Shadowmap

Name: Shadowmap
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Interactive 3D maps app to visualize solar shadows worldwide

5.0•1 review•

17 followers

Interactive 3D maps app to visualize solar shadows worldwide

5.0•1 review•

17 followers

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Given the impact the Sun ☀️ has on all our lives, a tool to predict its availability is surprisingly missing – Shadowmap is here to change that. It visualizes sunlight and solar shadows based on 3D data in a worldwide interactive maps app.

Free Options

Launch tags:Web App•Drones•Photography

Launch Team

LoomHit record, hand off to AI

Promoted

Shadowmap

Maker

Aloha Product Hunt ☀️ and thank you @__tosh for hunting us. It’s an honor 🙌 I’m Georg, founder of Shadowmap and there is so much to say about all that happened along the way to this day! I came up with the idea exactly 8.5 years ago, during a dark and cold winter in Vienna. Streets in the city center are narrow, the buildings are tall and the Sun sits low in the sky. The perfect recipe for a solid winter depression 🤷‍♂️ For two consecutive weeks I could not see the Sun in the sky and given how busy I was back then, I wanted to at least spend my lunch break in a sunny spot nearby. The 3D data representing shadow occluders should be available – but to my surprise, there was no app making use of it. Years and a few startups later there was still no solution and I finally decided to tackle the problem. Shadowmap has been in the works for two years now – including a public beta phase kicking off last October – and it is, at last, time for it to see the light of the day! Pun intended! The process was challenging Creating a web application that is on the one hand capable of processing large amounts of data while on the other hand performing real-time 3D visualization brought some obstacles with it. Plus, I wanted Shadowmap to be intuitive and familiar to use. It has been rewarding though Right from the beginning, conversations with friends brought up new ideas and different use cases: Friends of mine who are into photography immediately saw the potential of having buildings, terrain and the precise Sun’s position integrated into a 3D maps app. Perfect for outdoor and architectural photography – or other shots where one wants to get the lighting perfectly right. To give an example, we recently had our first major customer request, needing advice for an upcoming film shooting in a foreign country: Shadowmap visualizations helped them to choose the right season, hence, Sun position, for their big trip. All of this obviously reaches into territories of cinematographers, directors and drone pilots as well. But there is more I got feedback from people who used it to find bright apartments in Vienna (which is where we had 3D buildings first) or others who wanted to buy land in the countryside (@dvassallo 🤫). We also got requests bei municipalities to visualize reflections by solar panels, tourism offices to plan the Sun for winter hiking routes and even a solar car manufacturer, who wants to integrate it into their infotainment system. And we are proud to announce that there will be a real estate pilot project this June. I love this versatility of application and it confirms a phrase I like to use: The Sun is a prerequisite for life on Earth, it affects everything here and Shadowmap is the tool to understand it. I’m grateful to get the chance to present Shadowmap to you, people of Product Hunt! 😊 I can’t wait to get your feedback, your inspirations, your questions and your plans on how you’ll use it. I’m grateful for the people who helped me along the way with their feedback (@andreasklinger, @__tosh and @levelsio to name a few), @helge, who provided advice and necessary data from the beginning, and especially @simonmulser who started to actively shape Shadowmap with me last summer. He is my future Co-Founder and I can’t ask for a better one. Also for the Austrian Wirtschaftsservice (aws) and its public grant that funded the creation of our first prototype. Further thanks go out to all the people behind open data initiatives we heavily rely on, particularly OpenStreetMap and all open source projects we use, especially Three.js! Today is the public global launch and with this we also introduce 🌆 Worldwide buildings ⭐️ Shadowmap Pro While Shadowmap will always be free in its core functionality, Shadowmap Pro is our SaaS for professionals, primarily creatives. Right from the start it offers full camera and date freedom and there is a list of features to be added in the next weeks and months, like simulation of focal lengths, 1st person perspective, placement of custom 3D objects and even a Moon visualization. These features were requested by current users – we will keep listening to you. Product Hunt Launch Offer To celebrate, we are giving 50% off of the first 100 Shadowmap Pro subscriptions. That is $99 per year for as long as you’re in. You don’t need a code. Just go to app.shadowmap.org and proceed through the “Shadowmap Pro” button. Of course, there’s a trial period (10 days) so you can try everything out in peace. That’s it! Thanks for reading and using Shadowmap 🙏 May the ☀️ shine upon you, much love, Georg

