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Show HN: Follow London Trains in 3D

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.

65 points by mgranados - 25 comments

25 Comments

TheOtherHobbes [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

mgranados [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

darknavi [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

taylorius [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

thank you! i'll have a look

dmazin [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

uukelele [3 hidden]5 mins ago

And the Reading branch of the Elizabeth line

mgranados [3 hidden]5 mins ago

thanks for feedback i'll have a look!

fredley [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

sdoering [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

kentonv [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

thanks! that's a great suggestion will implement

ohjeez [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

Falimonda [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

mgranados [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

Leewen [3 hidden]5 mins ago

model rough but amazing. i cant do this

jrrv [3 hidden]5 mins ago

The planes were a surprise

mgranados [3 hidden]5 mins ago

hehe thanks!

philipwhiuk [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

0l [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago

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