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Comment by pheelicks | Hacker News Reader

What a shame. I guess they got sick of people taking their code and ripping out their API subscriptions.

For anyone interested in an open source mapping library (that also has 3D support) that can handle raster data (including the Mapbox tiles), I launched a project 2 weeks ago that is the culmination of 7 years effort: https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/.

I must say (while acknowledging my huge bias) that I'm disappointed with how the 3D terrain works in the new Mapbox version. It is the top-billed feature, but the controls feel clunky, the terrain often disappears and they didn't even bother implementing distance fog to give the scene scale. When they announced the 3D feature last year I was expecting more.

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> For anyone interested in an open source mapping library (that also has 3D support) that can handle raster data (including the Mapbox tiles), I launched a project 2 weeks ago that is the culmination of 7 years effort: https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/.

This is really impressive. Just one question about the distance fog, though: as you say it does give the scene scale when you're close to ground, but if you zoom out everything becomes foggy so it seems like it kind of gets hard to see anything. Wouldn't it make sense to somehow reduce the fog as you zoom out so this doesn't happen?

You're not the first person to point this out and the answer is: yes it does need tweaking. I'll add it to the list!

What other alternatives exist? I know now:

* openlayers, but vector tiles have no web GL support there

* Procedural GL JS

* tangram

* deck.gl (from Uber)

* harp.gl (from HERE Maps)

Openlayers has some prototype webgl support that's a bit promising. I enjoyed working with it (but hate working with buggy webgl in general).

Leaflet is also great.

If you're doing any sort of front end GIS I recommend openlayers above all else including mapbox.

But I suspect 99% of users just need basic maps. Leaflet is great for that.

Openlayers has web GL support but not for vector tiles and I would like to have fast vector tiles :)

They removed this support in some previous version, I think.

Or do you have a link to a pull request or issue?

(IMO Leaflet is dead now that the creator is working since several years for Mapbox)

I suspect Leaflet's current install base is many times that of any alternative - it's certainly not dead, and I'd argue its simplicity makes it ideal for most basic mapping applications.

7+ years to be exact. It's unfair to call Leaflet dead — it's still quite actively maintained, gets regular releases and has a huge community of both users and contributors, and Mapbox have always been supportive of me spending time on it during work hours.

What someone can see as less development activity is simply a sign of a mature product that doesn't need many new features and changes to remain useful — focusing on the core basic mapping needs has always been its goal, and it continues to adhere to it.

Thanks for replying and all your amazing work :) !

What I see or meant as a sign of "dead" is that there will be no new features that Mapbox GL JS has but that are critical for future applications. Like proper or inbuilt vector tiles support.

> Like proper or inbuilt vector tiles support

I thought one of the primary features of Leaflet was its modularity. Would built-in vector tile support be an anti-pattern?

Reading this comment makes me a bit sad because I wrote a really good incremental tile based renderer for leaflet that could easily be adapted for vector tiles.

Unfortunately that whole business unit got canned and the code is now gathering dust somewhere :/ would have loved to open source that one

> Unfortunately that whole business unit got canned and the code is now gathering dust somewhere :/ would have loved to open source that one

I'd encourage you to reach out and ask for permission to release it. In the past I've found that the sticking point was usually copyright assignment rather than the release per-se (with a side helping of worry over hidden IP violations), so get them to release a tarball under a permissive license like MIT/BSD, even if your intention is to immediately fork it.

Basically, if you can manage to do the work for them so they can just rubber stamp the release, you can probably get it done.

I work on WebGL in Chrome and WebKit and am interested to hear what problems you've experienced with WebGL.

I'm probably being very unfair given I'm new to it.

I've perpetually run into memory leaks and Max gpu issues whenever I try to use WebGL stuff in Openlayers depending on which browser I use.

Something will work fine in Chrome but max out my laptop's discrete card in Firefox until my laptop thermal throttles.

If you want a concrete example of this I would be happy to put together a reproducible example for you.

That would be great. There are a practically infinite number of things we could improve, and without feedback we won't end up working on the ones that matter to people.

https://cesium.com/cesiumjs/

I’ll add cesium also has commercial support and has been doing this for a while. It’s excellent. Patrick Cozzi and crew really know their stuff, highly recommend.

Does it have vector tiles support?

Nope. Roadmap issue: https://github.com/CesiumGS/cesium/issues/2132

It has had 3D tiles for a long time. Not Mapbox 2D vector tiles though.

+1 for CesiumJS, they have been doing 3D since ages... Also webpage mentions its Open Source from 2012 until Forever (Apache 2.0). I guess its time to switch.

Note that deck.gl was originally developed inside Uber, but was donated to the Urban Computing Foundation (part of the Linux Foundation) and is now under open governance.

Will any of these work with LIDAR data under their 3D rendering?

I'm keen on industrial archaeology and it's really helpful to have 3D visualisations of sites like old quarries.

Stand-alone 3D models can be done like [1] and the detail is substantially better compared to the map 3D views [2] (pits are pits again!) but I want to embed these into a website and start overlaying other data - just like I can with Mapbox maps.

1. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/dinorwic-snakes-ladders-and-...

2. https://felixpalmer.github.io/procedural-gl-js/, search for Llanberis

You might be interested in this: https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/sample-code/...

I have seen in demos coming from a few construction projects using this.

Mapbox actually put out this blog post for visualizing point clouds in 3D with GL JS + Deck.GL in May 2019 - should still be totally possible!

https://blog.mapbox.com/coloring-lidar-4522ca5a7186

The ESRI JavaScript API https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/showcase/

It does 3d, 2d, vector tiles, client side geoprocessing, and plenty of open data/service types

Looks like you're making good progress on windows, less spikes in terrain than I saw last time (I think it was the same project).

We also created a 3D renderer for sports tracking app Ayvri. Our standard player is Cesium, but if you click on the view beta link, you'll see our custom renderer. Still improvements to be made in tile loading.

https://ayvri.com/scene/v5plro09jr/cki6prg1a00013b6baegp6ub6

Isn't your custom player also Cesium? I see a Cesium logo in the top right on both players

Very very cool :)

Three observations:

- Why have a vertical limit when rotating in 3D? I have to click on 2D to look directly top-down. This would be the natural result if I simply tilted the camera all the way downward, but instead it maxes out at some arbitrary angle. (Same the other way, I want to look at the horizon, but I guess there are bandwidth issues involved.)

- Scroll zoom is waaay to slow. I have a mouse with an inertial wheel, so I can just let 'er rip, but this must be frustrating with a regular mouse wheel.

- +/- keys don't zoom, like I'd expect them to.

The camera limits are just defaults, and can be overridden. Manipulating a camera in 3D can be counterintuitive, so the defaults try to keep things manageable at the expense of flexibility.

As you say, the further you can see the higher the bandwidth bill. If you really want to see the horizon, make the window narrow :)

For the other issues, could you please file a issue on the repo? This is not expected and works great on all machines I've tested.

Sure:

https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/issues/6

https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/issues/7

I've also noticed a minor issue, I don't have time at the moment to file a report on github.

I noticed on the demo that if I zoom all the way out, and then use my mouse wheel to zoom in quickly enough I can clip into the earth and see the black below. This does seem to depend on scroll speed being high enough.

Kudos to you. Was a cesium user for a brief period in time. This domain is deceptively difficult.

Kudos for great project. I did see some funny looking monument looking artifacts while browsing your NZ parks examples.

procedural-gl-js is very cool tech! It's unfortunate it doesn't work globally, above 60 degrees north (yet?).

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