[HN Gopher] Show HN: Every mountain, building and tree shadow ma...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Every mountain, building and tree shadow mapped for any
date and time
I've been working on this project for about 4 years. It began as
terrain only because world wide elevation data was publicly
available. I then added buildings from OpenStreetMap (crowd
sourced) and more recently from Overture Maps data. Some computer
vision/machine learning advancements [1] in the past few years have
made it possible to estimate tree canopy heights using satellite
imagery alone making it possible to finally add trees to the map.
The data isn't perfect, but it's within +/- 3 meters of so. Good
enough to give a general idea for any location on Earth. Happy to
answer any questions. [1]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02206-6
Author : tppiotrowski
Score : 300 points
Date : 2024-05-30 20:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (shademap.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (shademap.app)
| imp0cat wrote:
| Nice! If you park on the street, you can use this to figure out
| where to park to keep your car cooler during summer.
| carbocation wrote:
| Very cool. I looked at the Bay Bridge and it gets the towers but
| probably not the bridge itself (this is a trivial point except
| for folks right by the bridge, but fun to look for edge cases).
| thih9 wrote:
| Here it is not showing any shadows in Honolulu mid-May around
| noon:
| https://shademap.app/@21.30371,-157.85237,16.56781z,17168489...
|
| Which is how it should be[1]; cool!
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahaina_Noon
| alentred wrote:
| Very nice. I was considering installing a few PV panels and was
| looking for something like this to estimate the solar exposure in
| various time periods. Works nicely to get an initial idea.
| guiraldelli wrote:
| I guess this calculator [1] and tools such as [2] and [3] might
| help you, as well.
|
| [1]: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html
|
| [2]: https://findmyshadow.com/
|
| [3]: http://shadowcalculator.eu/
| surfingdino wrote:
| Such a useful tool for photographers! Thanks!
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Wow, I had such an idea years ago when walking under blazing sun
| following gps directions, I wished that it would plan the route
| according to shade.
| lithiumii wrote:
| A Chinese map (https://www.amap.com/) has it, but only for some
| cities in China.
| eevilspock wrote:
| I've thought of and yearned for this too. Conversely, in the
| winter I'd like a path with maximum sun exposure.
| There's a dark and a troubled side of life; There's a
| bright and a sunny side, too; Tho' we meet with the
| darkness and strife, The sunny side we also may view.
| Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side, Keep
| on the sunny side of life; It will help us every day,
| it will brighten all the way, If we keep on the sunny
| side of life.
| kilian wrote:
| When it doesn't have height data it seems to set every building
| to the same height. Interesting, but it does make it inaccurate
| in my country.
| cr125rider wrote:
| OpenStreetMaps is pretty coarse with building heights.
| Seemingly just an integer with most buildings being 1
| (stories?) from what I've seen.
| Aachen wrote:
| I don't have this data at hand, and often it's hard to see
| from out front or differs for different parts of the
| building. So while an avid OpenStreetMap contributor, I
| rarely add height info to buildings
|
| Perhaps I should look into high resolution height data (that
| is, high enough that an individual building shows up at all)
| with licenses that allow use in OSM and at least tag the
| buildings that show having a mostly uniform height. For
| example in the Netherlands, AHN is amazing (hundreds of
| points per _tree_! It looks like a 3d wireframe render of the
| entire country, truly amazing) but the license is not
| permissive enough.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnOJirSCn8
|
| Due to the initial location, an extra verse can now be added to
| this song. (About a little Cafe in Sneek that is somehow
| tenuously linked to pretty much everything)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| This site is great but it's only an approximation.
|
| We've used this website for years for checking the sun in various
| potential homes and holiday rentals. It's a half decent
| approximation but it doesn't really have proper height data (I
| think it's using standard building classification from Open
| Street Map data?) so it's only a guide.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I'm surprised; I was thinking they might buy a few satellite
| photos through a sunny day and just... look at where the
| shadows are (with code).
|
| Maybe working back from that could feedback how high the
| buildings might be.
