Maps Mania

GTA - San Francisco

2026-08-25T02:06:03.478-05:00

Have you ever wanted to play GTA in San Francisco? In San Francisco - The Game, you can now drive cars, climb buildings or even hang-glide over the Bay Area - all in your browser.

What makes this game world particularly interesting from a mapping perspective is that this isn't a fictional city inspired by San Francisco. The game's 3D world is built from real-world photogrammetry and elevation data, extracted from Apple Maps 3D data and converted into a playable open-world environment.

The result is an extraordinary browser map that doubles as a game. San Francisco's famously steep hills, dense streets and distinctive buildings are all rendered as a detailed 3D landscape. You can explore the city on foot, clamber over buildings and rooftops, jump into one of the cars scattered around the streets, and even fly over the city strapped to a hang-glider.

The city is divided into 3D tiles which are streamed into your browser as you explore.

The game also makes surprisingly good use of its underlying geography. A minimap shows your position and heading, while a teleport feature allows you to immediately transport to any location in the city. There are even multiplayer features, allowing you to see and chat to other players exploring the same virtual San Francisco.

The game feels like a collision between Google Earth, GTA and a retro arcade game. But beneath the fun is an impressive demonstration of what is now possible when real-world 3D mapping data is combined with WebGL and game-engine technology.

Mapping 219,469 Rail Journeys

2026-08-24T01:59:06.450-05:00

One Day on Rails maps more than 70,000 train journeys across Europe during one single day this summer. It also maps 5,737 journeys across the USA, 34,206 journeys in Tokyo and 11,075 journeys in London.

One Day On Rails visualizes an entire day's railway activity on one single animated interactive map. Rather than showing trains at a single point in time, One Day on Rails uses real timetable data to animate thousands of services moving along their actual routes.

The main European visualization combines railway data from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and France. In total, it maps 70,427 scheduled journeys, with cross-border services carefully deduplicated so that the same train isn't counted twice when it appears in different national datasets.

There are also separate visualizations for Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, France and Berlin, as well as the USA, Tokyo, New York and London. The individual visualizations together account for 219,469 mapped train journeys.

One Day on Rails turns what would normally be an enormous and rather dry collection of timetable data into something surprisingly hypnotic: a whole day's worth of railway journeys brought to life on a map.

Inspired by One Day on Rails, Clock-face Schedule maps a single day across the Swiss rail network. What makes Clock-face Schedule so fascinating to watch is how this map feels less like chaotic traffic and more like a carefully calibrated timepiece.

This is because of the Swiss clock-face schedule.

Every half hour, you can watch trains converge simultaneously on major hubs across the country, pause as connections are made, and then radiate back out along regional lines. Rather than scheduling each railway line independently, Switzerland coordinates its network around major interchange stations such as Zurich, Bern and Basel. Trains from different directions arrive at these hubs shortly before the hour or half-hour, allowing passengers to make connections, before departing again a few minutes later.

The result is a remarkable choreography of trains: across the entire country, the railway network moves to the rhythm of the clock. The clock at the heart of the visualization is itself inspired by the iconic Swiss railway clock, designed by Hans Hilfiker in 1944. One of the clock's most distinctive features is its red second hand, which pauses briefly at 12 before jumping forward to mark the next minute. The reason for this is that in the 1940s, it was impossible to electronically synchronize individual clock motors across hundreds of stations.

To solve this, Hilfiker designed the second hand to run slightly fast - completing a rotation in 58 seconds - and then pause at the top of the hour. At precisely 60 seconds, an electrical impulse sent from a central master clock triggered the second hand to jump forward and start the next minute. This brief pause ensured that every railway clock throughout Switzerland struck the start of each new minute in absolute, perfect unison.

Bending Maps, Inception Style

2026-08-22T01:29:47.043-05:00

One of the most memorable scenes in Inception sees Leonardo DiCaprio's character walking through Paris as the city appears to fold in on itself, with entire streets rising from the ground and bending over the characters below. The surreal effect makes the city seem like a three-dimensional model that can be manipulated like a sheet of paper.

Orbify is exploring whether something inspired by this visual trick could have a practical use in car navigation. Orbify's patent-pending image-processing system takes a 3D map model and warps it onto a curved surface. Instead of having to choose between a conventional top-down map and a perspective view of the road ahead, both can be displayed simultaneously in a single image.

Close to the vehicle, the map retains a normal perspective view, showing the roads and buildings around you in three dimensions. Further away, the map gradually bends upwards until it becomes an overhead view, providing a wider view of the route ahead. The result is an unusual hybrid between a street-level navigation view and a conventional aerial map.

You can currently experience the idea in Orbify's demo. This is a preloaded production scene rather than a complete navigation application, and Orbify notes that the large splats used in the scene may take a moment to decode on your GPU. There are no routes to plan or destinations to enter; the demo is primarily a showcase for the unusual map-rendering technique.

