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Show HN: I Was Here – Draw on street view, others can find your drawings

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.

Why are places marked which have zero strokes? Why is the heatmap activating for places without strokes? Is something going wrong?

13 minutes agoseweso

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!

an hour agoqezz

Cool idea, but of course the very first image I clicked into was a dick.

4 hours agotkocmathla

First thing I saw was a Swastika. It was painted on an ex Nazi building, but still...

an hour agoeternauta3k

A swastika or a Hakenkreuz?

28 minutes agoSanjayMehta

Haha yeah, can't have nice things I guess. I'm currently working on automated moderation to catch that stuff faster. In the meantime, Report button exists if you stumble into anything awful.

3 hours agomrktsm__

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.

2 hours agodoctorhandshake

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.

3 hours agoabrookewood

Do you remember any details about the name of the software, or the cause of the lawsuits?

I had a similar idea, funny to hear it's been done and ended so badly.

3 hours agoTeddy_Kord

Don't know if it matches with the lawsuits, but could've been Third Voice (1999-2001).

an hour agogamesieve

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?

4 hours agoFailMore

Mostly from HN in the last 2 hours, yeah. Had some early users before but nothing like this spike. Glad you found the cat drawing!

4 hours agomrktsm__

Nice but come on paying 3.99 for more ink. You HP?

18 minutes agobehehebd

I love it until fine I'll signup and love it again but then no you pay now. My 2 cents is all I have to give.

4 hours agosans_souse

I hear you on the friction. I’m experimenting with the 'ink' limits right now, also the ink actually regenerates. I think I need to make it more obvious in the UI

4 hours agomrktsm__

I was definitely finding it fun, responsive etc. Started to do a Simpsons-esque tag in Boston but ran out of credit. Hope to see more leeway keep up the good work

3 hours agosans_souse

How are the panoramas chosen? That is, can I select one that isn't currently on the map?

4 hours agocolejhudson

About 2,000 locations so far. Mapillary has a lot of imagery but finding the 360 panoramas is trickier since they are a lot rarer. I'm actively expanding coverage

4 hours agomrktsm__

good work! this is like Wplace but in 3D

4 hours agoyukapero

Thanks! That was the main inspiration.

4 hours agomrktsm__

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