3 ms·
> Our goal was to create a more accessible and visual tool for citizens to comprehend urban problems and judge the impact of different decisions. Building atop
by neilv 2y ago
> Our goal was to create a more accessible and visual tool for citizens to comprehend urban problems and judge the impact of different decisions.
Building atop an old closed source video game isn't as accessible as would be ideal.
What are some open source and open standard starting points for this (other than OpenStreetMap), and how close do they get you?
(I once built something atop Google Earth, which made sense at the time, but I would've loved to be able to do it atop Web browser features we have today, and open source.)
- icaruswept 2y agoNot even remotely close. If you have millions of dollars and lots of talented programmers, I can build an engine from scratch. We do not live in an ideal world - public policy is about the art of the possible, and $19.99 (cost of Skylines in Sri Lanka) is a massive improvement from the $8000 a year fee for CUBE or OpenPaths. I do want to build a sim someday, but I estimate the learning of it will take me a few years to complete. Right now I'm at the stage of writing basic galaxy generator toys like https://github.com/yudhanjaya/GalaxyGen https://github.com/yudhanjaya/GalaxyGen
- kfarr 2y agoThis is super impressive! I'd agree the open-source tooling isn't there yet, but it's coming in a few places. I started a 3D street visualizer but it's only at the scope of a few blocks at a time, not as large as a city area although we'd like to get there someday: https://github.com/3dstreet/3dstreet/ https://github.com/3dstreet/3dstreet/ There's also https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet for larger area simulation but with less visual fidelity
- icaruswept 2y agoVery cool, great to see progress in this!