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feat(transit): live public-transit vehicles from open GTFS-Realtime feeds (#587)

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Supersedes #218 by @spcpza, ported onto the current component layout with fixes from review.

Verified before merge: format, package boundaries, unit suite, build, and the browser tracking suite; a browser harness for the change where one applies; adversarial review applied.

Contributor: @spcpza. His original commit is the base of this branch, and his own re-port onto main (2026-09-15, `5b69011`) was consulted while finishing the height work. That port reads every vehicle's surface from the app's shared ground-floor system (`cachedGroundFloor` / `warmGroundFloor` / `GROUND_FLOOR_LIFT_M`) rather than sampling the scene per layer, keeps a vehicle hidden until its cell answers, warms a bounded batch per poll on a timer instead of per frame, and renders at the ellipsoid above the altitude gate. That is the sounder primitive — one floor system for the app, with the rooftop-versus-street question already settled against a datum-correct DEM prior — and this branch's height work was rebuilt on it, replacing a bespoke cell cache, ground prior and rooftop rule written here. Credit for that direction is his.

Future work (not in this PR), both written up in docs/CURRENT-STATE.md:

- Readable route names. The realtime feeds carry only `route_id`; `route_short_name` / `route_long_name` live in each operator's static GTFS `routes.txt`, and headsigns in `trips.txt`. Doing it properly wants a server-side metadata loader beside the transit proxy with fixed registered static sources, bounded indexes built once and persisted, a slow conditional refresh, and a versioned route dictionary the browser caches. Shipped here: ids are never rewritten, and a cut one carries an ellipsis instead of reading as a typo.
- Below-ground rendering. Subway vehicles are drawn on the surface directly above themselves, because the feeds carry no depth and a train nobody can see is not worth drawing; the card says so plainly. Real treatment wants OSM tunnel geometry per city and a ghosted sprite tethered to the surface. The owner recorded it and left it.

Round four and after (2026-09-15). The owner tested round three under FLIR and NVG, and then asked for the design to be taken further: elegant in performance, beautiful on camera, trails with a cache for public transport, Cesium-native, and a core other moving layers can adopt. Codex Astra reviewed the plan (it confirmed the speed fault: a glide started from the drawn position at receipt time but spanned the gap between report times, so with MBTA reporting every ~10 s against a 15 s poll every second glide ran at 1.5x; it rejected a queued-segment patch), then wrote the design, then implemented it in commit-sized passes with adversarial review between them and real-browser harness runs by the integrator.

What this PR now contains beyond the contributor's original port:

- Delayed playback in a contact-agnostic core (`src/data/contactPlayback.js`): each vehicle keeps a typed, bounded fix history and a display clock that runs at one second per second through it, a feed-derived lag behind real time, holding at its newest fix rather than extrapolating and never sprinting to catch up. Marker, course, motion word, card and trail all read the same displayed sample. The clock has an explicit time-offset and seek API so a rewind is a later feature, not a rewrite; flights and vessels are untouched.
- A selected-vehicle trail (`src/data/contactTrailRenderer.js`, `src/layers/transit/trails.js`): the retained history drawn with batched Cesium primitives, clipped at display time so the head is exactly the sprite, faded by age, in the mode colour (white under sensor presets), on the same surface path as the marker.
- Bounded proxy-side history (`server/providers/transitHistory.js`): fifteen minutes and at most 128 fixes per vehicle with hard byte ceilings, MBTA only for now (opt-in per feed), served by a small endpoint that never fetches upstream, so a selected trail survives a browser reload while the server keeps running.
- Scene work bounded to what is visible and moving, an occluder, cached DETECT candidates, holds on the render loop only while something visible moves.
- Sensor presets: white-hot haloed sprites under NVG/FLIR/noir (black-hot inverts), saturated mode colours under CRT, per-mode bracket tiers in every theme, the selected card keeping its mode colour.
- A discriminating browser harness (`scripts/qa-transit.mjs`) that samples postRender frames, reads the real card anchor, and measures fleet budgets at 800 and 3,000 vehicles.

Not built, recorded as follow-ups: curated route display names (lowest priority per the owner), fleet-wide tails, route snapping, a rewind UI, adoption of the playback core by flights and vessels.

Verified at merge (2026-09-15 morning): unit suite 3,896 passing, build clean, format and boundary gates clean, tracking regression 109/109, browser harness keyless 200 pass / 0 fail (13 sensor checks unexercised because the live view offered fewer than six isolated sprites; every judged sprite passed), keyed on Google 3D tiles 198 pass with the per-frame allocation gate as the only failure. Follow-ups recorded: the keyed build's playback sampler still allocates per frame (CPU and frame time stay within budget; the 3,000-vehicle metro view sits at a 27.6 ms frame interval against a 25 ms budget), the shared detection overlay's per-paint allocation, friendlier route names, fleet-wide tails, a rewind UI, and adopting the playback core for vessels and flights.
