert: Sounds like it is that.