[HN Gopher] Show HN: Mountain Peaks in WebGL
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Mountain Peaks in WebGL
Author : pheelicks
Score : 187 points
Date : 2020-12-25 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (felixpalmer.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (felixpalmer.github.io)
| pheelicks wrote:
| Hi HN, Merry Christmas to all!
|
| I made this as a demonstration of the open data available from
| the Austrian government under the www.basemap.at project. The
| rendering engine is built on top of THREE.js and can be found
| here: https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/
|
| For those in the southern hemisphere, there is also a similar
| visualization of the national parks of New Zealand:
| https://felixpalmer.github.io/new-zealand-3d/
| fh973 wrote:
| Where do you get the DEM from?
| capableweb wrote:
| > https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/
|
| > Key features
|
| > Batteries included elevation data. Global 3D data coverage
| courtesy of nasadem.XYZ
|
| > https://www.nasadem.xyz/
| mauflows wrote:
| Very cool! How is the elevation data textured in this demo?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Just want to say, love the mobile interface on iOS. Smooth as
| butter, super controllable, intuitive. I don't know whether you
| designed it or if it came with the engine, but either way,
| quite lovely.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I disagree with one aspect.
|
| Rotation doesn't work the way it does in every other iOS UI,
| and so it took me forever to figure out how to rotate. On a
| related note, it kept inexplicably rotating whenever I would
| zoom in and out.
|
| Still impressive and smooth, though. And might just be part
| of the library chosen.
| pheelicks wrote:
| Could you elaborate? I'm also an iOS user and find it
| intuitive. But of course I would, as I've spent hours
| developing it and can't see the issues in the way a new
| user would. If you move two fingers in a rotating fashion
| the map rotates, does it not do this for you?
| jtbayly wrote:
| No. If I move two fingers from side to side it rotates.
| If I try to rotate two fingers, nothing happens. If I
| _also_ happen to also move them closer together /further
| apart, then it zooms. Or if I happen to end up slightly
| further left or right, then it rotates. The result is
| that when attempting to rotate 90 degrees right, it might
| zoom out slightly and rotate left a few degrees.
|
| Edit: this is an image to show how I rotate things on my
| phone and computer trackpad: https://cdn1.iconfinder.com/
| data/icons/gestureworks_gesture_...
| anarazel wrote:
| Not an iOS user, but I somehow expected rotation to work
| if I rotate two fingers against each other (I.e. draw a
| circle with two fingers at the same time). But I just
| need to swipe sideways with two fingers.
| pheelicks wrote:
| Well, I made the engine - so the answer is both :) Glad you
| like it. I still feel the pinch zoom could be improved though
| so that the focal point was at the center of the touch
| points, but otherwise it is pretty close to the native
| controls
| chime wrote:
| Can you let the user zoom further, even if it is a bit lo-res?
| recursive wrote:
| This is working much better than it was last time I saw it on the
| front page. Nice work.
| yincrash wrote:
| Apparently my setup was on the GPU blocklist in chrome so I had
| to enable #ignore-gpu-blocklist in chrome://flags
|
| This demo did not want to run on CPU only :)
| tomcam wrote:
| Bonus: can nick the names and use for IKEA furniture
| codetrotter wrote:
| Most of those names don't look very Swedish. Only one that I
| see really working is Daniel.
|
| And as far as I can tell there is no IKEA furniture named
| DANIEL. They could use that name for some furniture that would
| complement the BILLY bookshelves for example.
| arghwhat wrote:
| ... IKEA furniture doesn't use German names.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Leiwand!
| Keyframe wrote:
| Hmm, I can see rendering only as a flat map. Is it supposed to
| have height to it?
| pheelicks wrote:
| Yes, there very much should be a 3rd dimension. If you're
| having issues I'd appreciate if you could file an issue on
| https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js mentioning what
| device you have along with the output from
| https://webglreport.com/
|
| In the meantime, there are some video captures on my twitter:
| https://twitter.com/pheeelicks
| arifmeticus wrote:
| Same. I'm on desktop Firefox 84
| strictfp wrote:
| Same here. Could it be some rate limiting of the height data?
| I'm on a Samsung S20.
| Patient0 wrote:
| Same here. Maybe it does not work correctly on all platforms?
| I'm using an old Android phone (Samsung G8)
| hans1729 wrote:
| I have some rendering-issues: https://i.imgur.com/D0LW0r9.png
| pheelicks wrote:
| That's not a bug, it's Germany! The aerial imagery comes from
| the Austrian basemap.at dataset, which only covers Austria. If
| you use imagery that covers multiple countries this isn't an
| issue, but for this project I wanted to try out the basemap.at
| data. See https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/ for
| more
| ajnin wrote:
| Why is the polar angle constrained so much?
| pheelicks wrote:
| Generally just a choice for the demo - in part because
| restricting the view distance means less data to download (thus
| lower cost to serve!). If you switch the phone to portrait you
| will be able to see the horizon.
|
| The library itself (https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-
| gl-js) lets you configure the angle freely.
| la_fayette wrote:
| Amazing work! Is there any open data for elevation for germany?
| pheelicks wrote:
| There are a number of global elevation datasets. Check out
| JAXA, EUDEM or NASADEM for example. Processing them into a
| usable form is another issue.
|
| For the Procedural GL JS library we use NASADEM, via the
| www.nasadem.xyz service, which has almost global coverage (up
| to 60 degrees N)
| bigdict wrote:
| Merry Christmas! This is really well done. This gets very close
| in the look and feel to Google Maps/Earth.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-12-25 23:00 UTC)