3D map of the Czech Republic, made from 12.5cm/px imagery (2017) | Hacker News Reader

3D map of the Czech Republic, made from 12.5cm/px imagery (2017)

mapy.cz

335 pointsToutouxc111 comments

Some places to see:

- Rattay from Kingdom Come: Deliverance: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=399&yaw=57&pitch=-2...

- ArmA II / DayZ map (hovering above Chernogorsk): https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=3369&yaw=-14&pitch=...

- Church moved by 841 meters in 1975, artificial lake (ex-coal mine) opened in 2020: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=303&yaw=-16&pitch=-...

- Military training area, Doupov mountains: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=1582&yaw=-75&pitch=...

- Pumped-storage reservoir, Dlouhé Stráně: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=1337&yaw=-177&pitch...

Here's a video contrasting the ArmA/DayZ Cherno map versus drone footage of the real place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhCNEpcPO4

I'm completely lost without driving directions these days. But after accruing a few hundred hours in ArmA and DayZ, if you dropped me in or north of Usti nad Labem, I could get around no problem.

“Check out this big artificial lake and this church that was moved on train tracks once”

(Goes to investigate)

There's a frickin wizard tower next door, you're burying the lede!

https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?moje-mapy&m3d=1&height=675&yaw=1...

Beautiful!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hn%C4%9Bv%C3%ADn_Castle

There is a castle you can rent for camping outside of Brno.

https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=305&yaw=148&pitch=-...

Also some cool sandstone walls (Elbe Sandstone): https://mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=174&yaw=-30&pitch=-19&...

Also:

- Livonia, ARMA III: Contact: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=4952&yaw=-27&pitch=...

Wow, didn't know they put Chřiby in Arma, exciting! Though sadly not the parts I know well, will have to improve that.

Zooming in on the lower basin of the pumped storage reservoir switches the map from showing the filled basin to an empty basin!

Impression for those that don't want to wait for the application to load: https://lucgommans.nl/tmp/prague3d.html (5MB, 10s mp4 of a square in Prague)

A bit choppy because of the basically nonexistent GPU, and I just made it with xdotool (moving the mouse straight/consistently) while recording the screen, but I'm quite impressed with the level of detail of this 3d map!

And the practical application of data like these: https://prehrada.hrach.eu/en.html

This looks very useful and would bring electricity prices way down. The best time to start building would have been years ago, the second best is today!

I assume you’re joking, but in case you’re not - the plan would put the capital city (Prague/Praha) under 200m of water.

Yes, but 2 PWh clean energy though. Great for economic growth, and the new lake would be good for leisure and tourism.

We just need to float it. A new Venice of the North. Take that, Amsterdam!

This site is quintessential Czech humor, similar in spirit to recent Kralovec annexation and Jara Cimrman. Thank you for linking it here.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/WarWithThe... is another example of Czech humor. (From the author who brought you Robots.)

Reminds me "Ocean of Dreams" meme map https://imgur.com/gallery/Hkr5jgW

Wouldn't this put Prague underwater?

That's one of the main benefits.

also

> only a relatively small levee is needed.

facing towards Germany, if those small red lines are it.

One key problem I see is that Plzen is now underwater too, which means, no more Pilsner Urquell.

That would be bad.

And the more sinister application of this kind of map is for programming optimal paths for cruise missiles.

This, however, makes it easier to get funding. If you want money, create military, banking or casino/betting applications.

I see Jenda being Jenda.

let me guess it's proposed by someone from Brno

No, I (the author) am from Prague. However, I have something much better for people from Brno. Also, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and neighboring countries.

https://www.abclinuxu.cz/images/screenshots/1/0/250401-pouzi...

It is actually a recovery of a previous natural state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonian_Sea

Here is a writeup on how to create your own dam simulation: https://www-abclinuxu-cz.translate.goog/blog/jenda/2021/4/po...

It actually has some commercial applications, we use very similar software for simulating radar coverage.

Czech ingenuity solving the centuries-old sea-access issue.

Very nice! Obligatory and shameless self promotion everytime the topic of 3D maps comes up:

I recently created a web app to visualize GPS tracking files in a 3D terrain. You can upload your GPX or FIT files and it generates the 3D Terrain using Babylon.js

It's called https://cubetrek.com

I recently created a web app to visualize GPS tracking files

Off topic, but since you work with GPS tracking files, perhaps you can recommend a GPS tracking device for me.

Until last year, I used one I got around 2005 that was about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. You turned it on, and it would start logging waypoints at 10 minute intervals to a standard text tracking file on a microSD card. I could unload that text file into my computer and plot the route on a map in a bunch of mapping applications.

