alt.hn

1/10/2025 at 9:08:42 PM

Show HN: 3D Terrain simulation for hiking, skiing etc.

 https://github.com/r-follador/CubeTrek

by folli

1/11/2025 at 7:37:08 PM

I love the examples on your site.

I tried it out but got this message: "Error Track does not contain Timing data."

It would be awesome if it could work on GPX files that don't contain timing data. I often want to visualize a planned route or verify if a GPX file I have downloaded from somewhere has any obvious problems.

by SteveVeilStream

1/11/2025 at 7:53:50 PM

Thanks for testing!

The requirement for timing data is in order to calculate all of the statistics. Also, from a perspective of CubeTrek being a kind of diary of your activities, route only files do not really fit into thw picture.

But perhaps it makes sense to allow them on the anonymous upload for the purpose you mention.

by folli

1/14/2025 at 8:03:35 PM

First off, thank you for building this open source tool folli! With companies changing their subscription terms (eg: GaiaGPS) or shutting down (eg: FatMap), I and many others are looking for alternatives.

Chiming in to +1 SteveVeilStream's point about, "I often want to visualize a planned route". I personally care very little about statistics for a past activity and care much more about route planning for an upcoming activity and route tracking during an activity.

If you're firm on CubeTrek being a diary of your activities, then that's fair but it means folks like me, SteveVeilStream, and anyone else who's unhappy about the changes happening to paid GPS apps will need to continue searching.

by dtmooreiv

1/11/2025 at 8:07:35 PM

Yeah I would be fine with almost all of the statistics missing. I'm just one datapoint and I might be a bad one. Most of my GPS use is in the planning phase. I could also imagine people wanting to share visualizations of their route without the times because they don't want people saying they are slow.

Now I do have a lot of files that include the time... but they are all saved as GDB files. Do you know an easy way for me to extract the GPX file with timing information from the GDB without Garmin MapSource (These are old and I no longer have MapSource installed on my computer.)

by SteveVeilStream

1/11/2025 at 8:26:42 PM

Yeah it is a bit odd to have it fail on lack of timestamps.

One workaround would be to add dummy timestamps. There seem to be a few options floating around, like https://github.com/mikaello/gpxfaketimer (never used, no idea how well it’ll work)

by Modified3019

1/10/2025 at 9:12:17 PM

If anyone wants to tinker with the Babylon.js code for the 3D visualizations, I made a standalone, sandbox-like repo, which is much easier to set up:

https://github.com/r-follador/CubeTrek_Babylon

by folli

1/12/2025 at 11:21:51 AM

I work in the web 3d space, but unfortunately I know nothing about working with Babylon.js. What made you choose this engine? Did you evaluate cesium.js or three.js? Three.js would get you probably a couple of orders of magnitude more potential contributors, while cesium.js is designed for exactly this kind of project - at least that's my understanding, I haven't personally used it either.

EDIT: btw this sounds like a complaint but I didn't mean it that way. You might have really good reasons for your choice and I'm curious to hear them if you're willing to share.

by esperent

1/12/2025 at 10:04:35 PM

All good, it's a valid question.

I'm actually using cesium.js for the replay mode (https://cubetrek.com/replay/6638) using Google Earth data.

For the 3D mode I was evaluating both Three.js and Babylon.js, and back when I started Babylon.js seemed a bit more exciting as I could set everything up a bit faster, so it was not an objective choice. But perhaps it was the wrong decision in hindsight...

by folli

1/13/2025 at 7:17:15 AM

Thanks for your reply.

> But perhaps it was the wrong decision in hindsight

Well, it's hard to say. Babylon.js is funded by Microsoft and there's some good things that come from that. Better docs, more of a batteries included approach. I'd say it's far from a totally wrong choice anyway.

by esperent

1/11/2025 at 7:03:05 PM

Very cool.

I know this is not a related solution but just want to remind people that Google maps has a 3D mode. I do wonder if they are planning to get rid of it because they are burying it deep. you have to turn on "Globe View" and "Satellite"

https://i.postimg.cc/kMRMKvjc/Screenshot-2025-01-11-at-10-59...

by nox101

1/11/2025 at 7:48:18 PM

The replay mode (example: https://cubetrek.com/replay/6338) also uses Google Earth data. However, I'm a bit hesitant to further work on this, as I don't know if Google will suddenly pull the plug or charge extraorbitant amounts for usage. I consider it more of a proof of concept at this stage.

by folli

1/11/2025 at 8:24:06 PM

This is really cool, just tried it with a recent hike ( https://cubetrek.com/view/362602 ). Strava has a really basic 3d visualization but it's from a fixed angle which isn't very useful. Being able to move around and the replay mode are really neat. I was confused a little about the flame effect on the route before I realized it was matching my mouse on the other charts.