| martyvis wrote:
| They seem to have proper shadow information. I live in a
| semi-rural village and shadows from trees along our street
| are quite accurate ( and seem to be based on one section
| before it was cleared a year ago or so)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| The trees thing seems to be new, I'm not sure I've noticed
| that before
| Woeps wrote:
| Plus it seems to be missing a boat load of trees in the
| streets.
|
| But it's pretty cool overall! And I'll keep it in mind as we're
| in the process of looking for a new home.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Did you try the paid data? The free one missed most the
| trees, but the $2 map showed all the trees in my nearby park.
| Really impressive.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Can you share screenshots of both side by side? (perhaps of
| some area not your backyard if you don't want to reveal
| where that is?)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| If you click on the premium version, it will show a
| sample of a chosen area to show you how much more detail
| (esp re: trees) will be available. Even that was kinda
| worse than what I got.
| layer8 wrote:
| For me it only increases the resolution, but not the
| correctness. The shadows have more detail, but are still
| wrong.
| andybak wrote:
| So - how do I know if the paid version is accurate if the
| free version is inaccurate? It shows me a sample of some
| place I don't know so it's impossible to evaluate.
|
| They should offer some other way to trial the full version.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| $2 is how.
|
| The sample convinced me. $2 is a really small investment.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Edit: looks like they already show side-by-side samples,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40535186.
|
| They could probably have a side-by-side comparison of
| somewhere famous like Central Park (I'm from UK, fwiw)
| showing the free vs paid data to give an idea of what one
| might get; I guess it varies by location how much detail
| is mapped though, and how recently.
| jameshart wrote:
| The 'try a sample' link in the upgrade flow drops you
| into Central Park West with the full data.
| playa1 wrote:
| A few months ago I paired for the tree data to figure out
| the best place on our property to place some planter beds.
|
| I'm very happy with the results. It confirmed my guess that
| a specific section gets more light over the year even
| though there is a bit more shade in the mornings until late
| spring.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What's the data source?
|
| The premium map is really good for my neighborhood!
|
| I wonder if it's image processing from Planet data or
| something. Shape from shadows (then back to shadows?)
| dolmen wrote:
| It definitely has no data about roof shapes.
| thih9 wrote:
| Related mapbox-gl-shadow-simulator source code:
| https://github.com/ted-piotrowski/mapbox-gl-shadow-simulator
| crtified wrote:
| I don't know how the mechanics of it would work, but some kind of
| local accuracy index would be very useful in such broad maps.
|
| Because the elephant in the room with most global dataset
| compilations is that the accuracy varies greatly from place to
| place. Some countries or regions have detailed data, others have
| generic or unclassified blobs. Some data is older, some is newer.
|
| An ideal tool reduces the need for detailed provenance checking
| upon every usage.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Related product: https://shadowmap.org/
| smusamashah wrote:
| The sun view with angles clearly displayed is very informative
| on this one.
|
| EDIT: Lots of features are not free though. Pricing dialog
| keeps popping up when you click around things.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| I've signed up for shadow map while house hunting and it was
| worth every cent.
|
| Shade map just crashes my phone every time.
| igtztorrero wrote:
| impressive, wonderful gem of software, super useful for companies
| that install solar cells. congratulations, it is a very good job.
| mikkom wrote:
| I just had to check some really rural places and went to some
| random village in tibet. As there is no information about trees
| or buildings there, just roads, it surprisingly doesn't work - it
| just shows some shadows based on terrain heights in middle of
| empty village road grid.
|
| So as expected, if the site has height information it can draw
| shadows but definitely not for "every building" etc that the
| title claims.
| faraggi wrote:
| well... of course?
