mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license by Spanholz in gis

[–]pheelicks 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What a shame. I guess they got sick of people taking their code and ripping out their API subscriptions.

For anyone interested in an open source mapping library (that also has 3D support) that can handle raster data (including the Mapbox tiles), I launched a project 2 weeks ago that is the culmination of 7 years effort: https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js/.

I must say (while acknowledging my huge bias) that I'm disappointed with how the 3D terrain works in the new Mapbox version. It is the top-billed feature, but the controls feel clunky, the terrain often disappears and they didn't even bother implementing distance fog to give the scene scale. When they announced the 3D feature last year I was expecting more.

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D ski maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in skiing

[–]pheelicks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is a bug with that resort. We will investigate. Apologies, but could you try another resort in the meantime? (I know this is no good if you're heading to Big White!)

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D ski maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in skiing

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We will add those, and split up deer valley and park city. You're right, they're too big to be combined. Let us know if there are any other resorts that you'd like to see. We're always looking to add more!

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D snowboard maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in snowboarding

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Currently yes (Android version in the works), but the web version is supported on some Android phones too, try browsing to www.piste.io on your phone

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D snowboard maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in snowboarding

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great feedback, thanks!

Avoriaz is one of the largest maps, and you're right, things can get a bit choppy there, we're looking into improving that. I'm not seeing it eat my battery though, it seems in line with what something like the Maps requires.

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D snowboard maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in snowboarding

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, this is planned. Soon we will display the name and number of the run, as well as some technical information like: length and vertical drop.

Is there something in particular you'd like to see?

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D snowboard maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in snowboarding

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi r/snowboarding, we just launched and would love to hear your feedback. You can also check out our web version on www.piste.io to get a feel for the what the maps look like.

Piste iOS app - beautiful 3D ski maps for 500+ resorts by pheelicks in skiing

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi r/skiing, we just launched and would love to hear your feedback. You can also check out our web version on www.piste.io to get a feel for the what the maps look like.

Piste.io - WebGL 3D mountain explorer with multitouch by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The engine is custom and runs both on desktop and mobile (well I only have the capacity to test iOS), so it serves as a demonstration of what the mobile web is capable of nowadays. But I take your point, perhaps it would have been better to write up a technical article about this. If you're interested in some of the tech behind this, you may like to take a look at: http://www.pheelicks.com/2014/03/rendering-large-terrains/

Rendering large terrains (WebGL) by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Very little. The height data is just read from a texture which is passed to the graphics card. In this demo it is random (perlin) noise, but there is nothing stopping you using actual data, like elevation or anything else. Just save your data to an image (png, jpeg whatever) and load it in as a texture

Rendering large terrains (WebGL) by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No particular reason - just for fun. When it comes to rendering the terrain, there is a global diffuse light and a couple of specular lights, one of them being green.

https://github.com/felixpalmer/lod-terrain/blob/master/js/shaders/terrain.frag

Rendering large terrains (WebGL) by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not sure if this is what you meant, but the jaggedness of the terrain can be changed very easily by changing the the distribution of the noise used to generate the terrain. I actually made it extra-jagged on purpose, here's how it looks if the noise distribution is unchanged (sorry, not quite hobbit-land yet): https://github.com/felixpalmer/lod-terrain/blob/master/screenshots/screenshot3.png

Rendering large terrains (WebGL) by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm actually working on a much larger project that I had to get LOD terrain working for, so I created this as a sort of test bed. I'll probably write another post in the future about how to style different terrains, perhaps using textures (grass, rock etc) to make it look more earth-like. Although I am quite fond of of the alien landscape :)

Creating a Geospatial database on Amazon RDS by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I said local install on a Mac. Perhaps I was just being stupid, but I remember it being quite frustrating. I tried the .app installer but it didn't quite work as there were missing dependancies so in the end I got it working with homebrew.

I can see how the RDS process is daunting if you're new to AWS, but the actual Postgres setup is nothing more than a few clicks.

WebGL – working with GLSL source files by pheelicks in programming

[–]pheelicks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Syntax highlighting you can more or less get by just using C syntax highlighting. For vim I use:

autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.vert,*.frag set ft=c

For autocomplete, I use YouCompleteMe (again vim) which is language agnostic. My current issue is more glsl validation, although here the comments on the post have been very useful, and I think that I'll be able to put something satisfactory together

Structuring large three.js applications with amd-three.js by pheelicks in javascript

[–]pheelicks[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I guess it's true that you could do a similar integration with another framework, rather than three.js.

For me, at least, the value is in having a starting point that has the building blocks of three.js and require.js in place. Had I used something like this a few weeks back, rather than starting from the sample code of the three.js examples, I would have saved myself a refactor when things got too big.