However if you do want to explore your town using an Inception inspired map view you are in luck ...

Inception Map by William Davis uses satellite imagery to create a bendy map of Manhattan in the style of some of the famous folding city scenes in Inception. The map uses a number of separate Mapbox maps, each with a different map pitch view, seamlessly stitched together to recreate the folding city views seen in Inception.

Because the Inception Map was created in Observable you can actually adapt this map to show a different folding city view. To do this you will need to change the latitude and longitudes defined in the mapCenter array.

The Tangram Bendy Map also allows you to view this interesting Inception inspired perspective on an interactive map. The screenshot above shows Manhattan but in the Tangram Bendy Map you can pan and zoom to a folded city view of any location in the world.

The 3D Underground Map

2026-08-21T01:16:39.405-05:00

DrillerDB Underground is very different from a conventional map, which presents the Earth's surface as a flat 2D view from directly above. Instead, it offers a striking oblique 3D view where the surface of the earth has been sliced open like a layer cake. Rising above the horizon is standard aerial imagery draped over USGS 3DEP elevation data, but the real star of this map lies directly underneath: a volumetric 3D cross-section revealing the actual geological strata layered beneath the surface.

Turning 13 Million Well Logs into 3D Geology

This stunning subterranean visualization relies on broad regional interpolation models, DrillerDB has standardized 13 million historical well logs from state and county records across North America. Using these drillers' handwritten notes - scanned directly off decades of paper reports - DrillerDB has managed to map the data to standard USGS lithologic classifications.

The resulting Underground Viewer renders these records as color-coded, vertical lithology blocks. In these 3D cross sections you can see distinct beds of clay, sand, gravel, shale, and limestone stacked continuously under the ground. Where local well logs offer direct physical evidence, the model draws the geological faces as solid colors. Where data thins out or evidence runs dry, the cross-section fades to black rather than inventing speculative layers.

Users can pan, tilt, and zoom through the 3D block cut, hover over specific depth intervals to inspect the underlying lithology types, and toggle a vertical exaggeration slider to stretch thin strata for easier reading. It's an impressive example of taking what was unstructured historical record archives and creating an intuitive spatial exploration tool for that data.

Surfing the Jet Stream

2026-08-20T02:12:28.103-05:00

Anyone who has ever flown from America to Europe has probably noticed that the outward flight usually takes considerably less time than the return journey. The reason is the jet stream - fast-moving winds high in the atmosphere that generally blow from west to east. Flying east, aircraft can get a significant push from these winds, while flying west means battling against them.

The same phenomenon affects flights to Hawaii, and Flight Map from HawaiiTravelers lets you explore exactly how much extra time the winds appear to add to the journey.

Flight Map uses an azimuthal equidistant projection centred on Honolulu to plot straight-line flight paths from Hawaii's capital to 68 other airports. This means that distances from Honolulu are preserved, while the direction from Honolulu to each airport is also maintained. The result is less like a conventional world map and more like a giant compass centred on Hawaii, with the routes radiating outwards in their true directions.

Select any airport on the map and you can compare the two journeys. The map shows the median flight time for flights in each direction, based on flight data collected between January 1 and June 30, 2026. This lets you see how much longer a typical flight to Honolulu takes than the return journey. So you can immediately see not only which routes are longest, but where the difference between flying out and flying back is greatest.

The results confirm that the jet stream affects flights to Hawaii in much the same way as it affects transatlantic flights. The difference is that Hawaii lies to the west of the continental US, so the effect is reversed. Instead of getting a tailwind on the outward journey, flights from the US to Hawaii are generally flying against the prevailing west-to-east winds and therefore take longer. On the return journey, aircraft can take advantage of those winds, making the flight home a lot quicker.

The 2026 Fall Foliage Map Has Landed

2026-08-19T02:51:01.921-05:00

SmokyMountains.com has been producing its fall foliage maps for more than a decade. The Smoky Mountains 2026 Fall Foliage Prediction Map has now been released to visualize this year's expected progression of fall foliage across the contiguous US.

Rather than simply highlighting where autumn is happening now, the interactive map lets you travel through the season week by week to see when different parts of the country are expected to change colour. The map divides the US into counties, with each county coloured according to its predicted foliage stage. The legend ranges from No Change and Minimal through Patchy, Partial, Near Peak, Peak and Past Peak. This makes it particularly easy to see the gradual movement of autumn across the country.

If you're planning a trip to see the spectacular colours of autumn in the USA, the Fall Foliage Map 2026 is another useful guide to knowing where and when to go. This interactive map covers the Lower 48 states and lets you track the changing foliage through the season, from the first hints of colour in September through to the final displays in November and December.

The map includes a timeline running through the autumn months. Drag the date slider and the map updates to show the estimated state of the foliage on that date. Areas are coloured according to their predicted foliage stage, making it easy to see the gradual progression of autumn from the northern states and higher elevations towards the south.

