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Posted by stared 3 hours ago

Show HN: Warsaw in voxels – an interactive 3D map of the city centre(p.migdal.pl)
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!

120 points | 24 comments
jesse__ 1 minute ago|
It's almost unusably slow on my laptop. 3080ti mobile, windows 11, chrome. I opened the profiler and the update appears to be fast enough; roughly hitting 30fps, but there are massive gaps between updates and the actual frame time seems to be about 120ms.

Other than that, neat :)

wolvoleo 8 minutes ago||
Wow such amazing work! I love it.

I have good memories of my visits to Warsaw. Very walkable city so I spent a lot of time doing that (despite being there on tiresome work trips).

stared 3 hours ago||
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.
andyfilms1 1 hour ago||
It'd be cool to see these taken to the next level by showing actual live updated public transit and car traffic
ionwake 1 hour ago||
this blew my mind! incredible!
radicality 1 hour ago||
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 1 hour ago|
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.
wolvoleo 6 minutes ago||
Yeah that was the first thing I looked for. I find it fascinating that the old town was rebuilt exactly as it was before, after the war. Especially because at that time Poland was under communist rule who usually didn't really care for such 'inefficient' aesthetics.
sixtyj 2 hours ago||
Mobile version reloads, imho it is too heavy for Safari.

Well done.

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

stared 2 hours ago||
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 1 hour ago||
>As default weather - I would prefer sunny day instead of rain…

But then it would not be an authentic Warsaw experience!

ionwake 1 hour ago||
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 1 hour ago|
A very natural question.

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

hollowonepl 52 minutes ago||
small part of Downtown.. looks cool but instantly one wants more, especially if you know what this city can offer today and how rapidly it's changing its landscape!
wossab 2 hours ago||
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|
> Sure beats HTML tables with text and pictures

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

harvey9 1 hour ago||
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.

camies 2 hours ago|
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.
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