[HN Gopher] Show HN: Atlas - GIS and interactive maps in the bro...
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       Show HN: Atlas - GIS and interactive maps in the browser
        
       Author : vloewe
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2024-01-23 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (atlas.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (atlas.co)
        
       | samstave wrote:
       | AWESOME!.
       | 
       | Just signed up, will report back. Why is this awesome to me?
       | 
       | I have had a passion for GIS as a hobby my whole life, but neer
       | anything deep... until recently I have been doing a lot of art,
       | and I want to make GIS Map art.
       | 
       | I have been using a number of various tools and grabbing open
       | data from places like OpenTopography, USGS, municipality
       | resources, etc.
       | 
       | Further, I love GIS based data science, and especially how
       | informationally dense maps and GIS can be. They are wonderful.
       | (think of how informative looking at a full 3d model of an games
       | to see all the details of a level, objectives, risks, resources.
       | GIS/Mapping is intrinsic to communicating the world around you.
       | 
       | So - I have been looking for the right tool(s) to use - and
       | devour stuff like this.
       | 
       | Looking forward to coming back here with a review after I dive
       | into this for a minute.
       | 
       | The community maps are freaking beautiful. I am sad I hadnt found
       | you earlier!
       | 
       | Some of your community maps deserve their own HN posts, such as
       | the global submarine cable map:
       | 
       | https://app.atlas.co/projects/ft2YpKbX2NgOZueSPSTa?loc=16.38...
       | 
       | -
       | 
       | Your activate email link takes you back to the same page:
       | https://i.imgur.com/0NKEeXG.png rather than logging you in.
       | 
       | Adblocker prevents it from loading (ublock origin) - so have to
       | white list it.
       | 
       | Please partner with https://opentopography.org/about/partner
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | I'd love to be able to duplicate a community map into my
       | workspace and then do work on them - Maybe you can ask people
       | when they make a "community map" if they can license it with
       | "credit creator" appropriate license type?
       | 
       | For example - the ecological California map in hexagons is
       | wonderful, and I want to duplicate it, and export it and print
       | the hex version of California out with the topological height map
       | applied to it...
       | 
       | https://i.imgur.com/YFXkgQh.png
       | 
       | https://app.atlas.co/projects/RHOMLpu0kDJLDsCNyLYI?loc=-122....
        
         | jamessb wrote:
         | > Some of your community maps deserve their own HN posts, such
         | as the global submarine cable map:
         | 
         | Other submarine cable maps have been posted to HN before [1].
         | The one on https://www.submarinecablemap.com is more
         | interactive and provides more information that this map on
         | Atlas.
         | 
         | [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=submarine+cable+map
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | Yeah :-)
           | 
           | Also why I mentioned it...
           | 
           | What I noticed is the Infrastructure Tab, and reminded of how
           | an infra map was pulled from some kids thesis because they
           | felt it was a threat to have a map of communications infra in
           | public hands.
        
         | zyang wrote:
         | If you are interested in making map art, there's a Figma plugin
         | that can pull map data as vector:
         | https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1251030017228239072
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | Wonderful, thank you!
        
         | ecommerceguy wrote:
         | >>So - I have been looking for the right tool(s) to use - and
         | devour stuff like this.
         | 
         | You can get the entire ArcGIS suite for $100/yr with the home
         | license.
        
       | jamessb wrote:
       | How does this compare to Felt [1]?
       | 
       | It would be nice to have some plans with listed prices in between
       | "Free" and "Enterprise" ("book a demo"). For comparison, Felt has
       | $30/mo and $90/mo plans.
       | 
       | Calling yourselves "the new standard for GIS software" seems like
       | overly strong branding.
       | 
       | [1]: https://felt.com/
        
         | simantel wrote:
         | Also interesting to see this pop up two months after Tom
         | MacWright announced he was shutting down and open-sourcing
         | Placemark: https://macwright.com/2023/11/13/placemark
         | 
         | (Discussed on HN here:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38250459)
        
       | bozhark wrote:
       | I have a stupid dream.
       | 
       | I really want a news application that is rendered visually as the
       | Globe. Then a user can drag, zoom, and pan around the world,
       | similar to Google Earth.
       | 
       | The difference being, this news app overlays current trending
       | news stories on the physical location of where it is happening in
       | the world.
       | 
       | Maybe I can manage this idea with this underneath?
        
         | nickster wrote:
         | The wii news channel did this! It was a cool way to learn the
         | control and interact with the news.
        
         | danielvaughn wrote:
         | Facebook Live used to have a global view, where you could drag
         | around on a Google-earth-style map, and each dot would be a
         | live stream.
         | 
         | It was amazing. Unfortunately there were crimes committed on
         | stream, notably a mass shooting in New Zealand. They shut down
         | the map view soon after that.
         | 
         | A news broadcast would be feasible, because presumably the
         | streamers would be verified reporters.
         | 
         | Really cool idea. I love it.
        
         | _sam_ wrote:
         | I've actually been making exactly what you describe as a side-
         | project - and am very close to launch-ready. I was looking for
         | the same thing and decided it would be fun to build it myself.
         | It's good to hear (at least one) other persons might be
         | interested in such an app.
        
           | pkage wrote:
           | I'd also be interested--is there anywhere we can take a look?
        
         | amadeuspagel wrote:
         | Does this idea need a globe? Wouldn't it work with a map?
        
         | moandcompany wrote:
         | Somewhat Related - You may like the GDELT Project:
         | https://www.gdeltproject.org/
         | 
         | https://blog.gdeltproject.org/an-interactive-realtime-map-of...
        
           | guwop wrote:
           | this is so cool! you just know that it's real shit when the
           | website looks like that. i wonder if this is gonna be the new
           | "quality" stamp - a website not looking like the generic
           | react tailwind app but rather stuff like this?!
        
       | ecmascript wrote:
       | I thought "ah nice, maybe a mapbox alternative" but it seems not
       | to be the case unfortunately
        
         | NetToolKit wrote:
         | What features are you looking for in a Mapbox alternative?
         | Tiles? Geocoding? Anything else?
        
       | guwop wrote:
       | I got excited! But it seems this is just a mapbox gl wrapper?
        
       | totalview wrote:
       | How does this handle 3D reality capture datasets such as las,
       | obj, slpk/i3S? I saw support for 3D building tilesets but could
       | not find anything else
        
       | crtified wrote:
       | This will probably sound more cynical than it's meant, because I
       | do admire this, but here we go anyway - Whenever I see these
       | impressive-looking online data visualisation projects, I think:
       | What would be interesting - and/or convincing - would be case
       | studies written by experienced GIS people showing how and why
       | they would use this (as compared with other offerings).
       | 
       | Because there are quite a few data visualisation options around
       | these days, many re-imagining subsets of standard GIS
       | functionality from 20+ years ago, into their own online,
       | collaborative, friendly UI (<-- what Microsoft used to call "a
       | wizard"). It's very impressive but at the same time, the unique
       | contributions of such projects are often in the areas of
       | visualisation and UI, rather than in the area of geography. Which
       | are important in their own right!, but will not necessarily be
       | the primary consideration of some categories of user.
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-23 23:00 UTC)