I second the request to be able to visualize routes without timing, it'd be awesome to take some route I have planned out in caltopo and view it here.

Also it seems like not quite what you're aiming for but I already have a few places I can (and sometimes do) upload these for the sharing/community/diary aspect (strava and peakery) and it would be cool to have some sort of integration where I could visualize activities from there without having to download/upload the GPX. Maybe I really need some kind of GPX multiplexer to upload stuff from my GPS to all the different places it could go :).

by kbrackbill

1/11/2025 at 8:35:51 PM

Your hike looks cool, thanks for sharing!

Getting the data from Strava is something I really don't wanna touch with a ten foot pole. Talking to other devs, using their API is the stuff of nightmares because they keep changing their ToS very frequently and recently they have become extremely restrictive on what you can do with "their" (actually the user's) activity data.

I never heard of Peakery, need to look into that.

What you can do, however, is to directly link your Garmin, Coros and Polar account to automatically upload data.

by folli

1/11/2025 at 11:26:12 PM

That makes sense about strava, they don't seem the friendliest to work with. Good to know about linking garmin, etc. accounts though, I missed that and it would definitely do what I want.

by kbrackbill

1/11/2025 at 9:13:24 PM

For actual hikes / backcountry tours though (not just reviewing a recorded track, but helping plan before and orient in the terrain during) -- I've found an app creatively called "Maps 3D" to work best. You can download maps for offline use (handy in those places with no cell reception) and those often include common trails in the area.

by btbuildem

1/12/2025 at 12:24:23 AM

The website looks great! My first thought was "I wonder if it has a docker-compose file?". Searched the repo for docker, nothing. Check the PRs. One open PR from October where someone dockerized it.

Please merge this! It makes it much easier for people to deploy it one their own devices and try it out.

by Carrok

1/12/2025 at 6:19:41 AM

It's definitely not ready to be merged. But you're more than welcome to work on it!

There are some issues to be solved to self host the app:

- the global height (SRTM) data is approx. half a TB, so we need an option to provide only a subset of files for the relevant locations - same for OSM data where some extracted features are stored locally - remove some third party dependencies, such as captcha verification for sign-up etc. - remove hook to Garmin, Coros, Polar API (each user will need to go through each of the companies verification process themselves to get the keys)

Still some work to do...

by folli

1/11/2025 at 6:17:09 PM

The 3D terrain stuff in FATMAP was great. I don't get why Strava killed it.

by Stevvo

1/11/2025 at 7:27:34 PM

It's hard to overstate how passionate people were about FATMAP and how crushed they were when it was killed. Putting revenue aside, Strava should have found a way to keep it alive to maintain goodwill.

by SteveVeilStream

1/11/2025 at 7:33:10 PM

I have never missed an app or service like I miss FATMAP. I still search in vain for a half decent replacement every time I go into the mountains and nothing yet comes close.

I’d have paid quite a lot more than they were charging to keep it.

by barnabee

1/11/2025 at 7:44:59 PM

What did you mainly use Fatmap for? Planning, navigating during the trip or viewing after the trip?

by folli

1/11/2025 at 8:38:49 PM

Planning and navigating, the key features for me were:

- high res satellite imagery available for both summer and winter

- aspect and gradient shading

- routes and tracks shared and discoverable with description, altitude graph etc. for freeride routes, ski tours, hikes (great for visiting somewhere new)

I also enjoyed things like sharing the link to the 3D overview with friends after an epic day, but that’s both more easily replaced and less valuable to me.

I’m muddling through with a whole host of apps (Maps3D, Outmap, CalTopo etc.) and have tried and given up on still more, but FATMAP was so much better than any current alternative, particularly for skiing. (Mostly in Europe, if that makes a difference.)

by barnabee

1/12/2025 at 5:06:14 PM

I'm working on https://github.com/styluslabs/maps - has Sentinel-2 imagery, slope angle shading and custom slope shading including slope aspect.

by pbsurf

1/12/2025 at 5:47:06 PM

Sounds interesintg, I'll take a look, thanks!

by barnabee

1/11/2025 at 6:56:18 PM

Wasn't there some kind of plan to integrate it in Strava?

by folli

1/11/2025 at 7:14:01 PM

No announcement has ever been made about the integration of FATMAP into Strava. The only announcement was that FATMAP would be discontinued.

Strava has been stagnating for several years now in terms of functionality. The last two evolutions I remember are the introduction of the dark theme, which has been requested for years, and the AI coaching tips, which are unbelievably bad.