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| They shouldn't be using "every". It sounds like the kind of
| thing American programmers say.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Some people still thinks words should mean what they mean.
| tetris11 wrote:
| First time I've seen my workplace as the default centre for a map
| like this. Someone from the Technische Fakultat did this?
| t1c wrote:
| It's location based. The default place on the map for me was
| the Airbnb I'm staying at right now
| zild3d wrote:
| IP geocoding based
| worksonmine wrote:
| It's not a default center it's just your IP address and will
| change for everyone.
| abdusco wrote:
| Looks useful for photography. You can see where the light and
| shadow areas will be and plan out where and when to go.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I made an application like this waaaaay back in grad school. The
| hardest part is that it looks believable but getting accurate
| data is just so difficult.
|
| And behold, it's missing the entire forest my street is _in._
| rwmj wrote:
| One thing I often wonder is do car crashes happen more frequently
| when the sun is low in the sky and facing traffic? Surely someone
| has got together the data on traffic accidents, maps, times and a
| model of the earth/sun to work this out!
|
| (Google search results for this are full of spam from a mix of
| motor insurance companies and sunglass companies)
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Perplexity thinks yes. https://www.perplexity.ai/page/Do-Car-
| Crashes-kmZIsMnbR4qcdx...
| Aachen wrote:
| Couldn't tell you where I've read this but I heard years ago
| that it makes a difference indeed. Now I'm wondering if that
| was just the person who said or wrote it just giving an example
| of what kind of considerations you need to incorporate when
| optimising for safety, or if they actuality had data on this
| kfarr wrote:
| Yes
| grecy wrote:
| As a young driver I was given the advice that if you see a lot
| of oncoming cars using their sunshade or squinting into the sun
| as they come towards you, it's time to pull over and wait it
| out.
|
| Driving with the sun at your back is never a good time to be on
| the road.
| dolmen wrote:
| Crossing the road as a pedestrian neither.
| robszumski wrote:
| I was on a bike stopped at a stoplight and was rear-ended by a
| car for this very reason.
| tazlor wrote:
| There is a section of I-70 in Colorado that experiences
| temporary closures due to severe sun glare at certain times of
| the day and year. https://www.codot.gov/travel/sunglare
| joshspankit wrote:
| A tall tree on my street was lost last year: it shows the shadow
| for it even though it's not on the satellite image. Now I wonder
| where it gets the tree data from.
| kylecazar wrote:
| Similar situation here with a patch of trees.
|
| From the About: "The shadows displayed by default are estimates
| gathered through indirect means like crowd sourcing and low
| resolution data."
|
| Not sure what low resolution data they are using for the trees
| (I can't imagine mine were crowdsourced given I'm the only
| house around). Probably not worth it for me but apparently the
| premium version has more accurate/current data.
| sandos wrote:
| It says it is using openstreetmap, so you can probably edit
| that tree if its added to OSM.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's coming from public LIDAR data, which captures both trees
| and the ground below them (and is able to tell which is which).
| virtualritz wrote:
| Google maps in the browser on desktop had a similar feature when
| you zoomed in enough to see building footprints. It showed
| shadows for current time of day, based on building height and
| -footprint.
|
| I used it all the time, in the summers of 2014/2015 to pick
| places to have lunch at, that were in the sun, when I had a
| corporate job in the center of Berlin.
|
| It stopped working/being displayed at some time, don't remember
| which year after it was.
|
| I guess not many people knew about it and the discontinuation of
| it can be booked under "general enshittification of Google
| products".
| dpierce9 wrote:
| At the time they had an advertising product they were offering
| to solar installers based on site quality that used this
| feature. If I had to guess they probably stopped offering it
| when that product didn't take off.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| Stuff like this reminds me how awesome people can be
| dmd wrote:
| This doesn't seem to have ANY of the trees in my neighborhood (in
| Massachusetts) even though there are just tons of very large
| ones.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| +1 at this time of year it is simply incorrect in my location
| per my understanding of what a "shadow" is, unless their
| definition is like complete occlusion in the dead of winter or
| something
| dmd wrote:
| Also, apparently no trees cast a shadow at noon?
| nottorp wrote:
| "Worldwide trees" is just marketing. I just checked and it has no
| trees where i live.
|
| It does have the buildings although if i look out the window
| their shadows are a tiny bit too short for my location.
| strogonoff wrote:
| If you are a photographer, I can recommend Sun Seeker on iOS. It
| integrates with compass (so you can see, e.g., where the sun will
| rise/set in real time), but also has this map mode showing sun
| position relative to terrain, angle relative to horizon, etc., at
| a given time of any day. Though it doesn't try to paint shadows
| (which I think would be error-prone anyway for most locations),
| it is a one-time purchase that costs comparatively little and
| does not try to upsell a premium version.
