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Show HN: Follow London Trains in 3D

65 points by mgranados ago | 26 comments
deck.gl based visualiser of the TFL Api + National Rails to be able to track (with minimal drift) a train along the way in London and to the nearest airports. If you pick one from any platform in https://nexttrain.london basically you can share your train journey along the rails. Build to test Cloudflare workers and their infra along with deck.gl performance that is incredible in my opinion.

adecoster |next [-]

A bit buggy in term of tiles jonctions

TheOtherHobbes |next |previous [-]

Interesting but quite buggy. Example: mouse dragging seems trapped in a fairly small area.

mgranados |root |parent [-]

Ah yeah i tried anchoring to the train with a threshold for panning around i'll try smoothing it. thanks for trying it!

darknavi |next |previous [-]

I'd love to see a view with all/many trains. In London I was constantly wondering what the criss-cross of underground lines looked like.

mgranados |root |parent [-]

I saw a project like that here in hn recently for all uk trains even. it'd be pretty cool to extend this to support that, busy stations might be visually confusing, thanks for suggestions

hokkos |next |previous [-]

There seems to be some parallax issues between your trip layer and your 3D Tiles layer, but nice usage of deck.gl.

taylorius |root |parent |next [-]

Is it not that certain train lines are somewhat deep underground? The Piccadilly line swims with respect to the ground in the centre of town, when it is below ground. Further out where lines are at the surface the routes stick to the ground correctly.

mgranados |root |parent |previous [-]

thank you! i'll have a look

dmazin |next |previous [-]

It would appear you are missing the High Barnet branch of the Northern line.

uukelele |root |parent [-]

And the Reading branch of the Elizabeth line

mgranados |root |parent [-]

thanks for feedback i'll have a look!

fredley |next |previous [-]

Very nice, but the map seems to be in the wrong position vs. the trains/3d elements.

sdoering |next |previous [-]

Having just taken the Elisabeth Line to LHR T5 and sitting here, this was fun. Thanks.

Edit: Is there a Repo to look at and learn from this?

mgranados |root |parent [-]

<3 thanks!! i'll clean it and share here sometime soon

kentonv |next |previous [-]

This is really cool!

Quick suggestion: When not tracking a train, the mouse wheel should zoom into / out from where the cursor is pointing, rather than the center of the window.

mgranados |root |parent [-]

thanks! that's a great suggestion will implement

ohjeez |next |previous [-]

This is incredibly cool. I had it open on my desktop for most of the day.

Falimonda |next |previous [-]

How do I drive the train? Arrow keys not working :(

mgranados |root |parent [-]

It's just following api data for now. That'd be a real cool feature for backlog!

Leewen |next |previous [-]

model rough but amazing. i cant do this

jrrv |next |previous [-]

The planes were a surprise

mgranados |root |parent [-]

hehe thanks!

philipwhiuk |next |previous [-]

I'm curious what the 3D model source is - the Gherkin is kinda weird.

0l |root |parent [-]

OpenStreetMap - seems to be done with concentric circles, e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1365317072 and a dome on top

There is a good wiki page on this: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_3D_Buildings

gowld |previous [-]

The train paths are drawn on a 2D layer above the buildings, not at z-index that matches the proper 3-D position. So the paths appear to weave around and over the tops of buildings.

mgranados |root |parent [-]

I meant to make it feel like the tube ones felt "underground" by some metres i'll have a look thanks