It was great because when I was going on an adventure off the grid, or traveling overseas or something, I'd clip it to my backpack and then when I got home look at all the fun places I'd been.

I recently tried to find a replacement on Amazon, and nothing is suitable. They are all:

- Built with a big magnet for clamping to the underside a car

- Just a stripped-down Android phone, so large, fragile, and complicated

- Require a subscription

- Require cellular connectivity

- A watch

- A piece of software

I don't want connected. I don't want to subscribe to anything. I don't want it to drain my phone's battery. I don't want to stalk my ex-girlfriend.

I just want something simple that I can turn on and turn off. I know it's possible, because I had one. I just want to find another one.

Why not a dedicated phone? A small app like https://github.com/mendhak/gpslogger and use it in airplane mode. Add a prepaid SIM card so that you can use it as a backup in case of emergency.

That's basically what I'm doing to record my bike rides, with the exception that I leave the display and mobile internet on, since I use it as my bike computer. In my case it lasts around 3 hours, but the screen is at max brightness and there's a continuous websocket connection to my server, GPS is recorded in realtime, accelerometer and magnetic field multiple times a second.

So I guess that if I'd only record GPS once a minute with the screen off and no mobile connection that battery would last for more than a day.

You could also use it as a camera.

Plus, when you get home, you connect it to wifi and let it upload the data to your server.

I mean a cheap phone with a big battery.

What a blast for the past! I still have a functioning Wintec GPS tracker which I bought in 2007. One battery lasts for some days, I have multiple batteries… It’s barely larger than a pack of matches. Currently they sell This model here https://www.win-tec.com.tw/portfolio-item/wbt202/, I have a WBT200.

This is very much like the one I want to replace. Unfortunately, it's not available for retail purchase anymore.

True, sorry. I just looked at the site on my mobile. Also no luck on eBay for me...

If my memory serves me good, then a https://www.amazon.com/i-gotU-GT-120-Travel-Logger-Software/... should also do the trick.

Watches appear on the reject list, but fail to match any of your explanations. If it's about not wanting something on your wrist, just replace the strap with one that is good for clipping to your backpack. Most of the cheaper Garmin don't offer an option to lower recording frequency for extreme battery runtimes, but the Instinct series should do that just fine.

I personally use a Garmin Fenix (an old one, Fenix 3). The watch form factor is perfect for my use cases (mainly hiking, running and ski mountaineering).

Also: the barometric altimeter is a must have for mountaineering purposes.

I guess it very much depends on what you need it for.

Garmin Etrex.

Discontinued, according to https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/6403

The only available Garmin alternative is $200. The one I'm replacing was $30. But I'm willing to go to $75.

Also, it's a bit large because it has a screen, but that's not a deal-breaker.

The one I'm replacing didn't even have a screen, just a light for power and a light to indicate it was connected to the satellites.

There is a newer model eTrex 10.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/87768

I have it, it does the job well. It can store about 14 days of walking, the 25 hour battery life is accurate, it can do more with good batteries (uses 2 AA) and if you reduce the recording interval.

The map is rubbish, I deleted it to get more data for the exported tracks, which you can download to any computer with a USB cable, no special driver needed. Unfortunately it doesn't have a card slot.

The great thing for hiking is it supports just about any coordinate system you can think of (at least supports all that I know).

Very cool! But when trying stuff like this I'm always reminded how flat things look at scale, hah. Like my bike ride to work the other day: https://cubetrek.com/view/8197 200m of elevation from kilometer 25 to kilometer 31, but hard to grasp how steep some of those hills are, haha.

But for hiking mountainsides, or where I specifically bike up steep hills it looks really great https://cubetrek.com/view/8203

I completely agree. To let you in on a little secret: the hills/mountains are already exaggarated by a factor of 1.5 to make them stand out more. So reality is even more flat.

The tracks are definitely more impressive on mountaineous terrains (see some of the examples on the homepage), for flat terrain a traditional 2D map is more helpful.

like,mind=blown.

i was on a trek last month and was following a trail from a gpx file. there was no other guide with us so i had to constantly keep the phone on, try to be on the dotted line and more often i would divert to one side and had going up, we diverted a lot, had to face trouble being rimrocked more than once.

one, i felt like a need for voice navigation on OSM for hiking, just a simple "you have diverted from track, move to right 10 meters to be back on track" followed by "you are on track".

then i felt like the app should have 3d elevation data WITH the gpx track so that i can look at the phone, see the contour and look up at the rock and cross reference. This is 100% what i wanted.

