alt.hn

5/20/2025 at 11:43:55 AM

Show HN: Text to 3D simulation on a map (does history pretty well)

 https://mused.com/map/

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 1:52:32 PM

I asked for a large asteroid impacting the Pacific ocean. Interestingly the resultant tidal wave apparently heads directly to Honolulu, then to Terminal Island, then reverses course and visits Sydney before traveling overland through New South Wales and Queensland, causing some earthquakes in Papua New Guinea, and coming to rest in Tokyo Harbour.

Also I just realised I can talk to the asteroid. It understandably seems a little traumatized.

    me: Hi! What brings you to this particular part of the ocean?
    
    asteroid: *hurtling through the atmosphere at tremendous speed, trailing
        fire* AAARRRRRGGGHHHHH! NOT BY CHOICE! Gravity's got me in its grip! 
        Been floating peacefully through space for millions of years until your 
        planet's pull caught me! CAN'T STOP NOW! *glowing brighter* Ocean impact 
        in approximately 17 seconds! Nothing personal against this particular 
        patch of water! BRACE FOR TSUNAMI! *increasing in brightness and 
        velocity*
https://mused.com/map/sim/2225/asteroid-impact-event

by taneq

5/20/2025 at 3:31:31 PM

Couldn't help but start humming Queen's Don't Stop Me Now after reading what the asteroid said

by walthamstow

5/20/2025 at 3:14:33 PM

This is the best thing that anyone has simulated yet hahah

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 10:30:07 PM

We used to do 3D virtual world work, and though I like where you're going with this, I think loading hi-res tiles, for your use-case, is not the right approach.

The direction we were trying to move with https://ayvri.com back in 2018 was to model the world from low-res imagery, and render higher-resolution views. At the time, the AI tech wasn't ready, but I think you can do this now. You don't need a prefect replica of the world, you want a convincing replica, so when you're drawing Tokyo, the architecture and elements in the scene match what would be expected.

by pedalpete

5/21/2025 at 12:04:29 AM

Ayvri is impressive, and thanks for the feedback - I hear what you're saying about the convincing replica

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 2:52:25 PM

Cool idea, can only use 2D at the moment. Looks like the 3D tile quota is exhausted: "message": "Quota exceeded for quota metric '3D Tiles root requests' and limit '3D Tiles root requests per day' of service 'tile.googleapis.com' for consumer 'project_number:1016378558728'."

https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/3dtiles/root.json?key=AIzaSyB...

by mkbehbehani

5/20/2025 at 3:12:03 PM

Asking for a quota increase with support! Will build in bring-your-own-key

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 3:54:47 PM

Random thing worth I ran into once, you may have already handled this but sharing just in case:

May want to confirm the map renderer is making its requests using the URL with both the session and API key instead of only the API key. If your API requests are base key only, every refresh client-side might be unexpectedly consuming one of your root quota units, rather than each user getting a session of unlimited tile loads for 3 hours. If you're seeing network traffic in the console from your renderer out to the API without the session token in the query string along with the API token, or if you see the session token is totally different after refreshing, that might be a sign of something wonky causing quota depletion.

Example URL for a tile fetch with both params:

  https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/3dtiles/datasets/CgA/files/UlRPVEYuYnVs.json?session=SESSION_TOKEN&key=YOUR_API_KEY
Examples:

  https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/create-renderer#requests-and-responses
A quick check would be to see how far apart your google analytics for unique users are vs. your API console usage data. If way less than 10,000 unique users depleted the 10,000 unit quota it may be another indicator of something in token/session setup.

by mkbehbehani

5/20/2025 at 8:02:17 PM

Okay back online in 3d too!

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 1:40:17 PM

I don't totally understand this, but it has the potential to be very, very cool.

(The satellite imagery doesn't work in Firefox. Just clouds.)

by rafram

5/20/2025 at 2:56:44 PM

If this was just a post about generated clouds I would have upvoted anyway. They were cool. Love the vision!

by dr_dshiv

5/20/2025 at 3:12:51 PM

Sorry, exhausted quota on the 3d tiles from Google Maps Platform -- should have workaround up shortly

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 1:51:31 PM

The map imagery doesn't seem to work in Edge either.

by spuz

5/20/2025 at 2:41:30 PM

This might be being unfair, but I asked it to simulate the Battle of Goose Green, during the Falklands war of 1982.

