Show HN: I Was Here – Draw on street view, others can find your drawings
global canvas, anyone can leave a mark anywhere and others stumble onto it.
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AI Executive Synthesis
global canvas, anyone can leave a mark anywhere and others stumble onto it.
'I Was Here' is a niche consumer-facing application leveraging geospatial data and real-time rendering. Its core value proposition is ephemeral digital graffiti on real-world street views, fostering a unique form of social interaction and persistent digital presence. The use of WebGL2 for 3D projection and Mapillary for imagery indicates a technically sound implementation for its specific purpose. Market implications: This is primarily a novelty or social experiment, not a B2B SaaS product. It lacks clear monetization paths or enterprise utility. While it demonstrates technical capability in geospatial rendering, its market impact is limited to consumer engagement and digital art communities. No direct B2B SaaS implications.
Hey HN, I made a site where you can draw on street-level panoramas. Your drawings persist and other people can see them in real time.Strokes get projected onto the 3D panorama so they wrap around buildings and follow the geometry, not just a flat overlay. Uses WebGL2 for rendering, Mapillary for the street imagery.The idea is for it to become a global canvas, anyone can leave a mark anywhere and others stumble onto it.
Community Voice & Feedback
That's really neat. I think it would be a lot more popular if there were more locations we could draw on, but I get why it takes time to add new ones.Makes me wonder if something similar to this exists but just more of a "draw all over the globe" type of thing. No street view, just satellite view
Such a good idea, love it! How does moderation work though, in the case of certain writings or symbols that might need to be censored?
Also would be cool to have more places available, from maybe Google street view?
Also would be cool to have more places available, from maybe Google street view?
Cool idea !! But a limited number of places which is understandable :)
Kinda fun, it'd be more fun to explore any street view
How do you draw something? I can't seem to do anything but look, I even made an account. I went to look at the nearest locations to me with drawings but they all had nothing. I found the menu on the left side of the screen but that didn't do anything. To draw does it require becoming a paying subscriber?
It's not very obvious which places are available for drawing. At first I thought it pulls Google street view, so I just zoomed in to some place I visited recently, but there was nothing.So it turned out the spots on the map are actually the available panoramas, and not just a heatmap of the signatures.Cool idea overall!
It is my belief that a time may come when we can all ‘write’ on, or link information to, any person, place, or thing, based on a melange of semantic anchors, and in that world there will be fewer secrets and more experts.
A long, long time ago ... there was a browser extension or maybe an iframe, that allowed you to "comment" on public websites. Of course you weren't really commenting on the actual website, just some form of overlay. Anyway, it quickly devolved into lawsuits and rude comments if I recall correctly.
Cool idea, but of course the very first image I clicked into was a dick.
Good fun thanks! Found a cute cat in Buenos Aires. It seems you have quite a lot of activity already, is that all from HN in the last two hours or from something else before this?
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