There are two particularly useful ways to explore the data. Color Report shows the estimated foliage conditions for a particular date, while Peak Timing switches the map to show when different areas are expected to reach peak colour. The latter is especially useful if you're trying to work out when to visit a particular region rather than simply wondering where autumn has arrived.

You can search for a city, national park or other destination using the map's search bar. This zooms the map to the location and provides a link to a more detailed local forecast. You can also turn local foliage reports on and off, allowing you to compare the modelled estimates with reports from people actually seeing the leaves on the ground.

How to Win the World Cup - From Above

2026-08-18T02:54:12.673-05:00

Spain's 2026 World Cup win was hardly a massive surprise to football fans. It was another chapter in what has become an extraordinary period of Spanish dominance in international football. Spain won the European Championship in 2024 and the Nations League in 2023, and the Spanish women are the current World Cup holders. They also came agonisingly close to adding the 2025 Women's European Championship, only losing to England on penalties in the final.

Spain's success didn't come from nowhere. Behind the country's seemingly endless supply of talented footballers is la cantera - literally "the quarry" - the system of youth academies and local football infrastructure that develops the country's players.

La cantera, from above takes a fascinating look at one small but important part of that system: the football pitches themselves. Using Spain's national aerial survey (PNOA) from IGN España, the project has identified at least 257 football pitches in the greater Madrid area that have been built or significantly resurfaced since 2006.

LGND's change-detection technology identified these changes across 351 locations, including both full-size 11-a-side pitches and smaller 5-a-side facilities.

Click on any of the dots on the map and you can see the aerial imagery from before and after the work took place. In some cases a pitch appears where there was previously nothing; in others, an old playing surface is replaced with a modern artificial pitch. By stepping through the different PNOA survey dates, you can effectively watch Madrid's football infrastructure being built and upgraded from above.

Where Area Equals People

2026-08-17T01:02:55.967-05:00

What would the world look like if countries were resized according to the number of people living in them? You can explore that question in Gapmover, an map that shows how the relative size of countries has changed from 1800 and is projected to change through to 2100.

Unlike a conventional map, this animated population cartogram continually distorts the shapes and sizes of countries so that their area reflects their share of the world's population. As you drag through the timeline, countries swell and shrink, offering a striking visualisation of the changing balance of population around the globe.

The effect can be quite surprising. China, for example, is the world's most populous country for much of the animation, yet its relative size actually declines throughout the entire period as the global population grows. India follows a different trajectory, becoming relatively smallest around 1980 before its population growth eventually sees it overtake China around 2020.

One of the biggest transformations involves Africa. While many parts of the world shrink in relative terms, Africa expands rapidly during the 21st century, with Nigeria projected to overtake the United States in population by around 2060.

Gapmover is more than just an animated map, however. Its developer has created an algorithm specifically designed to resize countries while attempting to preserve their recognizable shapes and relationships with their neighbours. Shared borders are maintained, while additional "bridges" prevent islands and nearby countries from drifting away from their geographical positions. The result is a cartogram that can dramatically change the apparent size of countries based on different metrics, without completely losing the familiar shape of the world.

You can also see this algorithm at work on World Sizer - a map that resizes countries based on population, GDP, emissions and other measurements.

Mapping All Our Yesterdays

2026-08-15T02:55:32.976-05:00

If you want to take a trip through the history of Richmond, Virginia, Yesterdays is a wonderful place to start. This interactive map brings together thousands of historical photographs and pins them to the places where they were taken.

You can simply browse the map and see what photographs have been recorded in different parts of Richmond, or search the collection by date, subject and other data. For example you can set the timeline control to just view photographs of Richmond taken in the 19th Century. The result is a wonderfully addictive way to explore Richmond - one photograph, street and neighbourhood at a time.

What makes Yesterdays particularly interesting is that it isn't simply a map of old photographs. It is also a collaborative platform for georeferencing historical images. Users can help identify where photographs were taken, add information about what they depict and improve the geographical data behind the collection.

And the Richmond community has clearly embraced it. According to the project's developers, Yesterdays attracts more than 1,000 unique visitors a month from Richmond's Reddit community alone. Its local focus is an important part of that success. The homepage features photographs from Richmond, the map initially centres on the city, local institutions provide many of the collections, and contributors are likely to encounter photographs of places they recognise.

But Richmond is only the beginning. Yesterdays is actually a platform for creating locally focused historical-photo maps, that can be used in other cities. It is already being introduced in other parts of the United States. There is a Yesterdays Inland Empire, and other communities and institutions are currently exploring ways of bringing their own photographic collections to the platform.

