Show HN: Metiq: a real time 3D globe for 100 public datasets

6/20/2026 at 7:26:10 AM

Crazy cool. The idea and approach is super cool, spent 20 odd mins looking through. A timelapse is one thing that excited me on top of this - you guys already have a window to change but a play from let's say last 5 year feels different - data might be an issue I understand. Inspired to build this for some of my data.

by darth-pixit

6/20/2026 at 8:18:30 AM

How much of the data is real time? And how do you interpose different timelines?

by brownpoints

6/19/2026 at 6:21:48 PM

Very cool. The satellite views are awesome! I clicked around for 20 minutes and still felt like there was so much more to explore. Thoughts:

---

Unless there is a soviet military installation in Southend, Saskatchewan, something is seriously funky with the "military installation" layer.

It would be nice if clicking didn't lower the zoom level. It's fine to zoom in and center, but having it zoom me out every time I click something was annoying.

by jwardbond

6/19/2026 at 7:08:06 PM

Military installations currently need to be sanitized and cleaned out. Will be working on later today. The source is unreliable and much of the data can be stored internally instead of public dataset.

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 11:22:09 PM

I know it's "just" AI but one could think there is a forkable project out there. I have seen like tenths of projects like this. OPs explanation is different though. Usually the line is "inspired by movie".

by noAnswer

6/19/2026 at 11:38:54 PM

There might be, but that would be missing out on half of the fun. Plus the real development challenge wasn't the frontend, but the database strategy, caching strategy, and edge availability. As with all my projects they serve as a way for me to learn.

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 6:13:39 PM

Cool, but the UI could use more vibing. Seems unusable on mobile because it's not responsive and the controls can't be hidden or collapsed

by brailsafe

6/19/2026 at 6:47:51 PM

Mobile has been a common complaint that I have received. Planning on conquering this soon! (90% of all initial traffic is mobile).

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 11:11:10 PM

I really like this. Is this just pulling from free data sources? Wonder if you could also hook it up with a maps provider to show real terrain

by robby1110

6/19/2026 at 11:16:34 PM

Yup, if there is a bit more support ill begin to add in the mid-tier paid services, but I feel like its in a good spot for now. Working on terrain right now!

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 5:08:01 PM

This is amazing. I have been exploring open public datasets for some GIS projects. How are you dealing with any rate limits for how much you can pull from these public servers?

by dwa3592

6/19/2026 at 5:19:57 PM

I'm routing and caching a majority of the data into my own database so that all usage and rates are through my service. There are some client based api calls that are made (mostly around existing enrichment) but 95% of traffic hits the db my workers populate.

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 5:06:20 PM

Very impressive! What's the stack used?

Also, is there a way to stop the 'Satellite Inspect' dialog from coming up when clicking around the globe? It obscures a bit of the map.

by daviding

6/19/2026 at 5:20:28 PM

On it right now, should see the change live in 10 minutes! Was supposed to only show when imagery was selected.

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 8:36:53 PM

Very nice...the maritime vessels view seems very sparsely populated...especially in the Strait of Hormuz.

by sleepytimetea

6/19/2026 at 9:39:26 PM

Satellite GIS for all vessels is pretty pricey. Waiting to see this project grow before investing in that realtime data. For now we have coastline GIS for vessels.

by rakeda

6/20/2026 at 12:43:07 AM

horrible UX on tablet-have-to-turn-sideways-or-window-clipped. Get the basics right. Globe slice in vertical-stripmap? drifts uncontrollably. can't set roi nor reposition nor minimize nor resize any of the three panels. tremendous amounts of wasted space - all the time. map legends overlay map undismissibly. great eye-candy first glance;

by BobMontgomeryJr

6/20/2026 at 2:03:19 AM

Thanks for your feedback Bob, the website is currently optimized for viewports smaller than 1920x1080p but I do plan support for the future.

by rakeda

6/20/2026 at 1:00:50 AM

wow - very impressive, visually pleasing

one UX improvement I feel would make it nice is the mouse wheel zoom in to be smooth, atm it jumps from one zoom level to the next, if it could pan in and out that would make it feel more immersive in a subtle but pleasing way

by bigjick

6/20/2026 at 2:02:19 AM

Thank you for the advice, will incorporate smoother zooming, theres a trick between feeling snappy and responsive and smooth but sluggish.

by rakeda

6/20/2026 at 3:27:03 AM

- stupid question, how do you make a globe like that

by vivzkestrel

6/20/2026 at 3:50:12 AM

[dead]

by crimsonalucard

6/19/2026 at 10:20:19 PM

I wonder if Mollweide or Atlantis projections wouldn't be more performant?

by gavmor

6/19/2026 at 10:32:14 PM

It was less about performance and more about the visual storytelling. The globe itself isnt actually a 3d model, all of this are rendered in three.js as two dimensional wraps, but the performance is hit with the amount of data.

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 10:05:35 PM

I spent about a decade building a game that looks remarkably like this, I for one think this looks fantastic. Took me years of working with old 3d libraries and networking... and it never was finished....

Its incredible what can now be built with a little good ai tooling, just awesome.

EDIT > This is my favorite post this year (after Mythos) on HN good job

by ionwake

6/19/2026 at 10:28:19 PM

That is high praise. Thank you.

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 6:53:33 PM

really great stuff on here, exploring any of the layers makes me want to learn more about it, maybe finding a way to link to relevant wiki articles for some of the data layers would be neat.

by miniman1337

6/19/2026 at 8:24:06 PM

Some layers have additional enrichment, data linking everything internal external is a major goal for the project!

by rakeda

6/20/2026 at 12:35:44 AM

V2 rocket owned by Israel in Poland kinda surprised me. But I understand. I'm currently working on data heavy platform. The most menial task is to clear data to be usable. Keep up the good work!

by hsuduebc2

6/20/2026 at 4:20:06 AM

awesome work!!

by gaolei8888

6/19/2026 at 10:03:25 PM

Very cool

What’s the tech stack?

by fsuts

6/19/2026 at 10:44:22 PM

From what I put on reddit:

"The globe itself is just a black ball that hides anything behind it. On top of that we draw the grid (lat/lng) by looping through coordinates and connecting dots on the surface (same math youd do for platpoints on a map, just wrapped around the sphere). The coastlines and borders come from free geo data files and just drawn on the sphere, anchored.

The atmosphere and a majority of the affects are just tiny shaders (maybe 10 lines of code each) which gives it a strong 3d affect.

Everything else, data points, flights, events, is just coordinates associated with database entries and drawn ui components.

So if you tried it before and went down the rabbit hole of 3D and triangulation, you were probably overthinking it the same way I did at first. The wireframe aesthetic actually works in your favour because you never have to fill anything in"

by rakeda

6/19/2026 at 9:55:26 PM

awesome! I

by ak005

6/20/2026 at 6:24:58 AM

[dead]

by souljorje

6/19/2026 at 7:51:41 PM

[flagged]

by 0fuz