HN Explorer

Show HN: Follow London Trains in 3D (ride.nexttrain.london)

1 points by mgranados ↗ HN
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.

59 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] thread
kentonv
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
thanks! that's a great suggestion will implement
fredley
Very nice, but the map seems to be in the wrong position vs. the trains/3d elements.
dmazin
It would appear you are missing the High Barnet branch of the Northern line.
uukelele
And the Reading branch of the Elizabeth line
mgranados
thanks for feedback i'll have a look!
jdswain
Looks like many (all?) branches are missing. Central line doesn't have the Ealing Broadway branch.
gowld
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
I meant to make it feel like the tube ones felt "underground" by some metres i'll have a look thanks
sdoering
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 thanks!! i'll clean it and share here sometime soon
Falimonda
How do I drive the train? Arrow keys not working :(
mgranados
It's just following api data for now. That'd be a real cool feature for backlog!
darknavi
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
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
ohjeez
This is incredibly cool. I had it open on my desktop for most of the day.
TheOtherHobbes
Interesting but quite buggy. Example: mouse dragging seems trapped in a fairly small area.
mgranados
Ah yeah i tried anchoring to the train with a threshold for panning around i'll try smoothing it. thanks for trying it!
hokkos
There seems to be some parallax issues between your trip layer and your 3D Tiles layer, but nice usage of deck.gl.
taylorius
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.
Leewen
model rough. polish it and its gold.i can’t do this
adecoster
A bit buggy in term of tiles jonctions
Pigo
This is a fun idea and interesting implementation. I know there's only so much an api can give you, but I'd love to see anything that gives more information or visuals of the surroundings.
mgranados
thanks! you mean more 3d buildings? I'd love to explore that or more labels on things along the way?
Pigo
I'd assume there's better options, but I've worked a lot with cesium. Even it has some interesting visualizations, textures, even weather you can add with it. Anything that could make it feel more immersive would just be cool in my opinion. That just sounds like fun to me.
IIAOPSW
This is frustratingly close to amazing. Obviously you went through all the trouble of pulling all the data from all the trains and displaying them in 3d, but then lock our view on to just one train or one station while all that interesting information zips around in the periphery. The view port needs to be more free form...less on rails.
mgranados
I'll have a note on this! Thanks a lot! a free form to browse the trains I think is definitely doable whilst keeping it performant
tamimio
Neat! I chose victoria one and it was flying over the buildings!
mgranados
I knew Victoria was fast but not so much! On a serious note it's meant to have a sense of being underground that maybe it's failing to convey. I'll check the line in more detail thanks.
Eduard
using Google Pixel 7a with Chrome Android.

while the 3d buildings render properly, the trains' polygons have a flipped z-order: polygons that are supposed to be layered behind are actually in front.

nevertheless, great website!

Liquidor
This is scary. I literally just had a dream last night wishing I could see the metro trains from above the ground in order to follow where the tunnels are under the buildings and all that. Wow.
eMPee584
Like on most other digital maps today, what's direly missing is a scale bar.. cool feat though, thanks for showing!
mgranados
yeah scales have definitely been modified for theatrical (many landmarks) thank you!
Rophlock
Congratulations, it seems very cool.

It's not the same, but I've tried to create a free browser-based app to track bus lines where I live (Brazil), but I had to pause this project, as each city uses a different way to track their public transportation, and it would be hard to gather all the info in a way to be usable in the whole country.

It's nice to see something similar implemented to track the transportation in another country.

mgranados
thank you so much! yeah the data comes in many different ways! just here tfl is diff from national rails i've found llms super helpful tho
purplecats
the tracks arent grounded to the map, they slide all over, and would it cool if we could use satellite view
modeless
The rendering is a bit weird. It's disorienting to have the trains simultaneously underneath the map and occluding it. It also seems like the z-buffer is not being used correctly when rendering the train cars.
mgranados
yeah the trains are meant to feel "underground" maybe the effect needs improving
gilfaethwy
I wonder how much work it would be to actually handle them being underground/overground at appropriate places? e.g. the District Line and/or Picadilly near Hammersmith. Would be cool!
leoedin
There's also something wrong with the map alignment. I think the tiles are being rendered with the wrong placement - the underlying map doesn't match reality.