| interloxia wrote:
| The buildings boxes are a bit misleading, at least of the places
| I checked. It would be nice to have some sort of visulaisation of
| the height data that they use.
|
| I really like the Annual Sunlight and hours in the sun layers.
| It's really nice to be able to instantly see the shading at
| different times of the year without having to awkwardly select a
| date.
| tecleandor wrote:
| I've used it a couple times to show how the new luxury towers
| they're building in my neighborhood block the sun to the
| older/cheaper low-rise homes... :(
| goqu wrote:
| This is so useful when buying a house in the country that sun is
| as valuable as gold and you want to maximise it in the backyard.
| Great tool.
| dolmen wrote:
| You especially want to maximise the sun to light your solar
| panels.
| wesamco wrote:
| How the heck did it automatically pan the map to my current
| location, my small town, in an Incognito window, on page load?
|
| Is IP geolocation this accurate and accessible to every website
| nowadays?
|
| If this website can do this I assume every website I visit can do
| it too?
| mcslambley wrote:
| I can't speak for this website specifically but Cloudflare
| makes it pretty easy to geolocate users based on request
| headers.
| xp84 wrote:
| It is very cheap and easy. Even the free versions of the
| database available from maxmind are plenty accurate for town
| level.
|
| At my last job, I built a little docker image that used the
| free maxmind DB and kept it up to date, and ran a node server
| which returned some JSON telling estimated lat/long, city name,
| country, etc.
| regularfry wrote:
| Cheap, easy, and wrong. It puts me a clear 800km away from
| where I'm actually sitting, and I'm sitting in a major UK
| city.
|
| It's put me on the wrong continent before now. That was fun.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > It's put me on the wrong continent before now
|
| What did you expect after leaving Europe? /s
| wesamco wrote:
| I guess the accuracy really depends on your location or
| ISP.
|
| I believe my ISP rarely or never rotates IP addresses, and
| on top of that I think my ISP provided router is assigned
| an IPv6 address and it prioritizes using it, because when I
| visit whatismyipaddress.com with JS disabled, it can only
| show my IPv6 address, but if I enable JS it can show an
| IPv4 address too (I assume through the WebRTC IP leak
| method, which requires JS)
| xp84 wrote:
| When I built the thing I mentioned, and even if i did so
| now, I'd just not make an AAAA record for it, because
| it's still safe to assume ipv4 connectivity exists (and
| not just via some remote proxy or something), and I think
| at least the database I had access to was for ipv4.
|
| I don't think they need any hackery to get your IPv4,
| they just need a separate hostname configured that they
| can fetch from, which only has an ipv4 (A) record.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Cheap, easy, and generally correct for the majority of
| people*
|
| Just because it's 800km off for your IP does not mean it's
| 800km off for _every_ IP and Maxmind is generally
| considered one of the reliable providers of this
| information.
| reincoder wrote:
| Where do we locate you? https://ipinfo.io/
|
| If the location data is incorrect, you can always submit a
| correction with us: https://ipinfo.io/corrections
| regularfry wrote:
| Better! Still 200km out, but better!
| Moru wrote:
| Mine was about 600 km wrong but the correct country at
| least. It's reporting the ISP's location but it's a
| country wide ISP.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| I thought the same. It's the first time I've ever seen IP
| geolocation get my home IP address correct. It usually thinks
| I'm in North Carolina (I'm in Florida).
| hoosieree wrote:
| Same here. But knowing my ISP, it'll change throughout the
| day, sometimes by quite a lot.
| ale42 wrote:
| You should probably try what one of the few online demos of IP
| geolocation tell about your IP... (just to cite one among many,
| quality varies a lot across services and geographic zones:
| https://www.maxmind.com/en/locate-my-ip-address)
| Retric wrote:
| That's narrowing things down to a 200km radius for me and
| while I am within that circle it's center is over 100km from
| me.
| pavon wrote:
| Interesting. I have a static IP, and have kept that same IP
| through multiple moves around the state, but it knows my
| current zip code. I wonder if that is because my ISP shares
| the zip code, or through association with data collected from
| other sites.