1. is this open source ? 2. can this be added to some hiking app or even to osmand? 3. i tried to add a gpx track and got "Track does not contain Timing data.". if the file does not have that data, why not ignore all that and just show the visualization?

Thanks for checking it out.

No, it's not open source yet. I don't yet know where to go with this and if there's enough interest to continue development. I'm currently working on having accounts, so users can upload their tracks to their own profile. Also, integration with Garmin Connect is almost finished (so Garmin tracks will be automatically synced to your profile). Sign up to the newsletter if you want to keep in touch (or write me an email).

Regarding 3.: It only works for GPX files with timing data (i.e. from a n actual activity) in order to show speed etc. But this is the most requested feature so far, so I'll work on it...

Is there anyway to get such track or map from Apple Fitness?

I don't use Apple Fitness, but I assume there's a way to export GPX files?

As far as I know, you need a third person app. Strava will import from Apple Fitness, and you can export the .gpx from Strava.

Before it did that, I used HealthFit (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/healthfit/id1202650514) but there are others, I'm sure some are free.

3D map of my home country made available by our local map provider Mapy.cz (those guys rock).

Some more info: https://www.melowntech.com/post/2017/08/11/mapycz-country-wi...

Mapy.cz are very good outside of Czech Republic as well.

Perfect for offline hiking maps in Slovakia. Google Maps are basically unusable outside of car roads.

Not for offline (unless you pre-cache), but https://Freemap.sk (which is also OSM-based) is even better for online use.

Thanks, the Strava heatmaps look very helpful for finding common off-trail routes in the mountains.

They're probably my favorite OSM map style, especially the outdoor variant.

I prefer them to Google Maps. I even like the look better.

I was wondering why it kept working as I passed the German border

I like to use mapy.cz when looking at czech republic, because they're veeery recent. Only problem I have with them, is that they are intentionally uncompatible with leaflet. They have their own api/map library and for some reason prohibit usage with other map libraries, because (as per their docs, api.mapy.cz) they believe that accessing their maps directlly is some kind of abuse? Other than that, it's a good product.

This is pretty good, though tile loading needs some work.

I'm the founder of Ayvri, and we did some work with in the Carpathian Mountains (Romania, but they also cross into Czech). https://ayvri.com/scene/7ykxgdzoj9/xkol16r7k4

Tatra mountains: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=2926&yaw=15&pitch=-...

Nice! (Note: It takes forever to load, but it's worth the wait.)

The not yet loaded tiles give a interesting "thirteen floor" effect :)

I found a glitch https://imgur.com/a/6Oh3AQn https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=1100&yaw=234&pitch=... It looks like a quarry. Is the wall too vertical just in the border between tiles? Did they dug that part just between photos?

Yes, it is owned by a company I work for. It is an open pit coal mine. Not a glitch.

The glitch is a small very black thing under the arrow in my screenshot. It looks like a rotated "P". If you move, it's a hole and you can see the map under the image through it.

Why don't map sites ever publish 3D as topo lines overlaid on a flat 2D map? It's computationally much cheaper, and it's not too hard to learn to read a topo map, as long as the elevations are printed in a reasonably dense manner.

Because for a layperson, an actual 3D map is much easier (and prettier) to read than a topo line map.

Literally none of these are "actual 3D maps," they are topo maps. The only additional information they provide is the 3D extension of objects that were already discoverable in 2D.

"Can this map help me find the town hall of Whittier, Alaska?" If not, it isn't a 3D map.

> Can this map help me find the town hall of Whittier, Alaska?

For those who (like me) who didn't get the reference and were curious about this - the town appears to be mainly consolidated into a single 14-story building [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begich_Towers

Probably because it's both easier to make and more visually impressive and interactive. Contour maps made the naive way are too noisy, you need to process the height data in some way first. With 3D all you need is to put a vertex in each height data pixel and use the value as a z position.

https://hkartor.se/anteckningar/generating_graceful_contour_...

http://routegadget.net/karttapullautin/

Protip: open the hiking layer.

Why sacrifice accessibility and usability to save on a bit of computation?

Don't get me wrong, I think it would be super cool to _also_ include a topographical map feature for those who wanted/needed it, but I don't expect most people would be able to use it in lieu of a simple, visual 3D view.

Very nice. Now I can look at Prague and think about how much I miss it :) went in April and had such a great time.

Very cool map, but wow that is a lot of advertising cookies to individually choose!