Co-authored-by: spcpza <[email protected]>
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Bilawal Sidhu authored and GitHub committed 2026-09-15 05:18:30 -05:00
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README.md
+87 -81
View File
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
Photorealistic 3D globe. Live aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, traffic, and public cameras. Hands-free voice control powered by a realtime AI agent.
*No place left behind.*
_No place left behind._
![Orbital HUD, a tracked live globe, FLIR terrain — then OPEN SOURCED](docs/media/hero-open-source-reveal.gif)
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Photorealistic 3D globe. Live aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, traffic,
<img src="docs/media/youtube-popular-videos.png" alt="The God's Eye View video series on YouTube" width="100%">
</a>
▶️ **From the project behind the viral God's Eye View series** *(formerly WorldView)* — [5M+ on YouTube](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6qSg2I-7_koPbDnSMo0QeeHX_RknA2uv&si=nBGYMoHWQw41v93Q) · [25M+ across socials](https://www.google.com/search?q=god%27s+eye+view)
▶️ **From the project behind the viral God's Eye View series** _(formerly WorldView)_ — [5M+ on YouTube](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6qSg2I-7_koPbDnSMo0QeeHX_RknA2uv&si=nBGYMoHWQw41v93Q) · [25M+ across socials](https://www.google.com/search?q=god%27s+eye+view)
[![Reached #1 on GitHub Trending](https://img.shields.io/badge/%231_GitHub_Trending-thank_you!-F0A63C?style=flat-square&logo=github)](https://x.com/bilawalsidhu/status/2093798887815348521)
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ Photorealistic 3D globe. Live aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, traffic,
**[#8 Product of the Day](https://www.producthunt.com/products/god-s-eye-view?launch=god-s-eye-view)** · Hunted by Chris Messina, creator of the hashtag
*“pretty cool”* — [Brendan Eich](https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/2094592096401490266), creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and Brave · Featured on **[Pinokio](https://pinokio.co/posts/01m1m4p9xxm3qw7dnnpj2wr93g)**
_“pretty cool”_ — [Brendan Eich](https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/2094592096401490266), creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and Brave · Featured on **[Pinokio](https://pinokio.co/posts/01m1m4p9xxm3qw7dnnpj2wr93g)**
⚡ **Start without API keys.** Install with [Pinokio](https://pinokio.co/apps/github-com-bilawalsidhu-gods-eye-view) or run locally from the terminal. Add optional keys inside the app. **[→ Quick Start](#-quick-start)**
@@ -146,10 +146,10 @@ reopens the same panel.
- **Where keys land:** Pinokio → the app's ignored `pinokio/ENVIRONMENT`; a
terminal clone → the repo-root `.env`. Either file is made owner-only
*before* a secret is written into it. These are local plaintext files,
_before_ a secret is written into it. These are local plaintext files,
excluded from Git; the app uses your keys to contact the providers.
- **Keys you already have stay yours:** values from your shell or the macOS
Keychain show as *configured externally* and are read-only to the panel.
Keychain show as _configured externally_ and are read-only to the panel.
- **What to get first:** the free [Cesium ion](https://cesium.com/ion) token
(eligible personal, non-commercial use; current terms and quotas apply) for
photorealistic 3D and world terrain; a Google Maps key only for the
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ Choose a first-run mission, or try these in order. The GIFs show Google Photorea
![Moving from a full airport overhead down to close taxiway inspection with 3D flight models](docs/media/start-here/airport-ground-traffic-google-3d.gif)
4. **Look through a public camera.** Turn on **CCTV** over Austin, London, California, or Finland. The feeds aren't webcam embeds — they project *into* the 3D city. Cycle coverage to **VIEWSHED** and every camera draws its estimated coverage volume — where it reaches, and where it goes blind.
4. **Look through a public camera.** Turn on **CCTV** over Austin, London, California, or Finland. The feeds aren't webcam embeds — they project _into_ the 3D city. Cycle coverage to **VIEWSHED** and every camera draws its estimated coverage volume — where it reaches, and where it goes blind.
