Yet another Hacker News

Show HN: Warsaw in voxels – an interactive 3D map of the city centre

101 points stared 2 hours ago 20 comments

Explore central Warsaw in voxels - slightly inspired by Minecraft, and MagicaVoxel. You can change the date, time of day and weather, explore the city, or click on a pedestrian to control them (here a bit of inspiration from Dungeon Keeper).

Works best on desktop, but I tried to make it usable on mobile too. The initial load can take a while. It's based on several open datasets, including:

- OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=6/52.02/19.14) - buildings, streets, sidewalks, tram tracks, etc

- GUGiK / Geoportal (https://www.geoportal.gov.pl/) - LiDAR for building heights and trees, aerial imagery for colours

- Warsaw's city tree database (https://mapa.um.warszawa.pl/) - individual tree species, used for seasonal foliage

Open-source (https://github.com/stared/warsaw-vibe-voxel), so feel invited to (re)use it as you wish!

stared 2 hours ago | parent

There are quite a few such other projects, e.g. Streets of Prague (https://beta.streetsofprague.com/), were one can explore Prague in a top-down GTA2-like mode, based on real data.

ionwake 32 minutes ago | parent

this blew my mind! incredible!

andyfilms1 30 minutes ago | parent

It'd be cool to see these taken to the next level by showing actual live updated public transit and car traffic

java-man 2 hours ago | parent

Is it raining, or are those rendering artifacts on a fractional scale monitor?

edit: it is raining!

thehamkercat 2 hours ago | parent

Yes it's raining, you can change the weather on top-left of the website

stared 58 minutes ago | parent

It's raining, man :)

throw_a_grenade 1 hour ago | parent

A bit unfortunate it doesn't reach to the Old Town, or even Royal Palace. But impressive stuff nonetheless!

stared 1 hour ago | parent

Good point! I've already expanded the area from something much smaller (so to go to the National Stadium and so on). The first draft is easy, since Opus 5.5 is good at working with open data and checking against it.

What takes much more time is polishing. Sometimes things are jagged or wrong, streets are disconnected, some tree crowns float in the air, and bridges look like they’ve been hit by an airstrike.

I check things manually, compare them with photos, etc.

sixtyj 1 hour ago | parent

Mobile version reloads, imho it is too heavy for Safari.

Well done.

As default weather - I would prefer sunny day instead of rain…

stared 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah, it is a bit heavy, but I had to balance features and performance without adding too many toggles that push choices onto the user (often when it is already too late). I optimized it primarily for desktop, with some ideas for making it lighter on phones (rendering only small parts in 1m3 voxels and the rest in gray 8m3 blocks).

When it comes to weather, I am torn between always using golden hour with a clear sky and using the current weather.

WhrRTheBaboons 56 minutes ago | parent

>As default weather - I would prefer sunny day instead of rain…

But then it would not be an authentic Warsaw experience!

camies 1 hour ago | parent

Really impressive. The autumn trees and the golden hour light make it feel alive, and the landmark labels are a nice touch. Fun to fly around the city centre.

wossab 1 hour ago | parent

For the longest time I wanted this as the interface for a Local News website I was participating in. It was impossible at the time but I hope it will become a thing. Sure beats HTML tables with text and pictures.

ivanjermakov 1 hour ago | parent

> Sure beats HTML tables with text and pictures

Except this website chokes many desktop PCs, not to mention phones.

radicality 55 minutes ago | parent

Nice. At first glance looks cool, but then, oh my, some areas are really butchered :S Poor Old Town and Plac Zamkowy - I'm familiar with the area and at first was scanning trying to find it visually by the features I know are there, but then in this model it's very different (wrong color, many more floors in this model, a 20-story building where at most should be at most a 5-story, the old town castle looking like a gray residential 'blok' and not the prettier structure that it is!).

nutrientharvest 34 minutes ago | parent

I think you're looking at something else, because the Old Town isn't on the map at all. Unless part of it failed to load for me.

harvey9 54 minutes ago | parent

It was raining when I opened it. Is that tied to the live weather?

It's really good, and responsive in Firefox on my android tablet.

ionwake 34 minutes ago | parent

I really like this, not trying to be annoying but is the main point that we can walk around in first person or does it lend itself to be ported to minecraft or something?

Sorry to be weird and ask. Very impressive though I like it.

stared 12 minutes ago | parent

A very natural question.

Not a Minecraft player myself, but if you want to do so (code is there), feel more than invited.

lo_zamoyski 17 minutes ago | parent

A fragment of Śródmieście (the downtown center of Warsaw). The Old Town and most of the right bank (including Praga) are missing.

In any case, very fun. Hope it improves.