|
| And yet every site that uses IP geolocation for useful
| purposes thinks I'm in a completely different state that
| bounces around every few months, if I don't let the browser
| share my location.
| reincoder wrote:
| I work for IPinfo.io (feel free to check your location data
| with us to see if we are correct as well). It is most
| likely that your ISP is sharing your zip code via a
| WHOIS/geofeed record.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| This makes me glad I have iCloud Private Relay turned on for
| all of my devices and my wife's devices. Clicking on this
| link showed my location as Birmingham, Alabama, more than
| 1000 miles away from my actual location in northern Iowa.
| Several of the other IP geolocation sites others have linked
| in this thread showed places like Chicago (closer), and
| Dallas (much further).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| FWIW it placed me 10 miles away.
|
| Right city, completely wrong part. Maybe that's where my ISP
| has their connection?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Geo-IP through Cloudflare: <script
| id="cflocation"> window.CFLocation =
| {"lat":####,"lng":####};window.CFDsm=null; </script>
|
| See https://developers.cloudflare.com/network/ip-geolocation/.
|
| Mine's off by more than 100 miles (Comcast Business fiber),
| it's not magic.
| aeyes wrote:
| Cloudflare only gives you the country
| lights0123 wrote:
| No.
| https://developers.cloudflare.com/rules/transform/managed-
| tr...
| moogleii wrote:
| A VPN should help with that. E.g. for the Mac folks, Private
| Relay on vs off was a delta of about 100 city blocks for me.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| That is crazy. Even Google Maps isn't this accurate for me with
| location turned off.
| nnyms1 wrote:
| A similar app that I found recently (as they were nominated for
| an Apple Design Award) that does this is Sunlitt [0].
|
| Very polished and generally well designed.
|
| [0]: https://www.sunlitt.app
| js8 wrote:
| Is there a tool that could convert OSM map into a perspective
| view from a given location? And show what peaks and notable
| buildings are visible?
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| "Every" seems to be a bit of a stretch trees part. It's got maybe
| 5% of the tree shadows near me.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Weirdly, it's got ~1/4 of the buildings in my downtown area.
| dangerwill wrote:
| Super cool! But it seems to think that very small elevation
| changes are like mountains. The couple small hills in my local
| park don't cast a shadow haha.
| janpmz wrote:
| The Nazca lines in Peru seem to align with the shadows of the
| mountain, I made two videos to demonstrate it:
| https://x.com/janBuild/status/1796472554905022785
|
| In the second video, you can see that the shadow seems to align
| with a curved line during summer solstice:
| https://x.com/janBuild/status/1796473232658518133
| blastro wrote:
| Wow! This is an awesome observation
| renewiltord wrote:
| Wow, is this a novel theory? That is the first time I've heard
| of it.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Interesting. Could they have used the shadows as for of ruler
| to keep things straight?
| blackhaj7 wrote:
| Wow. Did you just crack the mystery?!
| causal wrote:
| Not sure I see it? Maybe would help to have someone highlight
| specific lines/shadows. I can maybe see it if I let my brain
| see some alignment and ignore the mostly not-aligned bits.
| lm28469 wrote:
| That's what I see:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/s1uihNT.jpeg
|
| https://i.imgur.com/dVrC8eC.jpeg
| causal wrote:
| Hmm yeah these particular shadows don't look that well
| aligned to me, but the hypothesis certainly warrants more
| searching
| xandrius wrote:
| You should definitely make the video more visual and add some
| helper lines. I watched the video 20+ times and still don't
| think they align (of course it's an approximation but still).