This seems like a particularly promising model for a vintage photo mapping project. Historical photographs are inherently local: a picture of an ordinary street, shop or building may be of little interest to someone on the other side of the country, but fascinating to somebody who lives around the corner. Yesterdays' approach recognises that local knowledge is also one of its greatest assets. Someone who recognises a building or remembers how a neighbourhood used to look is much more likely to be able to help identify and locate an old photograph and contribute their own photos to the map. The project is also deliberately open to contributions from local libraries, museums and other institutions.

Where does the North Begin?

2026-08-14T01:15:30.334-05:00

One of the perennial questions in UK politics and geography is “where is the border between the North and South?” I can now definitively answer that question thanks to MapSplit.

Giuseppe Sollazzo’s MapSplit interactive map allows you to map any UK-specific dataset and then “draw a movable straight line across the UK” to view a statistic for each side. This means I was able to upload all the Greggs outlets in the UK onto Giuseppe's map and instantly discover the dividing line across the country where there are an equal number of Greggs north and south of the line. Ending, forever, the debate about the border between the North and South.

MapSplit is a wonderfully simple idea, but one that opens up all kinds of possibilities for exploring geographic data. Choose one of the datasets provided by the map, drag the line across the UK and the statistics for either side are recalculated instantly. You can rotate the line using the handle, or snap it to a horizontal or vertical position. As you move it around the map, the totals and partial breakdowns update to show exactly what is being counted on each side.

Best of all, you aren't limited to the datasets supplied with the map. You can upload your own data in CSV or TSV format, GeoJSON, or even JSON and ESRI-ASCII grids. MapSplit can work with points or polygons (reducing polygons to their centroids), provided the data includes geographic coordinates and a numerical value. This turns what initially looks like a playful geography experiment into a genuinely useful little data-exploration tool.

For example, for my Greggs experiment I loaded in the Greggs geojson from the Greggs and Pret Heatmap. I was then able to use the Balance N-S and Balance W-E buttons to divide the UK in half based on equal numbers of Greggs. I was also able to rotate and move the line to discover the breakdowns of Greggs on either side of any arbitrary boundary. This makes it surprisingly easy to experiment with different ways of dividing the country and see how the distribution of your data changes from one side of the line to the other.

BTW: Based on the Greggs Method, the North begins at Leicester.

How to Find the Best Sunset Views

2026-08-13T04:43:19.993-05:00

If you want to discover the best spots nearby to watch the sunset, then you need the Sunset Atlas. Choosing a good local spot to watch the sun disappear below the horizon can involve a fair amount of trial and error. Sunset Atlas takes some of the guesswork out of finding the perfect sunset viewpoint by mapping sunset viewing conditions across Europe.

The interactive map uses a colourful heatmap to show the quality of sunset views, with warmer colours indicating locations where the setting sun has a more unobstructed line of sight. You can click on the map to see the Sunset Score for any location, rated from 0 to 100. Or click on the 'Find Best Spots' button to instantly discover the highest-scoring sunset spots near your location.

The scores are calculated for every 30-by-30-metre grid cell using a combination of terrain, vegetation and spatial data. The map uses the Copernicus GLO-30 Digital Elevation Model to identify hills, valleys, ridges and other terrain that might obstruct the horizon. It also incorporates canopy-height and land-cover data to account for trees and other vegetation.

There are some limitations to the approach. A 30-metre grid inevitably smooths out some of the details you encounter on the ground. My favorite sunset location scores poorly on Sunset Atlas. I assume this is because of the nearby tree canopy, which, while it doesn't actually obscure the sunset, may affect the location's ranking.

It's also worth remembering that Sunset Atlas is measuring the view of the setting sun, rather than the quality of the scenery. My spectacular hilltop location overlooking London might receive a mediocre score because the sun itself disappears behind distant buildings rather than directly on the horizon.

If you're looking for somewhere to watch the next spectacular sunset, Sunset Atlas could be a useful place to start. Just remember that a map can tell you where the sun should be visible - you'll still have to decide whether the view is worth the walk. Unfortunately, the map currently only covers Europe, so if you live elsewhere you'll have to discover your own Sunset Point.

Trains and Termini

2026-08-12T02:09:30.923-05:00

tokyo-trains

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a city in possession of a good railway network, must be in want of an animated train map. Yet, having once beheld the grandeur of Mini Tokyo 3D and the intricate labyrinth of the Shinjuku Station Indoor, one might reasonably despair of any further elegance in the art.

Mr. Gregg Tavares, however, was of a different mind entirely. Reader, he married them.

Gregg's creation, tokyo-trains, is a stunning web-based 3D visualization that fuses the macro city scale of Mini Tokyo 3D with the micro depth of the underground station architecture shown in the Shinjuku Station Indoor Map. While Mini Tokyo 3D gives us sweeping real-time vehicular movement across the capital, and the Shinjuku Station Indoor Map reveals the multi-layered underground maze of Japan’s busiest hub, tokyo-trains brings both concepts into a single interactive city-wide interactive map.