![Diving into an Austin intersection with a live public camera projected into the 3D scene](docs/media/03-austin-cctv.gif)
@@ -200,8 +200,8 @@ Choose a first-run mission, or try these in order. The GIFs show Google Photorea
![Cycling a dense live globe through CRT, FLIR, and NVG in one continuous view](docs/media/01-style-sweep.gif)
7. **Talk to it** *(needs an OpenAI key)*: *"Take me to LAX and select the nearest airborne aircraft."*
8. **Come home.** Hit **Reset Globe** — or just say *"zoom out to a globe view."*
7. **Talk to it** _(needs an OpenAI key)_: _"Take me to LAX and select the nearest airborne aircraft."_
8. **Come home.** Hit **Reset Globe** — or just say _"zoom out to a globe view."_
**Keyboard:** `1`–`7` visual styles · `H` HUD · `D` detection · `C` cockpit · `Esc` out.
@@ -219,7 +219,7 @@ The cockpit even carries its own briefing strip: nearby live signals, regional h
![A live military contact ridden through Normal, NVG, and Ironbow FLIR with dense detection](docs/media/start-here/military-cockpit-dense-google-3d.gif)
*Why cockpit mode exists: you're riding a real aircraft over real terrain — and you get to pick which sensor you see the world through.*
_Why cockpit mode exists: you're riding a real aircraft over real terrain — and you get to pick which sensor you see the world through._
---
@@ -229,19 +229,21 @@ The cockpit even carries its own briefing strip: nearby live signals, regional h
Click **GEV MIC**, grant the microphone, and just talk. This is more than a voice-controlled remote:
- **🧠 It knows what it's looking at.** The agent pulls live scene context before answering — including coordinates, street names, active layers, and view scale. Ask *"what city is this?"* mid-flight and it knows.
- **🎯 Entity Q&A.** Click any plane, ship, or datacenter and ask *"what's this?"* It answers using the object's live telemetry.
- **🧠 It knows what it's looking at.** The agent pulls live scene context before answering — including coordinates, street names, active layers, and view scale. Ask _"what city is this?"_ mid-flight and it knows.
- **🎯 Entity Q&A.** Click any plane, ship, or datacenter and ask _"what's this?"_ It answers using the object's live telemetry.
- **👁️ Visual grounding.** At street level, it reads a viewport screenshot to identify legible signage and building names, and is instructed never to hallucinate labels.
- **🎬 Cinematic framing.** *"Show me the planes overhead"* pulls the camera back, angles it, and frames the live traffic like a director.
- **🎬 Cinematic framing.** _"Show me the planes overhead"_ pulls the camera back, angles it, and frames the live traffic like a director.
- **🔒 Honest and secure.** The agent only confirms actions that succeeded. Your `OPENAI_API_KEY` never touches the browser; the client only gets a short-lived session token.
Twenty-eight tools, four jobs — the commands below come straight from the product's voice test suite and tool playbook:
**🎥 Direct it** — drone-operator camera verbs:
> 🗣️ *"Take me to Tokyo."* · *"Orbit around this area slowly."* · *"Draw the walking route from the Capitol to Zilker Park."* → *"Fly the route we just drew."* · *"Zoom out to a globe view."*
> 🗣️ _"Take me to Tokyo."_ · _"Orbit around this area slowly."_ · _"Draw the walking route from the Capitol to Zilker Park."_ → _"Fly the route we just drew."_ · _"Zoom out to a globe view."_
**🖊️ Annotate it** — a whiteboard over the real world:
> 🗣️ *"Outline the state of Texas."* · *"Annotate the Texas State Capitol and its grounds"* — it draws the **actual enclosing boundary**, not a circle. · *"How far is the Eiffel Tower from the Louvre?"* — a connector arrow appears and it speaks the distance. Everything persists until you say *"clear the map."*
> 🗣️ _"Outline the state of Texas."_ · _"Annotate the Texas State Capitol and its grounds"_ — it draws the **actual enclosing boundary**, not a circle. · _"How far is the Eiffel Tower from the Louvre?"_ — a connector arrow appears and it speaks the distance. Everything persists until you say _"clear the map."_
**✍️ Or draw it yourself** — DISPLAY ▸ **Draw**: pick Area, Line or Pin, click the vertices on the real world, double-click to finish, label it. Same whiteboard, same persistence, no microphone needed.
