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Comment by folli | Hacker News Reader

I'm facing the issue on how to aesthetically visualize my hiking and skiing GPS tracks in mountainous terrain (similar to the OP, I live in Switzerland, so it's either up or down).

I've decided to go directly the 3D route using Babylon.js, see here for an example: https://cubetrek.com/view/6338

Within Switzerland, it also uses Swiss-style maps as texture, outside of Switzerland a visually similar map style.

I'm looking for Beta testers, so feel free to sign up: https://cubetrek.com/

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Looks fun. I just tried to sign up, but the link I received by email redirected to http://localhost:8080

Damn, that's why I need diligent beta testers ;)

Seems to be some problem in redirecting to the "success page", your email should be verified in any case. I need to look into that.

Edit: seems to be some issue with my Nginx setup.

Looks really nice. One comment from a usability perspective: it would be nice if the center of rotation were a point on the trail, rather than a point somewhere underneath the landscape. Better still if that center point was dynamic as you pan around the map, such that it’s always the ‘middle’ point of the trail segment that’s in the viewport (at least, I think that’s what my brain is telling me it wants, I might be specifying that slightly wrong).

Great work anyhow!

Thanks for trying it out! I like the idea about the dynamic center of rotation, I have not thought about this.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions: contact@cubetrek.com

One of my pet peeves is when I zoom in to a 3D model and the rotation is somewhere far off screen, most of the time the model center. It makes it very difficult to orient yourself when rotation also moves what I was looking at off screen.

I think Google Earth (desktop) does it well, it rotates around the point where the mouse cursor is pushed. So you push the center button, it shows a marker where the pointer was, and then you rotate by moving the mouse.

At the very least I think the rotation center should be on the surface and on screen.

I think Google Earth has two options - you can keep the "camera" fixed and change the direction it's looking, or - you can rotate around a point on earth. I can't remember the details but this is accomplished using different modifier keys + the arrow keys.

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