Personally, I'd like to see more competition in the field of sports apps. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find interesting activities in the Strava feed. There is little or no possibility of editorialization (highlighting certain contents, collections, etc.).

It's very difficult to find a friend's activity if it's more than a week old. Would you like to know if anyone has made it over the pass at this time of year? Fuck you, here are some Zwift activities.

by Beretta_Vexee

1/11/2025 at 7:27:27 PM

> No announcement has ever been made about the integration of FATMAP into Strava. The only announcement was that FATMAP would be discontinued.

This isn’t true at all.

The original posts on their own sites are no longer up (though they are likely on archive.org), but you can see from the articles that followed the press release that they were quite explicit about this.

For example on TechCrunch[0]:

> The ultimate long-term goal for Strava is to integrate Fatmap’s core platform into Strava itself, but that will be a resource-intensive endeavor that won’t happen overnight. And that is why Strava is working to create a single sign-on (SSO) integration in the near-term, meaning that subscribers will be able to access the full Fatmap feature-set by logging into the Fatmap app with their Strava credentials.

> While Strava and Fatmap will remain separate products for now, Strava said that it will decide in the future whether Fatmap will live on as a standalone product once the technical integration has taken place.

> CEO and co-founder Michael Horvath, who stepped down in 2013 before returning as head honcho six years later, said that the Fatmap acquisition is part of Strava’s “ongoing investment to provide a best-in-class digital experience” for those seeking an active lifestyle. “Where other map platforms have been designed for navigating streets and cities, Fatmap built a map designed specifically to help people explore the outdoors,” Horvath told TechCrunch in a Q&A. “We will enable Fatmap technology in all of Strava’s services, empowering anyone to discover and plan an outdoor experience with curated local guides, points of interest and safety information.”

> In terms of timescales, Strava said that it has set up a dedicated team tasked with integrating Fatmap, and it anticipates this to start showing up inside Strava from around mid-2023. The company was also quick to stress that Fatmap’s tech will be available to both free and paid-for Strava members, though certain features relating to maps, discovery and route-planning will be reserved for paying subscribers.

> Strava provided TechCrunch with the following mockup images to give an idea of what Fatmap might look like inside a future incarnation of Strava.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/24/strava-acquires-fatmap-a-3...

by barnabee

1/11/2025 at 7:47:17 PM

They have withdrawn this announcement. The only remaining mentions are on the page announcing the closure and the transfer of payments to Strava:

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/26949702911117-...

by Beretta_Vexee

1/11/2025 at 9:18:42 PM

They haven't withdrawn everything. I've only just noticed this, but the Strava help centre still states that "FATMAP's 3D maps and other features will be built into Strava to create the world’s best platform for planning, navigating, and sharing outdoor adventures"[0].

There's also a recent comment on an Instagram post[1] about a supposedly recent response from Strava the commenter received that, if accurate, provides some hope.

It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it, but at this point I also rather hope that something more open, hackable, etc. rises from the ashes of FATMAP.

[0] https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/26949702911117-...

[1] https://www.instagram.com/oak_app/p/DDe3tNqs95k/

by barnabee

1/11/2025 at 6:59:28 PM

integrate really means “reimplement it but worse”

by internetter

1/11/2025 at 7:30:35 PM

This was so unbelievably disappointing that it was the final straw that caused me to cancel my paid Strava subscription and to delete and stop using the app entirely.

I know plenty of people who’ve done the same, because of one or other wrongheaded decision from Strava.

by barnabee

1/11/2025 at 9:33:49 PM

Ah! I've been tinkering on a very similar project off and on for years now. This is so awesome to see— really nice work. I've just never had time to actually polish mine off. I think the backend for processing new activities is broken at the moment, but the old demo activities are still around.

Ex: https://contour.run/home?activityId=36948814953

I've been using three.js and react-three-fiber for it. happy to swap notes! nice work :)

by izzymiller

1/12/2025 at 6:23:24 AM

Nice! I can definitely see the resemblance ;)

Where do you get your height data from?

by folli

1/12/2025 at 1:58:55 PM

This is awesome but would be way cooler if you showed a tiny 3d model of cyclist actually traveling the path in real time, with a timer and progress bar etc. People would LOVE to share these which is crucial to the growth of your site.

by 55555

1/14/2025 at 2:53:39 PM

I did a snowboard thing at the weekend, saved via Garmin -> exported to this: https://cubetrek.com/replay/365919 . Obvs the map is viewed as per summer but it still looks pretty good. Thanks!

by ragmondo

1/12/2025 at 2:31:58 AM

Thank you thank you thank you!

