What a treat that the default location is Mt. Battie in Maine! I saw the tower up there from town just about every day growing up. Fun to see it pop up online!
This is a well polished app, which has non-trivial technical solutions (the AR view works very well and must not have been so simple to implement reliability on a miriad of different android devices).
This is very useful for vhf and uhf radio communications as well, which are normally* line of sight.
In fact, the adsb-receiver[1] software package for setting up an aircraft tracking station includes a neat feature where you can use HeyWhatsThat to calculate maximum line of sight distances to aircraft at various altitudes and include these contours on your aircraft tracking map.
* atmospheric phenomena such as density or humidity differences or reflections from other aircraft, the moon, or even meteors can enable reception over the horizon.
We actually added this as a feature to our sharing software at Plane Finder using our own modelling.
If you sign up and then view your stats on the web you can compare your actual to the predicted.
https://planefinder.net/coverage
It’s also baked into tar1090[1] which is a little more maintained of a package and pretty easy to get set up if you’ve got an SDR and 1090MHz antenna to track planes.
It’s a fun little hobby - where I live there really isn’t much of a reason to do it as there are enough other 1090MHz receivers in the area, but it still is cool when I look and see obscure jets flying overhead.
"""One of the first attempts to initiate the geotagging aspect of searching and locating articles seems to be the now-inoperative site Wikinear.com, launched in 2008, which showed the user Wikipedia pages that are geographically closest to one's current location.
The 2009 app Cyclopedia works relatively well showing geotagged Wikipedia articles located within several miles of ones location, integrated with a street-view mode, and 360-degree mode."""
GeoImageViewer, not an overlay but side-by-side view of photograph and maps. Clicking the image anywhere (not just precalculated pois) shows corresponding location in map and vice-versa.
https://hdersch.github.io/
There is a widely spread myth that Mt. Diablo in Oakland has the second largest viewshed in the world after Mt. Kilimanjaro[1]. With this tool you can actually compare them directly, which is pretty cool:
Not to be flippant, but it's fascinating to think how an average airline passenger may trivially (and very approximately!) match or even beat such a land-based record simply by looking out the window at 40,000ft. *about twice Kilimanjaro's elevation, for the record.
Many semantics potentially apply, of course! But the principle is there. The principle that, for many decades now, humans have been matching the entire planet's largest natural viewshed, as a trivial matter of course during the everyday usage of technology, and barely even noticing most of the time...
It's interesting how the simulated view makes errors in the terrain data obvious. The view from Santa Cruz island (off the coast of California) is almost completely obscured by single-pointed errors in the height map along the coast that didn't get cleaned from the data: https://caltopo.com/view#ll=34.0505,-119.8665&e=30&t=n&z=3&c...
Wild, I was going to submit this to HN about a week ago and I hardly ever submit anything. Just slipped my mind. Weird how much the active users on this site think of similar stuff at the same time.
This site also holds that distinction of being niche and useful enough for me to want to remember it but then I forget its name every so many years and have to ask around since it's hard to search it.
I’d like to be able to determine the location of a landscape photo. Should be able to calculate the panorama for 5x5 mile regions of earth, and use some matching algorithms to find the closest profile to my picture.
I mentioned GeoImageViewer in a reply above. It contains several algorithms to determine the location of a landscape photo given some control points selected on a map. It is also able to determine lens parameters (fov, distortions,...).
https://hdersch.github.io/
One thing I constantly look for in new place is where can I see sunsets? Where can I see unobstructed views of town? Which hill in San Franscisco can I climb to see panoramic sunset?
It would be great to take this tool to next level to answer such questions.
I was thinking the same thing. I recently found apps that let you see the direction of sunrises and sunsets (as well as moon directions) for any given location, but you wouldn't really know if the view is obstructed.
However, you could replicate the functionality/outputs (for a given location) by using open source GIS software, any available free geospatial data, and basic long-established GIS techniques: the DEM, the cross section, and the viewshed.
52 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadUsually the less people pay, the more demands on the developers.
This is a well polished app, which has non-trivial technical solutions (the AR view works very well and must not have been so simple to implement reliability on a miriad of different android devices).
5 dollars! C'mon.
https://www.peakfinder.org
The AR feature is really nice.
In fact, the adsb-receiver[1] software package for setting up an aircraft tracking station includes a neat feature where you can use HeyWhatsThat to calculate maximum line of sight distances to aircraft at various altitudes and include these contours on your aircraft tracking map.
* atmospheric phenomena such as density or humidity differences or reflections from other aircraft, the moon, or even meteors can enable reception over the horizon.
[1] https://github.com/jprochazka/adsb-receiver/releases
[1] https://www.nycmesh.net/
It’s a fun little hobby - where I live there really isn’t much of a reason to do it as there are enough other 1090MHz receivers in the area, but it still is cool when I look and see obscure jets flying overhead.
[1] https://github.com/wiedehopf/tar1090
Or hell, even just a map where you can turn your phone facing a general direction and see an approximate line of sight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging#Wikipedia_article_g...
"""One of the first attempts to initiate the geotagging aspect of searching and locating articles seems to be the now-inoperative site Wikinear.com, launched in 2008, which showed the user Wikipedia pages that are geographically closest to one's current location.
The 2009 app Cyclopedia works relatively well showing geotagged Wikipedia articles located within several miles of ones location, integrated with a street-view mode, and 360-degree mode."""
https://www.wired.com/2012/05/hands-on-nokia-city-lens-beta-...
Mt. Diablo: https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=K1JW43D4
Mt. Kilimanjaro: https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=ME9CTRPG
1: Debunked here: https://www.kqed.org/news/11808501/does-mount-diablo-have-th...
https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=AVRM3QXH
Mostly ocean, but it seems to cover a wider area.
Many semantics potentially apply, of course! But the principle is there. The principle that, for many decades now, humans have been matching the entire planet's largest natural viewshed, as a trivial matter of course during the everyday usage of technology, and barely even noticing most of the time...
- https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=40.10094,-105.61557&z=15&b=m...
- Right click and select "Simulated View"
- Change to "WireImagery" in the upper right
I wish it had lighting. The weather.gov lat/lon graphs has it I wonder if that is a free source or something better.
Snow depth too would be amazing
but somehow the wireimagery setting doesn't work for any of the locations I've tried. it does work for the one you linked...
Edit: oh... picked a random location in the USA instead and there it works. So... no Europe? what's up with that?
Edit 2: also no south america apparently.
This site also holds that distinction of being niche and useful enough for me to want to remember it but then I forget its name every so many years and have to ask around since it's hard to search it.
I thought about this when watching geowizard:
https://youtu.be/0ZbmYh9QZgA
Using HeyWhatsThat to check whether a Russian GPS jammer in Khmeimim Air Base in Syria would be able to affect aircraft over Cyprus and in Tel Aviv: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1502400086696869889
Have we reached a world where this is easier than bookmarks?
Personally, I just look through all of my open tabs until I find the site I was looking for...
It would be great to take this tool to next level to answer such questions.
However, you could replicate the functionality/outputs (for a given location) by using open source GIS software, any available free geospatial data, and basic long-established GIS techniques: the DEM, the cross section, and the viewshed.