This map renders trains gliding along the tracks of 147 different train lines, while physically diving down into multi-level station complexes. Heights across the scene are rendered true to scale, utilizing OpenStreetMap data to map levels and platform placements. When you fly the camera into major interchanges like Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Tokyo Station, you can watch the trains plunge beneath the surface layers directly to their designated subterranean platforms.

The result is an impressive marriage of scale and detail. It is part transit map, part architectural model and part miniature world - and should delight anyone who has ever been fascinated by trains or dreamt of playing with a city-scale model railway.

Finding the Falcon 9 Crash Site on the Moon

2026-08-11T02:41:27.891-05:00

Last week Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the Moon. You can view its estimated impact site on azmth Luna, an interactive 3D map of our nearest neighbour. Enter “Falcon 9” into the map's search box and the crash site is highlighted on the lunar surface, near the Einstein crater on the Moon's western limb.

The Falcon 9 crash is just one of 44 landing and impact sites mapped by azmth Luna. These range from the Soviet Union's Luna 2 in 1959 to the latest commercial lunar missions, with successful landings, failed missions and accidental impacts all represented. The resulting collection provides a comprehensive visual history of humanity's attempts to reach the Moon.

Labelled tracks also show spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon, calculated from real spacecraft ephemeris data. You can speed up the simulation clock to watch these orbital paths change. The map also includes a fascinating 'replay' option that allows you to explore the whole history of lunar exploration from 1958 onwards.

azmth Luna isn't simply a map of lunar missions. It is a live 3D model of the Moon, complete with the current phase, terminator and subtle libration - the slight wobble that changes which parts of the lunar surface we can see from Earth. That makes azmth Luna more than just an attractive 3D Moon map. It is a fascinating visual record of lunar exploration, combining historical missions, current spacecraft and future targets with a live astronomical simulation.

Mapping the Hollowing of the United States

2026-08-10T02:02:54.522-05:00

The American population is moving south and west. You can see that migration writ large in the US Population Growth Atlas, an interactive map showing how the populations of every US county and state have changed between 1980 and 2025.

The most striking feature of the map is the broad band of population decline running through the middle of the country. From the Dakotas and Montana, south through Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma and into parts of West Texas, large numbers of counties are coloured red or orange. It is an “Emptying Middle” separating the rapidly growing populations of the coasts and the Sun Belt.

Elsewhere the picture is very different. Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and much of Texas are dominated by green, as are Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. California also remains predominantly green. The map reveals the remarkable extent to which American population growth over the past 45 years has been concentrated in the South and West.

The data for the map comes from the US Census Bureau Population Estimates Program. A date control allows you to view population change for a custom period, while clicking on an individual county or state displays a graph showing how its population has changed over the selected date range.

Perhaps the most revealing feature of the map is this “Emptying Middle”. The broad expanse of declining counties across the Great Plains extends eastwards into the Rust Belt and Industrial Midwest, with red and orange counties scattered across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Together, these areas highlight the uneven geography of American population change: with many rural and former industrial communities across the middle of the country having experienced decades of population decline.

7 Billion People Are Awake Right Now

2026-08-08T04:46:27.529-05:00

At the moment (as I write), 6.962 billion people are awake, while another 2.1 billion are fast asleep. Awake Globe visualizes this constantly shifting global rhythm of sleep and wakefulness, revealing where people around the world are currently awake, asleep, or somewhere in between.

The map presents the Earth as a glowing, rotating globe. Daylight sweeps across its surface at around 1,000 miles per hour (at the equator), while millions of tiny coloured points show where people are currently awake or asleep. Blue represents people who are tucked up in bed, while green indicates those who are awake, with a spectrum of colours in between showing the gradual transition from sleep to wakefulness.

The actual sleeping and wide-awake populations shown on the map have been derived from a number of different sources using a modelled sleep window. Population data comes from GeoNames, covering 135,233 settlements and around 3.13 billion people. The remaining 4.97 billion people are estimated as rural populations, distributed across each country's land according to local settlement density. The sleep model then estimates when these populations are likely to be awake or asleep, taking into account factors such as age, night-shift work, time zones and different working weeks.

Awake Globe is not meant to be a precise census of humanity's sleeping habits. It is more of a modelled visualisation of one of our planet's daily rhythms. As day and night sweep around this virtual globe, the colours constantly change, revealing the shifting boundary between the billions of people who are awake and those who are sleeping.

CastleGuessr

2026-08-07T02:23:02.040-05:00

I had determined not to post about Castle Map despite it being written about extensively elsewhere. There are already hundreds of maps of castles around the world and, although I have nothing against AI-generated maps, this one struck me as particularly uninteresting.

That first impression wasn't helped by the site's design. Castle Map takes the illegible grey-text-on-a-black-background AI design trend to even greater lengths by applying the same colour scheme to the map itself, with dark grey land set against a black sea. Not only are the menu options in the legend almost impossible to read, but the map itself is barely legible.