I have as part of my mega-project, an attempt at making a to scale earth (I am using main branch, compiled daily Godot), but many of the datasets for elevation and sat photos I have looked at are gpl incompatible datasets. I'm not sure how I missed the NASA SRTM datasets, but they are public domain and thus gpl compat!

This is great news and I appreciate this very much! (your product is cool too!)

Now, turning the HGT data into an actual mesh is going to be the challenge, but it seems doable! Mapping elevation data to a sphere is sure to teach me some things...

by arminiusreturns

1/12/2025 at 6:33:02 AM

Take a look at https://github.com/r-follador/TopoLibrary

I will need to document the code more clearly and extensively, but on the Readme there's an example on how to turn the HGT into a mesh (GLTF).

by folli

1/13/2025 at 3:23:04 AM

Very cool! Thank you!

by arminiusreturns

1/12/2025 at 7:43:33 AM

Very cool! I enjoyed watching my mountain hikes like this in the 30-day free Premium preview on Strava, but no way in hell am I paying $12 a month for a novelty feature.

by somedude895

1/12/2025 at 8:34:12 AM

What is it worth to you? It's fine to say 0 if you just enjoy the feature for free, maybe with some functionality tradeoffs...

by _blk

1/12/2025 at 9:48:48 AM

Something like $2-3 a month would be worth the premium features to me personally.

by somedude895

1/12/2025 at 4:22:23 AM

It would be cool if you could manually add landmarks to the maps. For example, the names of peaks, towns, bodies of water, etc. It would be amazing if this could be pulled in automatically, but I don't know if there's a good public source of landmark data.

It would also be cool if you could automatically link your media to the GPS track, like photos and journal entries. They could be assigned to the correct spot in the track via their timestamp or geolocation data.

by babs42

1/12/2025 at 6:08:15 AM

Regarding your first point: this is already implemented! In the 3D view you see these little markers on the model with text displaying OSM features "peaks" and "saddles"

Second point: I'm a bit hesitant to store media on the server or on a cloud service, this seems rather costly as this is a free service. But I don't have much experience with this, maybe someone has a good idea on how to manage it?

by folli

1/11/2025 at 7:00:21 PM

Any plan to increase the dimensions the 3d map can be generated for? This would be fun for motorcycle ADV trips but we tend to exceed the 100km squared limit.

by mtreis86

1/11/2025 at 7:42:57 PM

The limit was set in place to prevent the browser from crashing in low-end devices, as the full model is loaded and displayed as a single entity in full detail (in contrast Google Earth etc. uses multiple level of details, depending on the viewing distance).

Server side there's no problem to increase the model size, maybe I can add this as an option.

by folli

1/12/2025 at 5:47:46 AM

Perhaps you could simplify the terrain data at lower zoom? That's what we've done with route style geocorridor POIs to avoid thousands of points.

https://postgis.net/docs/ST_Simplify.html

by petre

1/13/2025 at 8:23:11 PM

A 3D view of all trails at a ski resort would be great. As a relative beginner knowing how some of them connect in advance could reduce frustration of missing them.

by nejsjsjsbsb

1/11/2025 at 6:09:33 PM

I’ll try it on my ski tour tomorrow!

by Mainsail

1/11/2025 at 6:55:15 PM

Don't forget to share the link ;)

by folli

1/12/2025 at 12:06:04 AM

Great visuals! I loved to use fatmap to look at ski resorts and mountains in 3d to identify slope/terrain etc. Having ski resorts as 3d models I can check out would be an awesome use case!

by soared

1/11/2025 at 8:09:16 PM

This is really cool. I dont like the fire effect on the 3d view though.

by lispisok

1/11/2025 at 8:38:37 PM

Is it too nervous? What would you suggest?

by folli

1/12/2025 at 4:06:59 AM

I agree it was a little distracting. Maybe a small, highlighted circle on the spot in the track that your mouse falls over? edit: I like how you highlight the current spot in replay mode.

by babs42

1/12/2025 at 5:12:04 AM

This is really cool. I've been hacking around with Babylon lately and it's been a great pleasure.

by briankelly

1/11/2025 at 10:00:43 PM

Would love to see a casual game (on Switch) where I could upload ski runs and "ski" them...

by __mharrison__

1/11/2025 at 7:00:11 PM

How do you switch it to American? (ie feet/miles)

by TinkersW

1/11/2025 at 7:06:30 PM

Look for the Settings (the cogwheel button on the top right)

by folli

1/12/2025 at 3:52:29 AM

Can’t sign up now

by dorbodwolf

1/12/2025 at 6:28:55 AM

I can't see anything unusual, do you get an error message?

Edit: I cleared the cache of failed email signups, can you try again?

by folli

1/11/2025 at 6:13:27 PM

[dead]

by krak12