Show HN: Atlas – GIS and interactive maps in the browser

This will probably sound more cynical than it's meant, because I do admire this, but here we go anyway - Whenever I see these impressive-looking online data visualisation projects, I think: What would be interesting - and/or convincing - would be case studies written by experienced GIS people showing how and why they would use this (as compared with other offerings).

Because there are quite a few data visualisation options around these days, many re-imagining subsets of standard GIS functionality from 20+ years ago, into their own online, collaborative, friendly UI (<-- what Microsoft used to call "a wizard"). It's very impressive but at the same time, the unique contributions of such projects are often in the areas of visualisation and UI, rather than in the area of geography. Which are important in their own right!, but will not necessarily be the primary consideration of some categories of user.

Atlas (and Felt, as another commenter mentioned) are interesting, but seem to be targeting a market I feel is too small. If you're established in GIS, you likely have your own stack (and biases). If you're new to it and need something more than just a visualization tool, these offerings can work well, but I fear that users may quickly outgrow the functionality and then move to a more conventional GIS offering.

I do like how Felt includes QGIS integrations as a marketing point. I feel like tools like these are great compliments, but not wholesale replacements. "The new standard for GIS software" is a gross overstatement. If I normally deal with data in the multi-GB range, limiting my uploads to 250MB seems woefully insufficient.

And I think far too many people have experienced data loss when any new platform goes under. Both Atlas and Felt have "sign in with Google" but not Microsoft OAuth which just seems odd to me unless they truly aren't targeting the existing desktop GIS user community. Import/export from OneDrive/O365 would likely be a selling point to many GIS users.

How does this compare to Felt [1]?

It would be nice to have some plans with listed prices in between "Free" and "Enterprise" ("book a demo"). For comparison, Felt has $30/mo and $90/mo plans.

Calling yourselves "the new standard for GIS software" seems like overly strong branding.

[1]: https://felt.com/

This is pretty cool - sort of a lightweight QGIS in the browser, with the ability to create and share maps.

So far the functionality looks kind of wide but thin. Lots of features but each one isn't fully cooked yet. For instance, you can create comment threads, but you can't resolve them - just delete them.

Various functions are also a bit buggy or clunky. I tried some vector operations on built in datasets, and they were just greyed out with no explanation.

Is there an API? Who knows. Hopefully there will be.

Overall, impressively easy to use.

I also hope they add map data authoring features to it.

The front landing page needs to do a better job of selling what it does, particularly the range of vector and raster analysis features, which is pretty impressive.

AWESOME!.

Just signed up, will report back. Why is this awesome to me?

I have had a passion for GIS as a hobby my whole life, but neer anything deep... until recently I have been doing a lot of art, and I want to make GIS Map art.

I have been using a number of various tools and grabbing open data from places like OpenTopography, USGS, municipality resources, etc.

Further, I love GIS based data science, and especially how informationally dense maps and GIS can be. They are wonderful. (think of how informative looking at a full 3d model of an games to see all the details of a level, objectives, risks, resources. GIS/Mapping is intrinsic to communicating the world around you.

So - I have been looking for the right tool(s) to use - and devour stuff like this.

Looking forward to coming back here with a review after I dive into this for a minute.

The community maps are freaking beautiful. I am sad I hadnt found you earlier!

Some of your community maps deserve their own HN posts, such as the global submarine cable map:

https://app.atlas.co/projects/ft2YpKbX2NgOZueSPSTa?loc=16.38...

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Your activate email link takes you back to the same page: https://i.imgur.com/0NKEeXG.png rather than logging you in.

Adblocker prevents it from loading (ublock origin) - so have to white list it.

Please partner with https://opentopography.org/about/partner

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I'd love to be able to duplicate a community map into my workspace and then do work on them - Maybe you can ask people when they make a "community map" if they can license it with "credit creator" appropriate license type?

For example - the ecological California map in hexagons is wonderful, and I want to duplicate it, and export it and print the hex version of California out with the topological height map applied to it...

https://i.imgur.com/YFXkgQh.png

https://app.atlas.co/projects/RHOMLpu0kDJLDsCNyLYI?loc=-122....

I got excited! But it seems this is just a mapbox gl wrapper?

How does this handle 3D reality capture datasets such as las, obj, slpk/i3S? I saw support for 3D building tilesets but could not find anything else

I tried Atlas for quite a while now and compared to others (both in-cloud and local softwares) it's the most interesting. I'm an Italian urban planner and I've been using various GIS tools for 9 years now. It makes pretty easy for me to add layers quickly, and share my projects with co-workers and online.

I'm really looking for what's next!

For something this ostensibly awesome their landing page needs an interactive demo map, not a video (which incidentally takes too long to load) overlayed by popups and cookie dialogs.

Imagine if maps.google.com had brought you to a video when it first came out.

A top-level link labelled "Pricing" that has anything but pricing?

Close tab.

I thought "ah nice, maybe a mapbox alternative" but it seems not to be the case unfortunately

I have a stupid dream.

I really want a news application that is rendered visually as the Globe. Then a user can drag, zoom, and pan around the world, similar to Google Earth.

The difference being, this news app overlays current trending news stories on the physical location of where it is happening in the world.

Maybe I can manage this idea with this underneath?

As a full time web app maker for many clients over the last 6 years I'm potentially a customer for this.

But that pricing page is a massive turn off. I can't see the functionality or see the pricing without booking a demo with some sales people? No thank you.