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

Posted by mrktsm__ 10 hours ago

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.

Comments

Comment by lattrommi 1 hour ago

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?

Comment by mrktsm__ 1 hour ago

You should see a toolbar at the bottom with a pen/marker icon, tap either to start drawing. No payment needed, premium is really just to support the project.

Comment by tkocmathla 7 hours ago

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

Comment by lukan 6 hours ago

I recently learned that in Bhutan, they are sacred smybols since a long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan

Since I know that, I am rather amused every time I see a dick painted anywhere.

Comment by mrktsm__ 7 hours ago

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.

Comment by eternauta3k 5 hours ago

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

Comment by SanjayMehta 4 hours ago

A swastika or a Hakenkreuz?

Comment by KellyCriterion 4 hours ago

Most people do not know about the directional-flip in these signs

Comment by SanjayMehta 3 hours ago

The Hakenkreuz is tilted at an angle.

The Hindu and Buddhist symbols are very different.

Comment by dghf 2 hours ago

> The Hakenkreuz is tilted at an angle

Not always:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_standard_of_Adolf_Hit...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honour_of_the_German_...

Comment by KellyCriterion 2 hours ago

Well, after skimming these, I have to admit that Im also in the group of "most people do not know..." :-D

Thanks for sharing!

Comment by qezz 5 hours ago

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!

Comment by lfx 2 hours ago

Cool idea, but you should consider required auth to ban trolls.

On other hand, I wonder why many pictures are in the middle of the bridges or viaducts?

Comment by mrktsm__ 1 hour ago

You may be right, I may need auth down the line. I wanted to reduce friction and let people draw right away though. I think the bridges thing is an artifact of Mapillary, the API I use for panoramas. Dashcams tend to overrepresent highways. Working on better curation.

Comment by FailMore 8 hours ago

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?

Comment by mrktsm__ 8 hours ago

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!

Comment by abrookewood 7 hours ago

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.

Comment by JimDabell 5 hours ago

There have been several efforts. At one point the W3C were working on a standard protocol for it: https://www.w3.org/annotation/

Comment by Teddy_Kord 7 hours ago

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.

Comment by chromakode 7 hours ago

I don't recall any lawsuits, but whytheluckystiff made one 20 years ago. https://ruby-talk.ruby-lang.narkive.com/buiXXTZh/what-is-hoo...

Comment by gamesieve 5 hours ago

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

Comment by rtwk 6 hours ago

I believe it was https://web.hypothes.is/

Comment by nasso_dev 2 hours ago

check out https://margin.at !

Comment by doctorhandshake 6 hours ago

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.

Comment by pcthrowaway 6 hours ago

I used this one called "Gooey" in 1999 that let you have a realtime chat with people on the same page as you: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/maker-of-goo...

Comment by JanoMartinez 1 hour ago

This is a really cool concept.

I like the idea of turning the map into a kind of shared canvas. The fact that the strokes wrap around the 3D geometry instead of just being a flat overlay is a really nice touch.

Curious — how do you handle moderation or prevent drawings from turning into spam once more people start using it?

Comment by mrktsm__ 1 hour ago

Thanks! There's a report button if you hold on any drawing, plus I have admin tools to delete flagged stuff. Working on automated moderation to catch things faster as it scales

Comment by jasonjmcghee 1 hour ago

Nearly certain you're responding to an LLM

Comment by herghost 3 hours ago

Ok, I give up.

How am I supposed to draw something?

Comment by mrktsm__ 2 hours ago

Sorry about that, just upgraded the infra. Try reloading the page!

Comment by herghost 2 hours ago

I might be missing something obvious but there only appears to be the option to draw something in predefined places - where the bubbles appear on the map.

I'm trying to mark up somewhere new that doesn't have a bubble and I can't see how I'm supposed to do that.

Comment by mrktsm__ 2 hours ago

Right now it's limited to ~2,000 curated panorama locations. You can only draw at existing bubbles on the map. I'm working on expanding coverage, but if you have a spot or location you'd love to see added, let me know :)

Comment by seweso 4 hours ago

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

Comment by mrktsm__ 4 hours ago

Yeah, I see that does seem confusing. The heatmap currently shows all available locations, not just ones with strokes. I need to think through the UX more like trying to balance showing coverage with making it obvious where actual drawings are. Thanks for the feedback!

Comment by sans_souse 8 hours ago

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.

Comment by mrktsm__ 8 hours ago

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

Comment by sans_souse 7 hours ago

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

Comment by mrktsm__ 2 hours ago

Thanks! Just increased the free ink limit. Your strokes should regenerate, come finish that Simpsons tag!

Comment by colejhudson 8 hours ago

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

Comment by mrktsm__ 8 hours ago

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