@@ -250,52 +252,56 @@ Twenty-eight tools, four jobs — the commands below come straight from the prod
![A spoken distance measurement spanning an airport, inspected from orbit](docs/media/04-airport-distance.gif)
**🔎 Interrogate it** — analyst queries against the live layers:
> 🗣️ *"How many flights are over Texas right now?"* · *"Which ships are headed to Oakland?"* · *"What is the biggest fire near Los Angeles?"* · *"Is anything flying above forty thousand feet?"* · *"When does the ISS pass over next?"*
> 🗣️ _"How many flights are over Texas right now?"_ · _"Which ships are headed to Oakland?"_ · _"What is the biggest fire near Los Angeles?"_ · _"Is anything flying above forty thousand feet?"_ · _"When does the ISS pass over next?"_
**🎛️ Operate it** — the whole console, hands-free:
> 🗣️ *"Switch to night vision and turn on the flights layer."* · *"Turn on the camera viewsheds."* · *"Play a news radio station near Austin."* · *"Track that plane."* → *"Enter Cockpit."*
> 🗣️ _"Switch to night vision and turn on the flights layer."_ · _"Turn on the camera viewsheds."_ · _"Play a news radio station near Austin."_ · _"Track that plane."_ → _"Enter Cockpit."_
**And the rapid-fire tier** — one sentence each:
> 🗣️ *"Show me global infrastructure."* (stages the layers and pulls back to the globe) · *"Play Orbital Watch."* (a full cinematic scene) · *"Set detection density to fifty percent."* · *"Next contact — helicopters only."* (mid-cockpit) · *"Show me space missions."* · *"Switch to OSM."* · *"Sharpen the image a touch."* · *"Switch to the tactical layout."* · *"What's turned on right now?"*
> 🗣️ _"Show me global infrastructure."_ (stages the layers and pulls back to the globe) · _"Play Orbital Watch."_ (a full cinematic scene) · _"Set detection density to fifty percent."_ · _"Next contact — helicopters only."_ (mid-cockpit) · _"Show me space missions."_ · _"Switch to OSM."_ · _"Sharpen the image a touch."_ · _"Switch to the tactical layout."_ · _"What's turned on right now?"_
![The globe populating with the world's radio stations as another live layer](docs/media/15-global-radio-layer.gif)
*Ask for radio near anywhere and the globe starts broadcasting — every station is a real place you can fly to.*
_Ask for radio near anywhere and the globe starts broadcasting — every station is a real place you can fly to._
---
## 🛰️ What's on the Globe
Fourteen layers and map sources. **Twelve have a keyless path.** Some offer additional capabilities with a provider key. (🟢 no key · 🟡 free key · 🔴 metered.)
Fifteen layers and map sources. **Thirteen have a keyless path.** Some offer additional capabilities with a provider key. (🟢 no key · 🟡 free key · 🔴 metered.)
| Layer | What you get | Source | Auth |
|-------|--------------|--------|------|
| 🗺️ **Map Stack** | Esri satellite imagery, Google Photorealistic 3D, OSM, plus additional ion-hosted stacks | Esri / Google / Ion / OSM | 🟢 Esri satellite + OSM · 🟡 ion-hosted Google 3D + world terrain · 🔴 direct Google + place search |
| ✈️ **Live Flights** | 11,000+ live aircraft + route history | OpenSky + adsb.lol | 🟢 (🟡 optional for more polling credits) |
| 🎖️ **Military Flights** | ADS-B military traffic in amber | adsb.lol | 🟢 |
| 🚢 **Live Vessels** | Thousands of ships worldwide | AISStream | 🟡 |
| 🛰️ **Satellites** | 838-object catalog, color-coded by class with a live legend — the **DENSE** chip drops in the whole Starlink shell | CelesTrak | 🟢 |
| 🌍 **Earthquakes** | Global seismic activity, last 24h | USGS | 🟢 |
| 🚗 **Traffic** | Simulated vehicles on OSM roads. With TomTom, live flow speeds drive the simulation and congestion colors below ~8 km; individual vehicle positions are not live observations | TomTom + OSM | 🟢 simulation · 🟡 live flow speeds |
| 📹 **CCTV Mesh** | ~3,600 public cameras projected *into* the 3D space — Austin · Texas (TxDOT) · California (Caltrans) · London (TfL) · Ontario (511) · Finland (Fintraffic) · British Columbia (DriveBC) · Estonia (Tallinn, Tarktee) · New South Wales (Live Traffic NSW) · Calgary. Positions are published; poses are estimated priors **you calibrate by dragging a gizmo on the camera itself** | City APIs | 🟢 |
| 📻 **Radio** | Geolocated world radio with an **analog tuner** — drag the needle across up to 750 stations and the globe flies to each broadcaster | Radio Browser / broadcasters | 🟢 |
| 🚲 **Bikeshare** | Live station availability | GBFS | 🟢 |
| 🧭 **Directions** | Click A and B on the globe for a street-following drive, walk or cycle route draped on the terrain with turn-by-turn steps — then FLY the camera along it. No key, no geocoder, no mic | OSRM on FOSSGIS servers (OpenStreetMap) | 🟢 |