Its just a blank screen - https://mused.com/map/sim/2993/battle-of-goose-green

I am excited to see it working though!

by tomaytotomato

5/20/2025 at 4:54:09 PM

The sim on your link is not blank anymore. I can see a map, some entities and some simple paths they take.

by yreg

5/20/2025 at 2:12:53 PM

I don't understand what it's supposed to do. I see clouds and a prompt entry. I type something in and it just gives me a text response about New York urban tourism...?

by solardev

5/20/2025 at 2:27:35 PM

I think it's a 3D visualization of Earth with simulated clouds. You can ask an AI to generate a GIS layer to visualize an event. Then, you can talk to parts of the event in chat.

by caseyy

5/20/2025 at 3:36:10 PM

Here's a video -- the 3d map tiles quota was hit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS9sNcDLJU

Should be back shortly!

by lukehollis

5/21/2025 at 8:44:45 PM

Ah, thanks, that video looks pretty cool!

by solardev

5/20/2025 at 5:57:36 PM

Dating myself, typed in "Global Thermonuclear War". Watching various cities of the world have their map flash on the screen for a few seconds at a time was certainly nightmare inducing. But fascinating.

by don-bright

5/20/2025 at 2:51:38 PM

Seems very interesting tho. Maybe pre-generate the three "prompts" that you show when I open the page, and load them from cache when I select them? At least I can see how it should work.

edit: in 2d the map loads, in 3d it doesn't load. But when it works in 2d it's VERY COOL!

Here's my example: https://mused.com/map/sim/3129/roman-civil-wars-of-the-1st-c...

by mdrzn

5/20/2025 at 2:43:16 PM

Doesn't work in Chrome (no map), doesn't work in Firefox. This sounds really interesting and I would love a video of it working its magic.

by moontear

5/20/2025 at 1:02:10 PM

I don't know what this is supposed to do, but it doesn't seem to work.

by meindnoch

5/20/2025 at 1:40:42 PM

This is magic. I just did volcano and it simulated lava flow, emergency responders, blast zones. Pretty cool stuff.

by conception

5/20/2025 at 4:01:39 PM

Thanks!

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 6:18:22 PM

Prompt box does not show on mobile. I'm using brave on Android. Even when I request the desktop site it does not show it. But when I use brave on Mac it does show it.

This was a confusing landing for me on a mobile device.

by ElijahLynn

5/20/2025 at 8:42:32 PM

Thanks, this should be updated for a better landing on mobile

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 2:59:26 PM

Update: sorry google maps 3d tiles aren't displaying!

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS9sNcDLJU

The Google Maps 3d Photorealistic Tiles are returning 429 Error too many requests Looks like will need to build in the ability for people to bring their own Google Maps API key. Fix up shortly

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 3:33:45 PM

Hey defaulting to 2D map temporarily! 3d will work shortly

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 8:02:50 PM

Okay back online in 3d

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 6:54:18 PM

Incredibly brave of you to post something like this here. How are you monitoring and managing cost/token usage?

by LargeWu

5/20/2025 at 8:26:24 PM

Thanks! The worst is the elevation API -- but yes, I monitored costs throughout today, it's not prohibitively expensive.

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 2:37:20 PM

The scaling is off on mobile, the prompt box is hidden from view etc.

by thenthenthen

5/20/2025 at 4:19:05 PM

mobile coming soon. focus is desktop

by eluttmann

5/20/2025 at 1:20:34 PM

I can't get it to work, but it sounds interesting. Does anyone have a screen recording to share?

by folli

5/20/2025 at 1:06:37 PM

it seems to work, but i dont know what i should be doing with it or what i am looking at

by mkoryak

5/20/2025 at 11:57:51 AM

The prompt… er, well, prompt doesn’t appear in portrait orientation on iOS 18.

by WalterGR

5/20/2025 at 1:28:01 PM

Mostly I seem to be looking at some pretty great looking clouds and some (fake?) satellite imagery, but not seeing any people or armies or anything. And then every now and then it sort of glitches out and resets everything.

I'd love to see a video or something of it in action.

...

Oh, it seems to work much better in 2D. Now I see markers and stuff.

by stevage

5/20/2025 at 11:56:13 PM

I tried to simulate peace on Earth.

by deadbabe

5/21/2025 at 12:06:46 AM

you're the best of us. How'd it do? Can you share it?

by lukehollis

5/21/2025 at 12:11:20 AM

it was beautiful

by deadbabe

5/20/2025 at 1:54:00 PM

interesting

by patrick4urcloud

5/20/2025 at 12:42:52 PM

I like the idea, but it's really glitchy and borderline epilepsy-inducing

by tetris11

5/20/2025 at 11:02:38 PM

Updated -- the geocoding was moving the map around too quickly

by lukehollis

5/22/2025 at 4:00:23 PM

much better this time around

by tetris11

5/22/2025 at 9:50:54 PM

Thanks!

by lukehollis

5/20/2025 at 2:05:38 PM

[flagged]

by busssard