Didn't see any, which I assume is due to my use of the Easylist Annoyances list in uBO. In my experience it blocks most cookie popups.

my only gripe with mapy.cz is that it's difficult to figure out the altitude of a place. You have to count the contour lines which can get tricky. Id love m seeing it (next to wgs84) when i long tap a location on a map

I remember back in 2010 when I did my ERASMUS stay in Prague, and mapy.cz and their startpage (can't remember the URL or name) was leagues ahead of anything I had seen up until them. Way ahead of Google.

And, at the same time, the interface was straightforward, clear and concise. It felt effortless, in no insecure need to "feel cool". Its only preoccupation was being extremely useful in the most honest way.

I felt enamoured with it. And it even had great naps for my own country, which isn't exactly close by.

I actually checked 3d maps recently, and Apple maps are just soo much better, it's actually very awesome. https://imgur.com/a/Dm0jvUJ - comparison how much cleaner the building are - I think maybe they have some data?

That's cool!

However, this road looks like it might give a rough ride: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?m3d=1&height=138&yaw=234&pitch=-...

This is a very pleasant 3d space to navigate on mobile. I was intuitively able to pan, zoom, rotate about the vertical axis as well as tilt. Put two fingers on the screen and move them vertically to tilt, move them tangent to the original contact center point of the place between two fingers to rotate, pinch them to zoom.

Awesome - since I was a kid I always dreamt with something like this but for the cities I know, because I thought that would make it easy for videogames to use them to set stories. Playing GTA (or other videogames) on my own city would be an incredible experience.

Awesome. Breathtaking.

But the imagery isn't from satellite data, is it? Must be from airplanes.

Indeed, something like 25cm or better is typically shot from airplanes. I don't remember what the physical limit is for image quality given a reasonably sized spy satellite (iirc it's around the 20cm mark), but commercially at least, the high quality imagery is all airplanes. Governments often commission such planes to fly ~yearly at something like 10 cm, as well as commissioning height maps[1], but the very good stuff is not released to the public for privacy reasons. I think the best I've ever seen is 15cm.

The point clouds from those height maps alone, though, I already find to be quite interesting/revealing. You can see the contours of e.g. a tree exactly, even without having any imagery laid onto them: https://snipboard.io/tPsRBo.jpg

[1] For those that can read Dutch, how the Actueel Hoogtebestand Nederland is made: https://www.ahn.nl/ahn-the-making-of

New Zealand regularly uses flying companies to take aerial imagery photos of most of the country, which is generally taken between 30cm and ~2cm, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) then releases this imagery imagery completely free (CC-BY)[1,2] to the public and can be downloaded as GeoTIFFs [3]

I think LINZ decided that <0.05m might have some privacy issues due to being able to distinguish people in it, and have held back releasing some <0.05m or they may have reduced the quality of it.

disclaimer: I work at Land Information New Zealand

[1] https://basemaps.linz.govt.nz/?i=hawkes-bay-urban-2022-0.05m... [2] https://basemaps.linz.govt.nz/?i=christchurch-urban-2021-0.0... [3] https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/106915-christchurch-005m-urb...

> but the very good stuff is not released to the public for privacy reasons.

You can buy the data, the agencies responsible for these data make some decent coin. Yes, they are expensive to obtain, but that is paid by taxpayers anyways, so it is kind of double dipping.

The entire area of Czech republic is available at 0,2-0,125 m per pixel for around ~100k EUR. Not unattainable for those who need it, but not hobbyist price either. For the neighboring Slovak republic, the ortophoto at 0,2 m per pixel is available for free.

As someone who doesn’t know anything about this particular data, how would I go about obtaining that Slovak republic data for free?

The eastern part of the country isn't available yet (April 2023), but the downloads (and supporting information) for what is available is here : https://www.geoportal.sk/en/zbgis/orthophotomosaic/

The eastern part is available for the previous cycle (2019) - https://www.geoportal.sk/en/zbgis/orthophotomosaic/1st-cycle...

I’d missed that, thanks!

> [1] For those that can read Dutch, how the Actueel Hoogtebestand Nederland is made: https://www.ahn.nl/ahn-the-making-of

Google Translate handles it just fine. Interesting!

Doesn't PDOK provide 8 cm resolution photos of The Netherlands?

Recently at an OSM meetup with the local government in Aachen (Germany), they mentioned that some imagery they shot was deemed too invasive and only used internally. I thought that was 10cm, but now checking what is available, looks like I was wrong! Probably it was 5-7cm then? Or maybe this was rather about the imagery available from different angles, so you can see into gardens from different directions?

In iD I see that indeed the PDOK imagery is now labeled 7.5cm, but checking that against the Belgian and German 10cm:

PDOK 7.5cm: https://snipboard.io/fbWqYM.jpg

AIV Flanders 10cm: https://snipboard.io/Ahn4lJ.jpg

NRW (Germany) 10cm: https://snipboard.io/RpT3vA.jpg

PDOK's looks awful, much worse than 10. Maybe some regions are available in a higher resolution?