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Interesting! The area is at the tropics so there's not much
| shadows for the majority of the day. And it seems as if its
| only very early in the morning where these shadows occur. A
| small change in time and the shadow changes greatly. Equally a
| very small variation in elevation of the mountain and plain may
| give different results.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Hmmm... I'm not an astronomer, and I wondered if they might
| have _once_ been more-exact. It seems that while Earth 's orbit
| has long term variations (eccentricity, obliquity, precession)
| the shortest of those cycles is still quite a lot longer than
| the estimated age of the Nazca lines. (Precession with a 26ky
| cycle, Nazca lines at 1.5 to 2.5ky.)
| deckar01 wrote:
| If anyone builds a version of this that accepts crowd sourced
| phone images to increase the accuracy with photogrammetry (before
| I get around to it) I will give you shademaps.com.
| jblindsay wrote:
| I love this, although I do wonder how accurate it is, given the
| likely limited underlying elevation data source. It reminds me a
| lot of an application for creating shadow animations based on
| digital elevation models that I wrote some time back
| https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbw-user-manual/book/tool...
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I've been watching shadows for the last 90 minutes and I have to
| says this tool isn't perfect, but it's pretty good.
| nayuki wrote:
| Relatedly, I use this website to visualize what angle the sun is
| coming from: https://www.suncalc.org/
| gHA5 wrote:
| I'm glad to see this website working again, years ago it broke
| because they couldn't afford Google Maps costs.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| First, I went and looked at my house... It's got a lot of tall
| oak trees near by and in a park across the street.
|
| It shows it almost completely in daylight save for building
| shadows, which is really wrong even right now as most of the
| house is shaded by trees.
|
| Then I see an upgrade button... and it wants me to pay. Yet I
| can't even validate the data passes a sniff test. Their free tier
| very much doesn't.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Yea the shadow data for my area is hilariously wrong. It's
| missing a whole forest that shades my house and a road nearby.
| Jabrov wrote:
| I feel like the paid version is actually a bit better for trees
| iandanforth wrote:
| The map near my house is so wrong as to be almost unrecognizable.
| brfox wrote:
| Manhattenhenge:
|
| https://shademap.app/@40.75481,-73.98696,14.82042z,171702794...
|
| https://www.amnh.org/research/hayden-planetarium/manhattanhe...
| aembleton wrote:
| Its got far more buildings on this map than Open Street Map.
| Where are they getting the data from, and can it be added to Open
| Street Map?
| rascul wrote:
| According to this, a significant area around the front of my
| house is quite shaded. In reality, it's in full sun. It also
| doesn't show my backyard being mostly shaded.
| fckgw wrote:
| Very helpful to figure out what seats in a stadium would be best
| to avoid the afternoon sun.
| Carrok wrote:
| Viewing Boulder, CO at 8PM is fun to see how the mountains really
| blot out the sun.
| fscaramuzza wrote:
| As others have done, I first looked for my house. I noticed
| something I hadn't noticed ever, namely a spot in the
| neighborhood that is shaded for most of the day. A good trick to
| know when summer comes and you want to keep your car cool.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| It'd be more useful if they explained why some of the data is so
| inaccurate, so you could decide what to trust and what not to. In
| my neighborhood I found some houses not casting shadows, or
| partial shadows, lot of missing trees, and houses casting shadows
| onto themselves in ways they can't.
| lupire wrote:
| Half the trees in my neighborhood are missing.
| settsu wrote:
| I thought there was a problem with some calculation that only
| occurred in early March and November (which can be observed by
| dragging the calendar slider.)
|
| Then I realized the "problem" was the Daylight Saving Time
| changes... _existential sigh_
|
| (Where do I submit a pull request to address that obvious bug??)
| dolmen wrote:
| The bug is that the time displayed should be the local time of
| the area, an in particular the correct date for the DST change.
|
| So the jump in shadows due to DST change in March should not be
| on the same day in Paris than in New-York.
| anothername12 wrote:
| Seeing shadows on opposing sides of similar buildings in the same
| area as me.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Using Lidar to map tree shadows_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36658001 - July 2023 (41
| comments)
|
| _Shade Map Pro_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30532286
| - March 2022 (12 comments)
|
| _Show HN: 3D map of shade around the world_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827943 - Jan 2022 (71
| comments)
|
| _Map of shadows at any place and time_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29681693 - Dec 2021 (4
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: GPX replay map that shows terrain shadows during
| activities_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28854959 - Oct
| 2021 (14 comments)
| VenturingVole wrote:
| I love this - I was looking for something exactly like it
| yesterday and you've built it. Specifically, I was looking to
| factor in shading to work out the likely amount of solar panels
| I'd need for both electricity and solar hot water across the
| seasons. Nice - great work!
