Follow London Trains in 3D

Consumer and social

transport tracking visualiser

SHOW HN2026

156points
62comments
#409of 4,366 in 2026
Top 10%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

11 positive, 12 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 12 critical, out of 39 comments about the project. Thread score +0.01.

Execution: 0 for, 7 againstDesign: 1 for, 5 againstIdea: 3 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fun and impressive visualisation with deck.gl

    From 3 comments
    • There seems to be some parallax issues between your trip layer and your 3D Tiles layer, but nice usage of deck.gl.
      hokkos on HN
    • This is incredibly cool. I had it open on my desktop for most of the day.
      ohjeez on HN
    • model rough but amazing. i cant do this
      Leewen on HN
  • Good idea to see the tube network in 3D

    From 2 comments
    • I'd love to see a view with all/many trains. In London I was constantly wondering what the criss-cross of underground lines looked like.
      darknavi on HN
    • This is scary. I literally just had a dream last night wishing I could see the metro trains from above the ground in order to follow where the tunnels are under the buildings and…
      Liquidor on HN

Objections

  • Map and train layers are misaligned

    From 4 comments
    • Very nice, but the map seems to be in the wrong position vs. the trains/3d elements.
      fredley on HN
    • There seems to be some parallax issues between your trip layer and your 3D Tiles layer, but nice usage of deck.gl.
      hokkos on HN
    • the tracks arent grounded to the map, they slide all over, and would it cool if we could use satellite view
      purplecats on HN
    • There's also something wrong with the map alignment. I think the tiles are being rendered with the wrong placement - the underlying map doesn't match reality.
      leoedin on HN
  • Trains render underground incorrectly, appearing to float over buildings

    From 3 comments
    • The rendering is a bit weird. It's disorienting to have the trains simultaneously underneath the map and occluding it. It also seems like the z-buffer is not being used correctly…
      modeless on HN
    • Neat! I chose victoria one and it was flying over the buildings!
      tamimio on HN
    • The train paths are drawn on a 2D layer above the buildings, not at z-index that matches the proper 3-D position. So the paths appear to weave around and over the tops of…
      gowld on HN
  • Missing several line branches

    From 3 comments
    • It would appear you are missing the High Barnet branch of the Northern line.
      dmazin on HN
    • And the Reading branch of the Elizabeth line
      uukelele on HN
    • Looks like many (all?) branches are missing. Central line doesn't have the Ealing Broadway branch.
      jdswain on HN
  • Panning is restricted and interaction is buggy

    From 1 comment
    • Interesting but quite buggy. Example: mouse dragging seems trapped in a fairly small area.
      TheOtherHobbes on HN

Requests

  • Free-form view not locked to a single train

    From 1 comment
    • This is frustratingly close to amazing. Obviously you went through all the trouble of pulling all the data from all the trains and displaying them in 3d, but then lock our view…
      IIAOPSW on HN
  • Show all trains or many trains at once

    From 1 comment
    • I'd love to see a view with all/many trains. In London I was constantly wondering what the criss-cross of underground lines looked like.
      darknavi on HN
  • Satellite or realistic 3D tiles

    From 2 comments
    • it would be EVEN cooler if you used cesium and google map tiles api to have realistic looking buildings
      idbnstra on HN
    • the tracks arent grounded to the map, they slide all over, and would it cool if we could use satellite view
      purplecats on HN
  • Touch support

    From 1 comment
  • Scale bar

    From 1 comment
    • Like on most other digital maps today, what's direly missing is a scale bar.. cool feat though, thanks for showing!
      eMPee584 on HN

Questions

  • Is there a repo to look at

    From 1 comment
    • Having just taken the Elisabeth Line to LHR T5 and sitting here, this was fun. Thanks. Edit: Is there a Repo to look at and learn from this?
      sdoering on HN
  • Where does the 3D model data come from

    From 1 comment
    • I'm curious what the 3D model source is - the Gherkin is kinda weird.
      philipwhiuk on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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