That is indeed awful, you're right. I remember that satellietdataportaal.nl or something like that allowed access to uncompressed files, maybe they're better. I'll see if I can find my old credentials and compare.

But yeah, compared to those 10 cm images, that can't be effective 7.5 cm/px.

Related: Apple Maps uses some data source that is ridiculously high res for my street. They've updated the image now sadly, but for a while I saw a gangly brown haired silhouette chasing two blonde haired kids across the street. I was super sure that was me and my kids; slanted shadows gave the right relative sizes, too. Cool and creepy at the same time.

For the Dutch railway network, ProRail has commissioned a set of aerial images shot from a helicopter at a height of roughly 190 m, which is ridiculously high-res and available for viewing here: https://twiav.nl/nl/luchtfoto_prorail.php

You can clearly make out individual paving stones or even the catenary wire, so the resolution must be somewhere in the 1 or 2 cm range.

I guess the geometry is also from lidar/airplanes. As example case in Slovakia: https://zbgis.skgeodesy.sk/mkzbgis/en/teren?pos=48.262614,17...

It also has a route planner which can plan a walk around a given spot that takes roughly the specified time or is roughly the specified distance

This is actually really cool. Is the data used public? I can imagine some pretty cool game concepts using such detailed real world data.

Anyone with MSFS, how does its terrain compare? Both are based on conceptually similar tech?

The raw terrain texture and height data is probably a bit lower res in most cases. Some places have photogrammetry, in which case it looks pretty good and looks similar. Outside those areas, which is limited to mostly major cities, any structure you see is auto-generated using some AI algorithm. It looks at the satellite images, open street map metadata and more and guesses what kind of structure matches best. Cities generated that way look ok, unless you fly too close :)

Didn't play for some time but pretty similar. MSFS spawns individual meshes for trees/buildings when you get closer so still a bit better imo, but keep in mind in game you are always pretty high so they didn't focus on first person view details.

Doesn't work in Firefox.

It does work on Firefox for me (on macOS at least)

It does.

It’s missing Královec

For the non-Czechs: this is a running joke about Kaliningrad electing to be annexed by Czech Republic after the occupied territories in Ukraine "voted" to join Russia.

There were a bunch of memes and tweets going around, adverts for holidaying by the Czech seaside, or joining the new Czech Navy to serve aboard the aircraft carrier "Karel Gott". A few companies played along, it was actually pretty funny :)

Nice!

Might be cool, won't know, because of that full page "we are tracking you, do you consent, or do you want to go through a click adventure that'll probably take half an hour before we pretend that analytics and tracking cookies are essential site functionality and we refuse to give you the option to turn those off" notice.

If you can't write your site code to do the right thing when DNT is turned on and without needing sessions to serve restful data, your site isn't done, and your code has bugs that need fixing.

You can open it in the incognito mode, consent to all, and then let the browser delete everything upon closing the window.

Or just don’t use it?

These sorts of comments always ignore the bidirectional relationship between websites and web users. They don’t owe you anything, you’re just another customer with a choice to make.

Yes, that's implicit to the complaint: "too much tracking and profiling being requested: won't use." And then you post a comment letting others know, in the hopes that they do better on their own websites because they see people voice the fact that they'll bounce on unreasonable tracking modals.

They don't owe me anything, I don't owe them anything, and when someone with whom we have no debt relationship one way or the other goes "give me your personal data or I won't show you anything, not even a preview to justify handing over your data" should be called out as making an unreasonable request before, as you suggest, moving on.

I suppose I could understand this complaint more if this was an unusual sight to behold, but surely you see this pattern a million times a day like the rest of society?

I guess it just seems like it's a little overly pedantic, like those people that insist every intersection be replaced with a roundabout because it's more efficient for traffic. It misses the point.

I think the law requiring websites to show the stupid things at every turn was a bad one. It should have been required of browsers to come up with some kind of one-time-per-user configuration standard of data collection and just be done with it. To me, that's better to do it once or twice per computer or whatever the case is, than with every little single-purpose website that someone browses to.

Anyhow, I misread your original complaint anyways, I should've read more carefully before typing. That's my mistake.

No, I don't? And I doubt "the rest of society" does either?

(Most sites that show a consent banner tend to still "just work" even if you don't click any of the buttons - which is a fine way to comply with an idiotic law. They don't throw up a full page "give us your data before we show you anything" =)

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