However, today I discovered that Castle Map includes a neat GeoGuessr-style game: CastleGuessr.

CastleGuessr is surprisingly fun to play, especially if, like me, you suddenly discover that you know more than you thought about castle design and architecture, and can tell your English forts from your French châteaux and your Japanese castles. It turns out that a lifetime of watching historical documentaries, period dramas and fantasy films has left me with a surprisingly useful knowledge of the world's fortifications.

Unfortunately, CastleGuessr appears to have been designed by the same AI as Castle Map, so it is very difficult to see your grey crosshair cursor against the grey-coloured map. Which is a shame, because the whole point of the game is to click as accurately as possible on the map. It might help therefore if the cursor were, say, a different colour from the map.

Even with its frustrating colour scheme, CastleGuessr is worth a look. It's a clever twist on the GeoGuessr formula and a reminder that castles are often as distinctive as the cities and landscapes that surround them.

Also See

8 Free Alternatives to Geoguessr

SimCity London: The Pixelated City

2026-08-06T02:14:57.494-05:00

London, drawn

Isometric NYC appears to have started something of a trend. In the last few weeks alone it has inspired both Isopolis - San Francisco and now London, drawn, another sprawling AI-generated city rendered in the style of a classic SimCity map.

Covering 216 square kilometres (roughly Zones 1 to 4), London, drawn transforms the capital into a giant pixel-art illustration that invites the same kind of leisurely browsing as a detailed painting. Pan across the city and you'll spot famous landmarks, hidden mews, sprawling parks and winding streets, all rendered in a beautifully consistent isometric style. The map even includes 183 annotated landmarks, allowing you to click on many of London's best-known buildings to learn more about their history and significance.

The finished map feels effortless, but the accompanying "story"explains just how much human work lies behind a good AI-generated map. The developer documents every stage of the process in remarkable detail, from capturing thousands of carefully aligned images from Google's Photorealistic 3D Tiles to discovering the ideal camera angle, height and tile size.

Creating London, drawn required thousands of rendered source images, extensive prompt engineering, repeated experimentation, manual quality control and painstaking efforts to hide the seams between more than four hundred AI-generated squares. The AI may have painted the city, but it still took weeks of human judgement to teach it how.

Also See

Isometric NYC
Isopolis - San Francisco

A World of Plane Crashes

2026-08-05T01:15:40.078-05:00

If you are already afraid of flying then you might want to give CrashAtlas a miss. This interactive map of aircraft accidents is unlikely to do much for your aerophobia. On the other hand, if you've ever wondered whether a plane has crashed near your home, then CrashAtlas may prove to be a fascinating, if slightly macabre, diversion.

CrashAtlas is a global interactive map dedicated to documenting the history of aviation accidents and incidents around the world. The map plots thousands of crash locations, allowing you to explore where aviation accidents have occurred geographically.

The map provides an intriguing overview of the distribution of aviation accidents across the globe. Zooming into areas with busy air traffic quickly reveals clusters of incidents around major airports and along historic flight corridors. Unfortunately, most of CrashAtlas's more useful features sit behind a paywall. Subscribers can search by aircraft type, airline, operator, location or date, examine detailed accident records, view archival photographs and explore the safety histories of individual aircraft types.

There is a seven-day free trial if you want to preview the features available to paid subscribers. Whether there are enough people willing to pay a recurring subscription for access to historical crash data is another question. For casual visitors, CrashAtlas is an engaging curiosity - a map that invites you to explore the geography of aviation history. For anyone wanting to use it as a serious research tool, a subscription quickly become unavoidable.

Isometric San Francisco

2026-08-04T02:17:48.668-05:00

Following the success of Isometric NYC, it was probably only a matter of time before another city received the same pixel-art treatment. Now Isopolis - San Francisco has recreated the City by the Bay as a sprawling isometric world that looks as though it has been lifted straight from the golden age of SimCity.

From the skyscrapers of the Financial District to the city's famous hills, bridges and waterfront, San Francisco has been transformed into a giant retro cityscape that invites endless exploration. SimCity fans will immediately recognize the aesthetic. The map captures San Francisco as a dense tapestry of tiny buildings, winding streets, parks and piers, all rendered in a consistent pixel-art style.

Like Isometric NYC, this project relies heavily on AI. Rather than using conventional 3D building models, the map was created by streaming Google's Photorealistic 3D Tiles into a Three.js application. Those richly textured models were then used to generate training data for an AI model, with hundreds of pixel-art images created and painstakingly curated to establish a consistent visual style. According to the developer, achieving that consistency required extensive manual experimentation and selection, even with the assistance of AI coding tools.

