Hacker Remix

Show HN: 3D Terrain simulation for hiking, skiing etc.

150 points by folli 1 week ago | 62 comments

I'm working on a GPS track visualizer for quite some time. It shines in hilly and mountaineous terrain (where a 3D view makes more sense), but it also offers quite a lot of Strava-like features (statistics etc.).

You can upload your GPX and FIT files manually, or sync directly with Garmin, Coros and Polar.

See https://cubetrek.com for the live app and check out some examples there. It's free and opens source.

Also, anyone who likes to work with 3D visualizations (especially Babylon.js), let me know if you like to help polish this thing further.

SteveVeilStream 1 week ago

I love the examples on your site.

I tried it out but got this message: "Error Track does not contain Timing data."

It would be awesome if it could work on GPX files that don't contain timing data. I often want to visualize a planned route or verify if a GPX file I have downloaded from somewhere has any obvious problems.

folli 1 week ago

Thanks for testing!

The requirement for timing data is in order to calculate all of the statistics. Also, from a perspective of CubeTrek being a kind of diary of your activities, route only files do not really fit into thw picture.

But perhaps it makes sense to allow them on the anonymous upload for the purpose you mention.

dtmooreiv 5 days ago

First off, thank you for building this open source tool folli! With companies changing their subscription terms (eg: GaiaGPS) or shutting down (eg: FatMap), I and many others are looking for alternatives.

Chiming in to +1 SteveVeilStream's point about, "I often want to visualize a planned route". I personally care very little about statistics for a past activity and care much more about route planning for an upcoming activity and route tracking during an activity.

If you're firm on CubeTrek being a diary of your activities, then that's fair but it means folks like me, SteveVeilStream, and anyone else who's unhappy about the changes happening to paid GPS apps will need to continue searching.

SteveVeilStream 1 week ago

Yeah I would be fine with almost all of the statistics missing. I'm just one datapoint and I might be a bad one. Most of my GPS use is in the planning phase. I could also imagine people wanting to share visualizations of their route without the times because they don't want people saying they are slow.

Now I do have a lot of files that include the time... but they are all saved as GDB files. Do you know an easy way for me to extract the GPX file with timing information from the GDB without Garmin MapSource (These are old and I no longer have MapSource installed on my computer.)

folli 1 week ago

For the GDB files, maybe https://gdal.org/en/stable/ can help?

Modified3019 1 week ago

Yeah it is a bit odd to have it fail on lack of timestamps.

One workaround would be to add dummy timestamps. There seem to be a few options floating around, like https://github.com/mikaello/gpxfaketimer (never used, no idea how well it’ll work)

folli 1 week ago

If anyone wants to tinker with the Babylon.js code for the 3D visualizations, I made a standalone, sandbox-like repo, which is much easier to set up:

https://github.com/r-follador/CubeTrek_Babylon

esperent 1 week ago

I work in the web 3d space, but unfortunately I know nothing about working with Babylon.js. What made you choose this engine? Did you evaluate cesium.js or three.js? Three.js would get you probably a couple of orders of magnitude more potential contributors, while cesium.js is designed for exactly this kind of project - at least that's my understanding, I haven't personally used it either.

EDIT: btw this sounds like a complaint but I didn't mean it that way. You might have really good reasons for your choice and I'm curious to hear them if you're willing to share.

folli 1 week ago

All good, it's a valid question.

I'm actually using cesium.js for the replay mode (https://cubetrek.com/replay/6638) using Google Earth data.

For the 3D mode I was evaluating both Three.js and Babylon.js, and back when I started Babylon.js seemed a bit more exciting as I could set everything up a bit faster, so it was not an objective choice. But perhaps it was the wrong decision in hindsight...

esperent 7 days ago

Thanks for your reply.

> But perhaps it was the wrong decision in hindsight

Well, it's hard to say. Babylon.js is funded by Microsoft and there's some good things that come from that. Better docs, more of a batteries included approach. I'd say it's far from a totally wrong choice anyway.

nox101 1 week ago

Very cool.

I know this is not a related solution but just want to remind people that Google maps has a 3D mode. I do wonder if they are planning to get rid of it because they are burying it deep. you have to turn on "Globe View" and "Satellite"

https://i.postimg.cc/kMRMKvjc/Screenshot-2025-01-11-at-10-59...

folli 1 week ago

The replay mode (example: https://cubetrek.com/replay/6338) also uses Google Earth data. However, I'm a bit hesitant to further work on this, as I don't know if Google will suddenly pull the plug or charge extraorbitant amounts for usage. I consider it more of a proof of concept at this stage.

kbrackbill 1 week ago

This is really cool, just tried it with a recent hike ( https://cubetrek.com/view/362602 ). Strava has a really basic 3d visualization but it's from a fixed angle which isn't very useful. Being able to move around and the replay mode are really neat. I was confused a little about the flame effect on the route before I realized it was matching my mouse on the other charts.

I second the request to be able to visualize routes without timing, it'd be awesome to take some route I have planned out in caltopo and view it here.

Also it seems like not quite what you're aiming for but I already have a few places I can (and sometimes do) upload these for the sharing/community/diary aspect (strava and peakery) and it would be cool to have some sort of integration where I could visualize activities from there without having to download/upload the GPX. Maybe I really need some kind of GPX multiplexer to upload stuff from my GPS to all the different places it could go :).

folli 1 week ago

Your hike looks cool, thanks for sharing!

Getting the data from Strava is something I really don't wanna touch with a ten foot pole. Talking to other devs, using their API is the stuff of nightmares because they keep changing their ToS very frequently and recently they have become extremely restrictive on what you can do with "their" (actually the user's) activity data.

I never heard of Peakery, need to look into that.

What you can do, however, is to directly link your Garmin, Coros and Polar account to automatically upload data.

kbrackbill 1 week ago

That makes sense about strava, they don't seem the friendliest to work with. Good to know about linking garmin, etc. accounts though, I missed that and it would definitely do what I want.