[HN Gopher] Spacetime maps: A map that warps to show travel time
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Spacetime maps: A map that warps to show travel time
Author : kevinsundar
Score : 76 points
Date : 2025-02-13 20:36 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (maps.vvolhejn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maps.vvolhejn.com)
| freetonik wrote:
| Author's video about building this map is pretty interesting
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC2VQ-oyDG0
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Previous discussion on HN
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39808215
|
| If you're on mobile, click the hamburger menu and enable "Focus
| on hover"
| hansonkd wrote:
| TBH kind of disappointed by how little it distorts, especially
| for cities with stereotypically difficult travel times by car
| like LA. almost loos like random distortions as opposed to
| something to pattern match. Really the only thing noticeable is
| bodies of water distort the map the most (which explains why LA
| doesn't get that distorted).
|
| Would be kind of nice for when i click the point that all the
| points distort based on that point instead of globally trying to
| position each point relative to every other point.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And the fact that the distortion is preset and not based on
| where you click. This is one of those things using heat maps
| where the clustering is clearly large population centers. Not
| really as helpful/useful as people think they are
| michaelmior wrote:
| Why would where you click matter? Two points are always the
| same time apart from each other regardless of reference to
| any third point.
| dylan604 wrote:
| because warping of spacetime is relative
| piannucci wrote:
| If the analogy to warped spacetime was exact, then there
| would be a "scale factor" for every point depending on
| the local transit speed. Then it would be possible to do
| as this page does and for the answer not to depend on
| starting point.
|
| However in the real city the transit speed at any point
| is not isotropic, the space is 3-D, and some paths are
| forbidden (getting on-off the train between stops).
| dylan604 wrote:
| if you want to use spacetime in the title...
| ruytlm wrote:
| Toggle on "Focus on hover".
| voytec wrote:
| NYC seems like bad default example. I had to check other cities
| to "get" what's this site about. With NYC - everywhere is
| similarly far.
| kittikitti wrote:
| I really appreciate this and hope to see more time infused maps.
| As we get ready for the arrival of lunar time, these tools move
| the needle in the right direction.
| stevage wrote:
| It's a shame that they're warping an image, rather than warping
| map data. Having distorted labels is very distracting and makes
| it hard to get a sense of whether this could possibly be useful.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Like the idea - lived in LA my whole life and it wasn't until the
| start of covid, when I was able to commute across huge swaths of
| the city in the order of dozens of minutes rather than hours, did
| I realize how distorted my view of its physical size was - in
| places like LA, when asked how far something is, an angelino will
| almost always respond in a measurement of time rather than
| distance.
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(page generated 2025-02-17 23:00 UTC)