Unlike the real San Francisco, Isopolis is almost entirely flat. Although the developer used Google's photorealistic 3D tiles as the source material, the finished map doesn't attempt to preserve the city's dramatic changes in elevation. That is probably an inevitable compromise. The clean, consistent pixel-art style - and the fixed isometric viewpoint (no rotation) - would make faithfully representing San Francisco's famously steep streets extremely difficult.

As a result, Isopolis - San Francisco like the original Isometric NYC works less as a geographical model and more as an affectionate reimagining of the city. Like the original SimCity, it captures the character of an urban landscape rather than every aspect of its physical geography. It isn't a map designed for navigation, but a richly detailed illustration that encourages you to zoom in, explore familiar neighbourhoods and appreciate just how much personality can be packed into a retro pixel-art city.

Don't Miss the Eclipse!

2026-08-03T02:00:00.000-05:00

On August 12, 2026, a total solar eclipse will cross Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain. While eclipse chasers in Spain can enjoy totality, there is one potential problem. By the time the Moon's shadow reaches the Iberian Peninsula, the Sun will be hanging just above the western horizon. If there's a mountain between you and the setting Sun, you could miss part - or even all - of the eclipse.

Alessio Zanol's EclipseMap is designed to solve exactly that problem. Rather than simply showing the path of totality, the interactive map calculates how the surrounding landscape affects your view of the eclipse, helping you find locations where the horizon remains clear.

At first glance, the map's colour scheme can be a little surprising. London, which will experience only around 91% of the eclipse, appears in a brighter shade than some locations within the path of totality in northern Spain. The reason is that the colours do not represent how much of the Sun will be covered by the Moon. Instead, they show the percentage of the eclipse that will remain visible above the local horizon.

In much of northern Spain, mountains to the west can hide the low evening Sun before the eclipse has reached its maximum. As a result, some valleys and mountain slopes receive much lower visibility scores than places outside the path of totality with a clear, unobstructed western horizon.

Click anywhere on the map and EclipseMap calculates the percentage of the eclipse visible from that location, allowing you to compare nearby viewpoints and identify the best places to watch the event. It might even save you from making the long journey to the path of totality, only to discover that the mountain you're standing on has blocked your view of the eclipse.

Via: weeklyOSM

The Map of Global Friendship

2026-08-01T03:06:10.677-05:00

Social Connectedness Index Map

St. Louis, Missouri and Bosnia and Herzegovina are separated by more than 5,000 miles. Yet Facebook friendship data reveals that the two places share remarkably strong social ties. An unusually large number of people in St. Louis have Facebook friends in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The explanation lies in the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of Bosnian refugees settled in St. Louis, creating the largest Bosnian community per capita outside Europe. Decades later, those family relationships, friendships and community networks remain so strong that they stand out as one of the most striking patterns in Meta's global dataset of social connections.

The Social Connectedness Index (SCI), developed by Meta's Data for Good team, was designed to measure these otherwise invisible links between places. Using anonymized Facebook friendship data, the SCI calculates the relative probability that a person in one location is friends with someone in another.

The interactive Social Connectedness Index Map brings this data to life by visualizing how strongly any country, state, province or county is connected to every other part of the world. Select any location on the globe and the map instantly recolors to reveal where its strongest social ties lie. Darker shades indicate a higher probability that a Facebook user in your chosen location is friends with someone living there.

You can search directly for any available location or simply click on the map to make a selection. Once a place has been chosen, a control panel allows you to focus on a single country, rescale the colour range to the current view, or adjust the baseline percentile used in the visualization. These options make it much easier to uncover subtle regional differences that would otherwise be overwhelmed by the strongest global connections.

Via: Webcurios

Mapping Meals Under $10

2026-07-31T01:11:52.086-05:00

CheapFoodMap is an interactive map that highlights restaurants across the United States where you can still find meals for under $10. Rather than focusing on national chains, it celebrates local diners, neighborhood taquerias, family-owned cafés and other hidden gems.

Every listing includes the featured meal, its current price and the date that the price was last verified, allowing users to judge how reliable the information is in an age of inflation, when menu prices seem to change every few months.

The project is inspired by South Korea's popular Beggar's Map (거지맵), a community-maintained guide to inexpensive restaurants used by students and budget-conscious diners. Like its Korean inspiration, CheapFoodMap relies on users to submit new locations, vote on existing entries and keep prices up to date. The site even gamifies contributions, rewarding users with 'acorns' for adding and verifying listings, while a leaderboard highlights its most active contributors.

CheapFoodMap isn't just another restaurant finder. It aims to build a community around affordable eating. At launch, the map includes around 1,200 meals across 15 US cities. Its long-term success will depend on its ability to encourage users to contribute new discoveries and keep existing listings up to date. If it succeeds, CheapFoodMap could become an invaluable resource for students, travellers and anyone trying to eat well without emptying their wallet.