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5yr ago

Helpdesk by LabiDesk

@__tosh @dvassallo @andreasklinger @levelsio @helge @simonmulser @molzer Looks great! Congrats on the launch 🚀

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@bochkovaleks Thanks Aleks 🤗

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5yr ago

Congratulations! Awesome product with a huge field of applications. Pricing structure seems very convincing. All the best!

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@constantin_tutu Thank you for the feedback Constantin! 🙌

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5yr ago

Troopr AI Scrum Master

Congratulations, this is so interesting, just to see. I live in India where we don't have to look for Sunny places, do you have a use case for people like me?

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@rashjbp I assume there is an abundance of Sun where you live 😊 The cool thing about Shadowmap is that the same way it helps you find the Sun, it helps you find some shade. FYI: iea.org estimates that by 2050 cooling will be the major energy demand in buildings. So it makes sense to incorporate solar radiation into building structures and Shadowmap helps with this! Shadowmap: Helping Humans find some Shade (as well) 😉

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5yr ago

Troopr AI Scrum Master

@molzer This is cool and actually the truth!! We do look for shades so often :) And the second one is true too, people are going to need maps for building planning, good though, good product :)

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@rashjbp I'm very happy it resonates with you 🙏

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5yr ago

Oh wow, this is incredible! This will be super helpful for my work trying to propose a method for quantifying sidewalk shade as a way to help cities plan for heat waves and equitable distribution of shade throughout a city. I guess I'm taking sort of the opposite angle -- looking for shade rather than looking for sun :) This seems like a very useful tool for people working for urban resilience and disaster planning. Congrats on seeing your vision through!

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@kim_perez1 Really cool Kim! 💪 That is a nice use case. Do you have already other ideas/products besides Shadowmap to carry out your work?

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@kim_perez1 This sounds very interesting. Remind me of a story I once read about how streets/avenues in NYC were laid out so that for noon they were the brightest (?) on an average day? We're also getting regular requests having route planning on either sun or shade, depending on temperature. Please write me if we can help you somehow!

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5yr ago

@simonmulser Thanks Simon! I wanted to capture shade from buildings and trees along designated walking routes in my city. I created 3D models in ArcGIS Pro, and used LiDAR data to get that third dimension, but then I had to manually size, shape and place every single tree -- that was painstaking. Do you guys have any plans to add trees? I would imagine that might be challenging on a global scale. I compared my models to field tests, and I had to do a LOT of correcting, to get the trees right. :) For what it's worth, here's a link to what I did, in case you find it useful: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/....

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5yr ago

@molzer Thanks Georg! That's interesting about NYC. I'm from Los Angeles, California, and we definitely have the opposite problem. I signed up for your mailing list and am excited to watch where you take Shadowmap

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@simonmulser @kim_perez1 Wow that sounds like significant effort! We had a first try with trees (200k in Vienna, available via open meta data) – and they'll come back in the next months. The related meta data is pretty cool and offers species, stem diameter, height, crown diameter, etc. … so really perfect for a pretty good approximation of reality. TBO, we don't know how the situation looks outside of Vienna, I assume some cities provide similar open data but we'll need to do research on it!

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5yr ago

Product Hunt

This is seriously cool! Living in Switzerland I assumed this wouldn't work because of the complexity with mountains, but this works really well. Great for planning where to live or even which side of the house would be sunniest to eat outside :)

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@calum Thanks for the compliment - mean a lot to us! 🤩

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@calum We put some effort into a performant integration of terrain and buildings data! And there is still much room for improvement. Living in Switzerland Shadowmap might come handy for the next hiking or ski tour as well!