| 🔥 **Active Fires** | Live NASA FIRMS detections, trailing 24h | NASA FIRMS | 🟡 |
| 🚀 **Space Missions** | Rolling 30-day launches with payload, stage, and recovery detail | Launch Library 2 | 🟢 (🟡 optional token raises the allowance) |
| 🎖️ **Mapped Installations** | Viewport-bounded military-site context from community mapping — incomplete by nature, and labeled that way | OpenStreetMap | 🟢 |
| Layer | What you get | Source | Auth |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 🗺️ **Map Stack** | Esri satellite imagery, Google Photorealistic 3D, OSM, plus additional ion-hosted stacks | Esri / Google / Ion / OSM | 🟢 Esri satellite + OSM · 🟡 ion-hosted Google 3D + world terrain · 🔴 direct Google + place search |
| ✈️ **Live Flights** | 11,000+ live aircraft + route history | OpenSky + adsb.lol | 🟢 (🟡 optional for more polling credits) |
| 🎖️ **Military Flights** | ADS-B military traffic in amber | adsb.lol | 🟢 |
| 🚢 **Live Vessels** | Thousands of ships worldwide | AISStream | 🟡 |
| 🛰️ **Satellites** | 838-object catalog, color-coded by class with a live legend — the **DENSE** chip drops in the whole Starlink shell | CelesTrak | 🟢 |
| 🌍 **Earthquakes** | Global seismic activity, last 24h | USGS | 🟢 |
| 🚗 **Traffic** | Simulated vehicles on OSM roads. With TomTom, live flow speeds drive the simulation and congestion colors below ~8 km; individual vehicle positions are not live observations | TomTom + OSM | 🟢 simulation · 🟡 live flow speeds |
| 📹 **CCTV Mesh** | ~3,600 public cameras projected _into_ the 3D space — Austin · Texas (TxDOT) · California (Caltrans) · London (TfL) · Ontario (511) · Finland (Fintraffic) · British Columbia (DriveBC) · Estonia (Tallinn, Tarktee) · New South Wales (Live Traffic NSW) · Calgary. Positions are published; poses are estimated priors **you calibrate by dragging a gizmo on the camera itself** | City APIs | 🟢 |
| 📻 **Radio** | Geolocated world radio with an **analog tuner** — drag the needle across up to 750 stations and the globe flies to each broadcaster | Radio Browser / broadcasters | 🟢 |
| 🚲 **Bikeshare** | Live station availability | GBFS | 🟢 |
| 🧭 **Directions** | Click A and B on the globe for a street-following drive, walk or cycle route draped on the terrain with turn-by-turn steps — then FLY the camera along it. No key, no geocoder, no mic | OSRM on FOSSGIS servers (OpenStreetMap) | 🟢 |
| 🚌 **Transit** | Live buses, trams, metros, trains and ferries with delayed playback between reports, selected-vehicle trails, and mode-coloured DETECT labels — Boston, Austin, Minneapolis, Helsinki, the Netherlands, Norway, South East Queensland | Operator GTFS-Realtime feeds | 🟢 |
| 🔥 **Active Fires** | Live NASA FIRMS detections, trailing 24h | NASA FIRMS | 🟡 |
| 🚀 **Space Missions** | Rolling 30-day launches with payload, stage, and recovery detail | Launch Library 2 | 🟢 (🟡 optional token raises the allowance) |
| 🎖️ **Mapped Installations** | Viewport-bounded military-site context from community mapping — incomplete by nature, and labeled that way | OpenStreetMap | 🟢 |
**The basemap ladder — what each tier buys you:**
| You have | The globe you get |
|---|---|
| 🟢 Nothing | Esri World Imagery satellite basemap + keyless terrain, in 2D. OSM takes over automatically if Esri is unreachable; if terrain is unavailable the globe continues without it |
| 🟡 A free Cesium ion token | **Google Photorealistic 3D cities** and world terrain — eligible personal, non-commercial use; current ion terms and quotas apply |
| 🔴 A Google Maps key | The same 3D direct from Google, plus in-app place search — the billing-enabled, metered route |
| You have | The globe you get |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 🟢 Nothing | Esri World Imagery satellite basemap + keyless terrain, in 2D. OSM takes over automatically if Esri is unreachable; if terrain is unavailable the globe continues without it |
| 🟡 A free Cesium ion token | **Google Photorealistic 3D cities** and world terrain — eligible personal, non-commercial use; current ion terms and quotas apply |
| 🔴 A Google Maps key | The same 3D direct from Google, plus in-app place search — the billing-enabled, metered route |
![A reconstructed Falcon 9 ascent climbing and curving into its projected orbit](docs/media/08-falcon9-replay.gif)
*The Space Missions layer replaying a Falcon 9 ascent — labeled `RECONSTRUCTED ESTIMATE`, scrubbable 0.25×–4×.*
_The Space Missions layer replaying a Falcon 9 ascent — labeled `RECONSTRUCTED ESTIMATE`, scrubbable 0.25×–4×._
**Also on the globe:** neighborhood overlays · an optional cockpit WX cloud effect. **Bundled static infrastructure:** Datacenters (4,351), Dams (704), and Submarine Cables (712).
