Show HN: Text to 3D simulation on a map (does history pretty well)
35 comments
·May 20, 2025mkbehbehani
Cool idea, can only use 2D at the moment. Looks like the 3D tile quota is exhausted: "message": "Quota exceeded for quota metric '3D Tiles root requests' and limit '3D Tiles root requests per day' of service 'tile.googleapis.com' for consumer 'project_number:1016378558728'."
https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/3dtiles/root.json?key=AIzaSyB...
lukehollis
Asking for a quota increase with support! Will build in bring-your-own-key
mkbehbehani
Random thing worth I ran into once, you may have already handled this but sharing just in case:
May want to confirm the map renderer is making its requests using the URL with both the session and API key instead of only the API key. If your API requests are base key only, every refresh client-side might be unexpectedly consuming one of your root quota units, rather than each user getting a session of unlimited tile loads for 3 hours. If you're seeing network traffic in the console from your renderer out to the API without the session token in the query string along with the API token, or if you see the session token is totally different after refreshing, that might be a sign of something wonky causing quota depletion.
Example URL for a tile fetch with both params:
https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/3dtiles/datasets/CgA/files/UlRPVEYuYnVs.json?session=SESSION_TOKEN&key=YOUR_API_KEY
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/create-renderer#requests-and-responses
tomaytotomato
This might be being unfair, but I asked it to simulate the Battle of Goose Green, during the Falklands war of 1982.
Its just a blank screen - https://mused.com/map/sim/2993/battle-of-goose-green
I am excited to see it working though!
yreg
The sim on your link is not blank anymore. I can see a map, some entities and some simple paths they take.
rafram
I don't totally understand this, but it has the potential to be very, very cool.
(The satellite imagery doesn't work in Firefox. Just clouds.)
lukehollis
Sorry, exhausted quota on the 3d tiles from Google Maps Platform -- should have workaround up shortly
dr_dshiv
If this was just a post about generated clouds I would have upvoted anyway. They were cool. Love the vision!
spuz
The map imagery doesn't seem to work in Edge either.
mdrzn
Seems very interesting tho. Maybe pre-generate the three "prompts" that you show when I open the page, and load them from cache when I select them? At least I can see how it should work.
edit: in 2d the map loads, in 3d it doesn't load. But when it works in 2d it's VERY COOL!
Here's my example: https://mused.com/map/sim/3129/roman-civil-wars-of-the-1st-c...
solardev
I don't understand what it's supposed to do. I see clouds and a prompt entry. I type something in and it just gives me a text response about New York urban tourism...?
caseyy
I think it's a 3D visualization of Earth with simulated clouds. You can ask an AI to generate a GIS layer to visualize an event. Then, you can talk to parts of the event in chat.
lukehollis
Here's a video -- the 3d map tiles quota was hit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS9sNcDLJU
Should be back shortly!
conception
This is magic. I just did volcano and it simulated lava flow, emergency responders, blast zones. Pretty cool stuff.
lukehollis
Thanks!
lukehollis
Update: sorry google maps 3d tiles aren't displaying!
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS9sNcDLJU
The Google Maps 3d Photorealistic Tiles are returning 429 Error too many requests Looks like will need to build in the ability for people to bring their own Google Maps API key. Fix up shortly
lukehollis
Hey defaulting to 2D map temporarily! 3d will work shortly
moontear
Doesn't work in Chrome (no map), doesn't work in Firefox. This sounds really interesting and I would love a video of it working its magic.
meindnoch
I don't know what this is supposed to do, but it doesn't seem to work.
lukehollis
Sorry, hit a quota on the 3d map tiles - here's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS9sNcDLJU
And requested increase, should be back soon!
taneq
I asked for a large asteroid impacting the Pacific ocean. Interestingly the resultant tidal wave apparently heads directly to Honolulu, then to Terminal Island, then reverses course and visits Sydney before traveling overland through New South Wales and Queensland, causing some earthquakes in Papua New Guinea, and coming to rest in Tokyo Harbour.
Also I just realised I can talk to the asteroid. It understandably seems a little traumatized.
me: Hi! What brings you to this particular part of the ocean?
asteroid: *hurtling through the atmosphere at tremendous speed, trailing
fire* AAARRRRRGGGHHHHH! NOT BY CHOICE! Gravity's got me in its grip!
Been floating peacefully through space for millions of years until your
planet's pull caught me! CAN'T STOP NOW! *glowing brighter* Ocean impact
in approximately 17 seconds! Nothing personal against this particular
patch of water! BRACE FOR TSUNAMI! *increasing in brightness and
velocity*
walthamstow
Couldn't help but start humming Queen's Don't Stop Me Now after reading what the asteroid said
lukehollis
This is the best thing that anyone has simulated yet hahah
thenthenthen
The scaling is off on mobile, the prompt box is hidden from view etc.
eluttmann
mobile coming soon. focus is desktop
folli
I can't get it to work, but it sounds interesting. Does anyone have a screen recording to share?
Simulate anything on a map from a text prompt -- and conduct risk analysis against LiveUA map's global realtime data points from social media and news sources. I trained a GPT-2-size model on historical incident data used to predict things that will go wrong.
As historian Benjamin Breen mentions, the leading language models are good historians, so the application will simulate historical events pretty well also.
I include a Multi-Agent RL Urban Mobility model in progress displayed on the map as small white cubes representing traffic and pedestrians. Around SF, it uses real census data and other sources for semantically meaningful day plans, etc. It will populate where you move the map, albeit a little slowly. This is based on previous work on my GitHub--I hope to connect it to Unreal's city samples project soon.
The simulations are pretty simple so far but will grow in complexity soon.
I won the AGI House World Models Hackathon with this and the MARL model.
Many thanks to Shota Matsuda and Garrett Johnson for the cloud and atmospheric effects libraries on Github at takram-design-engineering/three-geospatial
Glad for feedback, and thanks for trying it out!