German Döner, English Curry & American Pizza

2026-07-29T01:51:00.000-05:00

German Döner Kebab restaurants have started popping up all over London. For some reason, the idea of a German kebab still strikes me as slightly incongruous - a bit like a Swiss curry or a French taco. However, according to a recent analysis of OpenStreetMap food venues, there are far more döner kebab restaurants in Germany than there are in Turkey. In fact, 51% of the world's döner shops are located in Germany.

The surprising truth is that restaurant names often tell us more about migration and language than they do about the birthplace of a dish. That's the premise behind Flavor Lines, an ingenious interactive map that uses millions of restaurant names from OpenStreetMap to reveal the invisible cultural boundaries that shape the world's cuisine.

Rather than mapping where people eat particular foods, Flavor Lines maps where those foods become part of a restaurant's identity. The application searches OpenStreetMap restaurant names for dishes ranging from döner and shawarma to plov, biryani, pierogi and pelmeni. Every location on the map is then coloured according to the nearest restaurant bearing that dish's name, creating striking territories where one culinary term gives way to another.

The resulting boundaries resemble linguistic isoglosses more than political borders. One of the most striking examples is the transition from plov to biryani around the Hindu Kush, while across Eastern Europe pierogi gradually give way to varenyky and then pelmeni as languages change. These aren't borders imposed by geography so much as by culture.

The real achievement of Flavor Lines is that it demonstrates how much hidden information exists within OpenStreetMap. By looking not at where restaurants are located, but at what they choose to call themselves, the map uncovers patterns of migration, language and identity that might otherwise remain invisible.

Bigfoot's Giant Step Forward for Tourism Maps

2026-07-28T02:26:00.000-05:00

Tourism websites often present destinations using static maps, brochures and carefully curated lists of attractions. Bigfoot's BC demonstrates that there is a much more engaging alternative. By turning British Columbia into a playful 3D world that visitors can explore as a giant Sasquatch, it transforms the traditional tourist guide into an interactive adventure.

Built with three.js and powered by open geographic data, this map recreates the province of British Columbia as a charming low-poly landscape. The terrain follows British Columbia's real topography, while roads, lakes, parks and settlements are all positioned using real-world geographic data. The result is a map that resembles an open-world video game.

Rather than assigning missions or objectives, Bigfoot's BC gently nudges you to explore. Beacons scattered across the landscape lead you to towns, roadside attractions and hidden natural landmarks. Each discovery opens an information panel explaining the history of the location, accompanied by photographs that help bring each place to life. It transforms what could have been little more than a virtual sightseeing tour into an engaging introduction to the province's geography and history

One of the map's greatest strengths is that it rewards curiosity. Leaving the main roads often uncovers hidden viewpoints, wildlife and lesser-known places that many visitors - and probably quite a few residents - might otherwise overlook.

The Most Optimal Road Trip Maps

2026-07-27T02:19:10.786-05:00

In 1954, a landmark paper in computer science famously solved the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by proving the exact, shortest route to visit all 48 contiguous state capitals plus Washington D.C. The underlying puzzle is deceptively simple: given a list of destinations, what is the shortest possible route that visits each location once before returning to the start?

That breakthrough kicked off a long tradition of mathematical road trips, inspiring some wonderfully bizarre optimal road trip maps of the United States:

Casino Road Trip plots the optimal route to visit all 835 casinos in the United States. The resulting journey covers 33,826 miles and would take around 31 days to complete - although I suspect you'll run out of money long before you reach the final stop.

Randy Olson's Optimal Road Trip Across the U.S. tackles a more scenic challenge, calculating the shortest possible route that visits 50 of America's best-known landmarks.

The Best Brewery Road Trip Ever optimizes an itinerary around 71 of the highest-rated breweries in the United States. The route spans nearly 12,000 miles - remember that if you're attempting it for real, make sure that your designated driver stays sober.

The Optimal County Tour visits every county in the United States. This is a journey of 93,466 miles, taking in 3,100 county seats.

The Traveling Tesla Salesman visualizes the optimal route around all 196 Tesla superchargers in the U.S. (originally published in 2015 - so there are probably a few more now).

Ready to build your own?

If these epic itineraries have inspired you to plot your own optimal road trip, you don't need a supercomputer to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem today. Several modern web mapping APIs and open-source libraries can handle the heavy lifting for you:

GraphHopper Route Optimization - a fast, web-based routing engine that takes a matrix of coordinates and returns fully optimized turn-by-turn routes across global road networks.

Openrouteservice Optimization - an open-source vehicle routing engine powered by OpenStreetMap data. It solves complex TSP and multi-stop routing problems in milliseconds, making it ideal for pairing with front-end mapping libraries like MapLibre GL JS or Leaflet.

Google OR-Tools - Google's open-source suite for combinatorial optimization. If you want to customize your constraints - like forcing specific stopovers, driver breaks, or time windows - OR-Tools can help calculate the optimal sequence before passing coordinates to your map renderer.