Things I learned along the way:
- How slippy maps work and Leaflet.js
- Most elevation maps use data collected back in 2000! [1]
- You can perform calculation on the GPU without knowing GLSL [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Radar_Topography_Missi...
There is another project (https://shadowmap.org) that casts shadows in 3D. You might want to reach out to them. For me, I use ray-tracing per pixel because I want more control/information on a per-pixel basis. For example, when will the sun hit the particular location.
I've been trying to figure out a smart home automated system to determine if shades should be open or closed to optimize for energy efficiency, accounting for sun intensity, time of day, and orientation of the window. I suppose I could throw something like this on rather than relying on generic sunrise and sunset times.
Did you have a lot of wrangling with coordinate systems and the location of the sun changing throughout the year?
[1] https://github.com/mourner/suncalc
I was thinking maybe using it to give actual sunrise/sunset times for any position on earth. For example, Denver sunset time is 5PM but the mountains will cast shadow on Denver at 4:40PM [2]
[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/denver
[2] https://shademap.app/#39.70243,-104.99153,10z,1610667780000t