Awesome - I like the 'depth' feature of the tube network. I assume this data is also provided by TFL? If so, it is quite good of them to provide so much data to the public ___domain.
The data is all publicly available TFL data. Although a lot of work has gone into making it all useable. We're hoping to give back and help improve some of the ways TFL structure their data too
"What you can see here is the result of many hours of work from Pete and I, ranging from programming time, to nearly giving up trying to understand the algorithms involved, to hours spent manually wrestling with Excel spreadsheets containing the data we needed. Let's just say that the world would be a better place if data was offered in a variety of similar, usable formats."
I'm leading the project on exactly that, our new Beta site is built upon the new API my team have been building (common data model, RESTful, lower latency etc). Ping me over a mail and we can get you involved in the beta API.
Very cool. What % of the platform (if any) would you say is tailored to London? (ie how easy is it to implement other cities - assuming the mapping/traffic data is present)
Thanks! Right now we have some unique aspects per-city due to the way the data is provided and structured and the fact that we're still prototyping features.
Eventually, we plan to move to an abstracted approach using consistent data formats that means we can spin up a new city without any modifications to the platform.
awesome, I was getting a bit worried about the lack of updates on their blog. Thrilled that they are actually talking to various agencies.
I am a bit worried about the attention given to "shiny" (Leap Motion, Twitter, vehicles etc.) features rather than actually useful statistical stuff but I am hoping they are just working on this while they are in discussions with said agencies.
Re: "Shiny". We're working on a huge number of different features and we didn't want to overload the latest update with things we'd already covered in the first update – things like statistical data visualisation, etc. We're still working on those areas though and they are still a priority, they just don't need as much work as the other features right now.
We've been meaning to post for ages! Finding time in amongst all the excitement has been our challenge. Thanks so much for your support - lots more soon!
I did sign up for the beta (following the initial post).
So far, I've only seen overexcitment for a simple web-based viewer that displays very few data layers for a specific city and lacks a lot of useful information: for instance there are no POIs / streets labels / ... In this regard, I believe the recently unveiled WebGL-based Maps / Earth from Google are significantly more advanced. Most of the focus of your project has been on visual cuteness (tilt shift, animated cars) and wow effect (leap motion). This is combined with using buzzwords that IMHO don't really apply here (big data, platform). I'll be glad to be proven completely wrong when your beta is out.
When google maps came out, it had noticeably worse data than MSN Maps and Mapquest, bit it was fast and slick. Don't compare 4 months of work by 2 people against what Google has accomplished in a decade.
I am not trying to do a comparison with Google Maps on this level.
Even when Google Maps came out, it was nevertheless showing useful mapping information and not only background data layers. In this respect, it was not a shiny toy.
My point is that the current prototype for ViziCities is focusing almost exclusively on visual appeal, at the expense of mapping accuracy / actual usefulness / advanced interactivity.
Glad you're excited about it. We don't have a date yet but we're working hard to get it out as soon as we feel it's ready. And London to start with, though we already have plans for other cities (so long as the data exists).
