Show HN: Low Poly Earth – The whole planet in 3D, built from OpenStreetMap data

Show HN: Low Poly Earth – The whole planet in 3D, built from OpenStreetMap data(lowpolyearth.pages.dev)

6 points by blueblazin 13 days ago | 5 comments

After seeing demos of Claude and GPT construct Manhattan and other city neighborhoods in 3D I was inspired to make something similar but for the entire Earth.

It's a low poly version of Google Earth built using open street and elevation data as a native Apple silicon Mac app. It was built entirely using Codex and Claude Code and took about 80 days.

bmoathn 12 days ago |

Don't have a mac to try but site examples look cool! How did you handle arctic regions, arctic DEM? I assume it's an online app so you're serving the terrain height data or does it run offline?

Cool project. Feels like google earth mixed with a lowfi steam game i love Art of Rally :)

blueblazin 12 days ago | |

Thanks, this is an online app and it uses protomaps[1] and mapterhorn[2] data for cities and elevation. So the app streams relevant elevation tiles based on your current location and uses those to render the terrain.

[1] https://protomaps.com [2] https://mapterhorn.com/

bmoathn 11 days ago | | |

Ah interesting thanks for the references I will take a look

ryker2000 13 days ago |

Wow, super cool project, would be awesome if you can manage to get it running in the browser.

blueblazin 12 days ago | |

Thanks! I am trying to port it to the browser. Keeping those Anthropic GPUs and TPUs busy.