@@ -309,33 +315,33 @@ Fourteen layers and map sources. **Twelve have a keyless path.** Some offer addi
Once the basics click, run these:
| Mission | How |
|---|---|
| **🚁 Ask the planet** | *"Why are all these military helicopters flying in circles?"* Select a military track — it silently backfills ~24 h of real trace history — and see what it's been doing, resolved as stacked 3D loops. |
| **✈️ Final approach** | Click-track an airliner lining up for a runway, hop into the **cockpit**, and ride it down. |
| **🌃 Night watch** | Fly to your own city, switch to **NVG**, and let the detection mesh and HUD read the scene. |
| **🚢 Port call** | Vessels on over the Port of Long Beach. Click a tanker for its tactical card and wake trail — then hit **NEAREST** in the CCTV panel and look at the same water through a public camera. |
| **📻 Tokyo FM** | Orbit Shibuya with the **Radio** layer on — then drag the analog tuner needle: every position snaps to a real station and the globe flies to whoever's broadcasting. |
| **🔥 Fire line** | FIRMS over California. Click a detection — the camera dives to it — read the intensity, then hit **NEAREST** in the CCTV panel for a ground view. |
| **🚶 Ask for a walking route** *🎙️* | Tell the world where you want to go and watch a real street-following route trace itself through the 3D city — then *"fly it"*: banked turns, eased ends, a camera that leads the path like a drone shot. |
| **📏 Measure LAX to DFW** *🎙️* | *"How far is LAX from DFW?"* — an arrow spans the country, the distance lands in the caption, and the endpoints stay pinned to the real world as you orbit. |
| **🚀 Launch replay** | Open **Space Missions**, pick a launch from the last 30 days, and ride the T-minus countdown through ascent to orbit — scrub it at 0.25×–4×. Labeled `RECONSTRUCTED ESTIMATE`, because it is one. |
| **🪦 Walk the boneyard** | Fly from regional context down into dense, fully resolved rows of retired aircraft. |
| **🏗️ Orbit Three Gorges** | Sweep the dam and its terrain at a glance — then flip on the **Dams** layer and find 703 more. |
| Mission | How |
| ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **🚁 Ask the planet** | _"Why are all these military helicopters flying in circles?"_ Select a military track — it silently backfills ~24 h of real trace history — and see what it's been doing, resolved as stacked 3D loops. |
| **✈️ Final approach** | Click-track an airliner lining up for a runway, hop into the **cockpit**, and ride it down. |
| **🌃 Night watch** | Fly to your own city, switch to **NVG**, and let the detection mesh and HUD read the scene. |
| **🚢 Port call** | Vessels on over the Port of Long Beach. Click a tanker for its tactical card and wake trail — then hit **NEAREST** in the CCTV panel and look at the same water through a public camera. |
| **📻 Tokyo FM** | Orbit Shibuya with the **Radio** layer on — then drag the analog tuner needle: every position snaps to a real station and the globe flies to whoever's broadcasting. |
| **🔥 Fire line** | FIRMS over California. Click a detection — the camera dives to it — read the intensity, then hit **NEAREST** in the CCTV panel for a ground view. |
| **🚶 Ask for a walking route** _🎙️_ | Tell the world where you want to go and watch a real street-following route trace itself through the 3D city — then _"fly it"_: banked turns, eased ends, a camera that leads the path like a drone shot. |
| **📏 Measure LAX to DFW** _🎙️_ | _"How far is LAX from DFW?"_ — an arrow spans the country, the distance lands in the caption, and the endpoints stay pinned to the real world as you orbit. |
| **🚀 Launch replay** | Open **Space Missions**, pick a launch from the last 30 days, and ride the T-minus countdown through ascent to orbit — scrub it at 0.25×–4×. Labeled `RECONSTRUCTED ESTIMATE`, because it is one. |
| **🪦 Walk the boneyard** | Fly from regional context down into dense, fully resolved rows of retired aircraft. |
| **🏗️ Orbit Three Gorges** | Sweep the dam and its terrain at a glance — then flip on the **Dams** layer and find 703 more. |
*🎙️ = voice missions — they need an OpenAI key.*
_🎙️ = voice missions — they need an OpenAI key._
![Resolving a selected aircraft's recent flight path into stacked 3D loops above the terrain](docs/media/07-helicopter-loops.gif)
*Ask the planet: a military contact's last ~24 hours of real trace history, resolved as stacked 3D loops.*
_Ask the planet: a military contact's last ~24 hours of real trace history, resolved as stacked 3D loops._
![Asking for a walking route and flying the generated path through the 3D city](docs/media/10-walking-route-flythrough.gif)
*"Draw the walking route… now fly it" — banked turns, eased ends, the camera leading the path like a drone shot.*
_"Draw the walking route… now fly it" — banked turns, eased ends, the camera leading the path like a drone shot._
![Descending from regional context into dense rows of retired aircraft at the boneyard](docs/media/08-boneyard.gif)
*Walk the boneyard: rows of retired airframes, fully resolved in 3D.*
_Walk the boneyard: rows of retired airframes, fully resolved in 3D._
---
@@ -343,10 +349,10 @@ Once the basics click, run these:
How the globe handles live data:
- **World-stable icons.** Aircraft and ships point along their *true real-world heading* at every camera angle — tracked or not, looking straight down or across the horizon — via per-frame screen-space course projection. No spinning, no viewport-locking.