| codingminds wrote:
| I love the idea, but sadly it's not very precise in our case.
| There are even buildings on the property that - as far as I know
| - never existed in that place.
| VenturingVole wrote:
| This looks fantastic - well done for putting so much effort in to
| creating it. Literally a few days ago I was looking for something
| exactly like it, so that I could work out the likely amount of
| solar panels I'd require when factoring in seasonal shadows cost.
|
| I imagine the solar industry to be a target market of yours and
| wish you lots of luck with growing it.
| goliathDown wrote:
| How are you handling shading for dense wooded areas? I'm looking
| around at some neighborhoods with dense redwood trees in the
| northern California region. I know in the middle of the day a
| decent amount of shadow will still be in the area, which comes
| from the density of the forest and the length of the trees. From
| what I'm seeing, this shading is not accurate to the wooded areas
| I frequent.
|
| But, that's probably a really hard problem to tackle. If there's
| no data on tree height, it seems impossible to accurately portray
| shadow extrapolations for forests. Especially since the forests
| can have a high frequency of change.
|
| Super cool project, I hope this continues to grow!
| AlexDragusin wrote:
| A cool use of this is to visually identify clusters of tall
| buildings, usually business districts and the distance and
| relationship to the other clusters and the areas in between. Set
| it around 7AM and an appropiate zoom and start thinking of
| business ideas.
| dexzod wrote:
| Is it accurate though?. If I fix the time and slide by the month,
| I expect the shadow to move east to west, but it only grows or
| shortens, which would mean the sun is exactly at the same
| vertical line on ground every day of the year but the height
| above horizon changes.
| dolmen wrote:
| It fun to do that (lock the time, slide by day) and see what
| happens on DST change.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| It shouldn't be on a vertical line, it should follow the solar
| analemma for your location. It's essentially trivial to add
| this, I think the creator just needs to add equation of time
| correction?
| kpennell wrote:
| this is amazing
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Checked my specific area.
|
| Has shadow from a tree that fell over and was removed 6 months
| ago.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| I'm sorry, but for 18:00 Dvorakova street in Brno, Czechia, it is
| very inaccurate. It shows half of the street without shadow - but
| I know empirically the whole street is in shadow. Great idea and
| awesome implementation (fast and instantly responsive!), but
| sadly useless.
| davidw wrote:
| This is pretty cool. I bet you could sell something like this to
| real estate people. It's useful to see what kind of shade a place
| gets in, say, January.
| dolmen wrote:
| It would have more potential for sellers of solar panels... if
| it had the shape of roofs right (which it doesn't as I look to
| my house).
| refulgentis wrote:
| Thank you so much for doing this. Sublime and moving in a way
| only things that are novel and required a ton of effort can be.
| Visualizing over time and seeing this gave me an interpretation
| of sunrise as removing shadows, and sunset adding them, gave me
| goosebumps.
| paiute wrote:
| Has the trees on my property pretty spot on. Kind of creepy.
| codingdave wrote:
| First off, this is cool and well done. I did notice an oddity,
| but the fact that we're all complaining about oddities and edge
| cases (pardon the pun) shows how well done it is. In any case,
| the wonky thing I noticed is that it effectively shows shadows on
| the edges of forests, but not on the forests themselves (at least
| in my area).
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| I had the same issue.
| sndean wrote:
| Does anyone know if the shadow of the Washington Monument
| actually reaches the Potomac River in the morning? [1] That'd be
| cool to see, but seems like the sun would never be bright enough
| at 6:30 AM.
|
| [1]
| https://shademap.app/@38.88916,-77.03523,14.41656z,171715125...
| davidmurphy wrote:
| I'd like to see outdoor park / landscape designers actually think
| of shade issues when thinking of shade umbrellas, shade roof
| overheads, etc.
|
| I used to work outdoors somewhere where the "shade" providing
| roof and umbrellas were useless many hours of the day, due to the
| actual position of the sun.
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