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5yr ago

@calum can we use your feedback on our social media? Happy to tag you on Twitter and IG! 🙏

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4yr ago

Amazing product! I hope this helps bring some awareness on the "shadow footprint" of modern cities (in fact, its out-of-control buildings). Thanks!

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@hmgauna Fully agree! There are regulations in some countries ("Ancient Light" in UK, also a EU directive, and something similar in Japan), they don't seem to really executed though. And there are studies of South East Asian megacities where citizens are only getting ~10% of UV exposure due to ever more skyscrapers. Would be cool to see someone initiating studies using Shadowmap in these regards 👍

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5yr ago

@molzer thanks for answering. I didn't knew about those regulations. Very interesting stuff. Here (in Latin America) money from real estate developers is shaping the cities, so you may imagine the results. Congrats again for the product!

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@hmgauna Yeah maybe there are even regulations where you live? Often it's just that they are not executed properly … wanna share which city?

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5yr ago

@molzer I live in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, just next to the administrative limits of the city. The town is Vicente López. I never heard of "light" regulations here. However, I do know that anyone with the right contacts (or bribery) can easily override the existing regulations and build a tower where it is not allowed, and so on. So in the end, it's like not having regulations at all. You could potentially tell it by looking at the highley irregular volumetry of the city. Too bad that this kind of damage is hard to revert. I think that Shadowmap could even be used to set lightness targets (kind of like carbon footprints) and integrate them in future regulations.

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@hmgauna Love your idea! Some people here expressed their support with the joy of exploration, which I personally love as well. I think Shadowmap will be a tool to support this, start understanding the light situation in the area you live in. And with upcoming features, it'll be even better. Sorry for suffering with corruption, it's a tricky topic throughout the history of humankind.

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5yr ago

This is seriously cool, and I will definitely use this when I go house-hunting next. Living in Denmark where the sunlight is sparse most of the time, it's also awesome being able to view where the sun is when you wanna go out - makes it so much easier picking a bar where you can sit outside in the sun ;-). Couple of questions: - It seems currently that you're not able to search for a specific number on a street and it just defaults to number 1. Am I missing something, or are you planning on adding that later on? - Any plans towards making this an actual app? Not that it's a big hassle finding it in your mobile browser, and maybe I'm just a typically lazy modern cosumer who prefers app's, but I feel like it would be cool to just have it right at your fingertips when you open your mobile, especially on the go. Congrats on the launch, and a great product, can't wait for some more sun in Denmark so I can use it more. ?makers

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@tallwhitepasty Hey A. J.! I'm happy to see how Shadowmap resonates with you, thank you! To your questions: 1) Yes, we're aware of this (it's listed in our FAQ's in the "?" help); the current solution (provided by Algolia) is not able to handle housenumber resolution. We are – among other features! – also working on an improved location search and will release them throughout the next months. 2) Yeah totally, we get this very often and I'm the same; a native app makes a difference. Native apps are hopefully out in Q3! Until then: Use the "add to homescreen" feature on your phone (PWA), it's a fast solution for now! Thanks again and yes, more Sun for everyone (in colder climate zones) 😅

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5yr ago

This is very cool @molzer and I see a lot of useful applications - real estate/planning and also trends like urban farming. Super interesting, and excited to see where it goes! FYI: the app can get pretty heavy on the browser when zooming out & panning around.

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@richard_francis2 It can be demanding depending on the number of visible houses, camera angle (= view range), etc. If it's too much for your machine, try lowering the visual quality with the "gear"-button on the bottom right 👍 Also FYI: There's an additional high quality mode (Shadowmap Pro only) but this is highly probably too much for your current device.

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5yr ago

Shadowmap

Maker

@richard_francis2 … oh and yeah, we also totally see urban farming as a use case, as well as facade greening. Great idea, Richard!

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5yr ago

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