- **World-stable icons.** Aircraft and ships point along their _true real-world heading_ at every camera angle — tracked or not, looking straight down or across the horizon — via per-frame screen-space course projection. No spinning, no viewport-locking.
- **Smooth motion from choppy data.** Live feeds arrive every 15–30s; the globe renders one interval behind real time and interpolates between known fixes. Dead reckoning fills the gaps.
- **Honest satellites.** SGP4 propagation with orbit rings that stay locked to their satellites via GMST realignment — no drift, no per-second flicker.
- **Sits on the real ground.** Entity heights run through a real vertical datum — geoid-aware, sampled against the *rendered* terrain mesh — so aircraft park on aprons and cameras stand on street corners instead of floating.
- **Sits on the real ground.** Entity heights are aligned to work with Google 3D tiles, so aircraft park on aprons and cameras stand on street corners instead of floating.
- **Caching and request budgets.** An OpenSky credit governor, a TomTom daily tile budget, and disk-cached TLEs reduce repeated requests. These controls do not replace provider quotas or billing controls.
- **Server-side credentials.** Every API that touches a private key (OpenAI, AISStream, OpenSky OAuth, camera frames) is brokered through a hardened server-side proxy with SSRF protection, response caps, and sanitized errors. The only keys the browser sees are Google Maps and Cesium ion (restrict both at the provider).
- **No framework.** Vanilla JavaScript, **CesiumJS**, and **Vite** — plus **Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles** for the planet and the **OpenAI Realtime API** for voice. Fast to read, fast to hack on.
@@ -382,25 +388,25 @@ and configuration details.
Six keys. Four have a free tier, and the two 🔴 ones are metered:
| | Key | Why | Get it |
|---|-----|-----|--------|
| 🟡 | **Cesium ion** | 🗺️ Google Photorealistic 3D, world terrain, and additional ion-hosted imagery stacks. The free Community plan is for eligible individual, personal/non-commercial use and has quotas | [cesium.com/ion](https://cesium.com/ion) — use a public `assets:read` token and check current [pricing/eligibility](https://cesium.com/platform/cesium-ion/pricing/) |
| 🔴 | **Google Maps** | Direct Google Photorealistic 3D + Google place search ([Map Tiles API](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile)) | [Google Cloud Console](https://console.cloud.google.com/) — URL-restrict it |
| 🔴 | **OpenAI** | 🎙️ The voice experience + AI HUD summary. The mini model works; the standard model is noticeably smarter. Want Gemini or another provider behind the mic? PRs welcome | [platform.openai.com](https://platform.openai.com) — metered, see costs below |
| 🟡 | **AISStream** | 🚢 Live global ships | [aisstream.io](https://aisstream.io) — free signup |
| 🟡 | **NASA FIRMS** | 🔥 Live active fires | [firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov](https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/api/map_key/) — free |
| 🟡 | **TomTom** | 🚦 Live flow speeds and congestion colors for the simulated traffic layer | [developer.tomtom.com](https://developer.tomtom.com) — free tier available |
| | Key | Why | Get it |
| --- | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 🟡 | **Cesium ion** | 🗺️ Google Photorealistic 3D, world terrain, and additional ion-hosted imagery stacks. The free Community plan is for eligible individual, personal/non-commercial use and has quotas | [cesium.com/ion](https://cesium.com/ion) — use a public `assets:read` token and check current [pricing/eligibility](https://cesium.com/platform/cesium-ion/pricing/) |
| 🔴 | **Google Maps** | Direct Google Photorealistic 3D + Google place search ([Map Tiles API](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile)) | [Google Cloud Console](https://console.cloud.google.com/) — URL-restrict it |
| 🔴 | **OpenAI** | 🎙️ The voice experience + AI HUD summary. The mini model works; the standard model is noticeably smarter. Want Gemini or another provider behind the mic? PRs welcome | [platform.openai.com](https://platform.openai.com) — metered, see costs below |
| 🟡 | **AISStream** | 🚢 Live global ships | [aisstream.io](https://aisstream.io) — free signup |
| 🟡 | **NASA FIRMS** | 🔥 Live active fires | [firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov](https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/api/map_key/) — free |
| 🟡 | **TomTom** | 🚦 Live flow speeds and congestion colors for the simulated traffic layer | [developer.tomtom.com](https://developer.tomtom.com) — free tier available |
![Diving from city-scale live congestion straight into an intersection's public camera](docs/media/05-traffic-to-cctv.gif)
*What the TomTom key buys you: rush-hour density painted on the city — then dive from the jam straight into the camera watching it.*
_What the TomTom key buys you: rush-hour density painted on the city — then dive from the jam straight into the camera watching it._
### Cherry on top
| | Key | Why | Get it |
|---|-----|-----|--------|
| 🟡 | **OpenSky** | ✈️ More flight-polling credits (🟢 anonymous works without) | [opensky-network.org](https://opensky-network.org) |
| 🟡 | **Launch Library 2** | 🚀 Higher space-missions request allowance (🟢 works without) | [thespacedevs.com](https://thespacedevs.com) |
| | Key | Why | Get it |
| --- | -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| 🟡 | **OpenSky** | ✈️ More flight-polling credits (🟢 anonymous works without) | [opensky-network.org](https://opensky-network.org) |
| 🟡 | **Launch Library 2** | 🚀 Higher space-missions request allowance (🟢 works without) | [thespacedevs.com](https://thespacedevs.com) |
Add these if you need higher polling allowances.
@@ -437,12 +443,12 @@ OpenSky can run fully anonymous (`OPENSKY_AUTH_MODE=anon`), or import OAuth cred
Honest numbers, roughly, as of mid-2026 — always check the provider pricing pages:
| | Cost reality |
|---|---|
| **🟢 Most layers** | **$0, no signup.** OpenSky anon, USGS, CelesTrak, adsb.lol, city CCTV, Radio Browser, GBFS, Launch Library 2, bundled datasets. |
| **🟡 The free-key tier** | **$0 with a signup.** AISStream, FIRMS, TomTom, OpenSky, plus Cesium ion for eligible personal/non-commercial use. Provider quotas and eligibility still apply. |
| **🗺️ Google 3D tiles** | **Free through an eligible Cesium ion Community account within its quota; metered through a direct Google key.** Use the direct route for GEV place search or commercial deployment, verify current provider terms, and set budget alerts where billing is enabled. |
| **🔴 OpenAI voice** | **The one that costs real money — so the app meters it for you.** Realtime audio runs a few cents per active minute; an evening of heavy use is single-digit dollars. A live session-spend readout sits next to the mic, with an STD/MINI model toggle, a $2 warning, and a **$5 hard cap that ends the session**. The voice context window is kept deliberately short too. |
| | Cost reality |
| ------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **🟢 Most layers** | **$0, no signup.** OpenSky anon, USGS, CelesTrak, adsb.lol, city CCTV, Radio Browser, GBFS, Launch Library 2, bundled datasets. |
| **🟡 The free-key tier** | **$0 with a signup.** AISStream, FIRMS, TomTom, OpenSky, plus Cesium ion for eligible personal/non-commercial use. Provider quotas and eligibility still apply. |
| **🗺️ Google 3D tiles** | **Free through an eligible Cesium ion Community account within its quota; metered through a direct Google key.** Use the direct route for GEV place search or commercial deployment, verify current provider terms, and set budget alerts where billing is enabled. |
| **🔴 OpenAI voice** | **The one that costs real money — so the app meters it for you.** Realtime audio runs a few cents per active minute; an evening of heavy use is single-digit dollars. A live session-spend readout sits next to the mic, with an STD/MINI model toggle, a $2 warning, and a **$5 hard cap that ends the session**. The voice context window is kept deliberately short too. |
Google's direct 3D route is surprisingly generous: the first 1,000 Photorealistic
3D Tiles sessions each month are currently free, and one root request supports
@@ -500,9 +506,9 @@ First — thank you. To everyone who watched the God-view demos and went off to
So here it is. Step inside the spy-thriller cockpit — except the data is real — and let's turn this into our shared sandbox for making sense of the world, and have fun doing it. This repo is the baseline, it stays open, and the whole point is for you to break things and bolt on layers we haven't thought of yet.
One heads-up from the inside: build in this space for a week and you learn that **the present is the cheap part**. The moment you try to go back in time — tiling, serving, and scrubbing *what happened* and *what changed* at any real resolution — the data gets expensive and the compute gets brutal. That's the long game.
One heads-up from the inside: build in this space for a week and you learn that **the present is the cheap part**. The moment you try to go back in time — tiling, serving, and scrubbing _what happened_ and _what changed_ at any real resolution — the data gets expensive and the compute gets brutal. That's the long game.
**Update — a hosted version is coming.** We originally planned to keep this repository as the open-source client and build a separate professional product. Then the launch happened, and the loudest request wasn't another feature — it was *"just give me a link."* So we're building an official hosted God's Eye View at [Halfpixel](https://halfpixel.ai): no installation, just open it in your browser. The hosted version is the easiest way into this open-source project. More soon.
**Update — a hosted version is coming.** We originally planned to keep this repository as the open-source client and build a separate professional product. Then the launch happened, and the loudest request wasn't another feature — it was _"just give me a link."_ So we're building an official hosted God's Eye View at [Halfpixel](https://halfpixel.ai): no installation, just open it in your browser. The hosted version is the easiest way into this open-source project. More soon.
---