Show HN: Algorithmically finding the longest line of sight on Earth

We're Tom and Ryan and we teamed up to build an algorithm with Rust and SIMD to exhaustively search for the longest line of sight on the planet. We can confirm that a previously speculated view between Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan and the Hindu Kush in China is indeed the longest, at 530km.

We go into all the details at https://alltheviews.world

And there's an interactive map with over 1 billion longest lines, covering the whole world at https://map.alltheviews.world Just click on any point and it'll load its longest line of sight.

Some of you may remember Tom's post[1] from a few months ago about how to efficiently pack visibility tiles for computing the entire planet. Well now it's done. The compute run itself took 100s of AMD Turin cores, 100s of GBs of RAM, a few TBs of disk and 2 days of constant runtime on multiple machines.

If you are interested in the technical details, Ryan and I have written extensively about the algorithm and pipeline that got us here:

* Tom's blog post: https://tombh.co.uk/longest-line-of-sight

* Ryan's technical breakdown: https://ryan.berge.rs/posts/total-viewshed-algorithm

This was a labor of love and we hope it inspires you both technically and naturally, to get you out seeing some of these vast views for yourselves!

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45485227

alltheviews.world

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340 points

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tombh

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12 hours ago

138 comments

crazygringo ・ 7 hours ago

This is so clever and interesting. Congratulations!

But... I want to see a photo! Or at least what it looks like in Google Earth, with a red arrow marking the furthest point.

It feels like the site is setting you up for the big suspense of the longest line of sight... and then it's just a line on a 2D map.

I think it would also really help if the maps themselves were at an angle in 3D with an exaggerated relief, with the line drawn in 3D, so you can get a sense of how it travels between two peaks.

It seems like you've put a ton of effort into this project. I think with just a tiny bit more work on the page, you could really put the "cherry on top".

And with those visualizations, get it picked up by a lot of major news outlets. This is a really fun story, the kind of stuff newspapers and magazines love to run. It's easily understandable, it's a cool new "record", it's a story of someone's perseverance paying off, and then you show a Google Earth image simulating the view as the payoff. (And from slightly above, if necessary, to take account for refraction.)

EDIT: Here, I used Google Earth to show the two points. Unfortunately it's from high above, since otherwise Earth wouldn't show the pin for Pik Dankova, but it at least gives a general idea of the area:

https://imgur.com/hindu-kush-to-pik-dankova-530km-adbVFwb

And here is the Google Earth link for the view, but it doesn't contain the pins:

https://earth.google.com/web/search/41.0181,77.6708/@36.6644...

  • stevage ・ 36 minutes ago

    Also spell out what "line of sight" means in this context.

  • LorenPechtel ・ 3 hours ago

    Google Earth shows what it looks like from above. That can be very different from what it looks like from a side view. I've hiked to many spots I saw from above with Google Earth--it can be hard matching up what I see on the ground with what it saw from the sky. It never looks remotely the same.

    Also, there is a local sky island completely nontechnical wanna-be 12. Sight lines from up there are huge--except the two times I've been up there I couldn't see anywhere near as far as the supposed sight lines. Roughly 100 miles before all I saw was a haze. (And in a related thread some time ago one of these sight line plotters was getting it seriously wrong. It failed to show areas I knew I could see, it showed areas I knew were blocked by mountains.)

    • crazygringo ・ 3 hours ago

      Google Earth can produce a side view just fine, it's just not designed for that so it can be tricky to get the position just right with the available controls.

      And like I said, the reason I didn't do it here was because it hid the label on the horizon. But here it is:

      https://earth.google.com/web/@36.43138439,78.74038717,4785.2...

      But without the label you can't really tell what you're looking at. And the big problem is there's no "sideways" zoom like a telescope. Google Earth effectively treats zoom like altitude only.

      In my experience while hiking tall things, the Google Earth view is accurate in terms of what you see, if you manage to get the viewpoint next to the ground like this. And you appreciate that the resolution is obviously limited.

      • tombh ・ 2 hours ago

        Do you think there's any way to automatically create these Google Earth links for each of the longest lines of sight on maps.alltheviews.world?

  • tombh ・ 6 hours ago

    Thanks!

    That imgur link is great, I totally see what you mean. So surely there is a way to at least automate linking to these views? I don't know about embedding them cos Google will want money. We're very open to suggestions, and PRs of course! https://github.com/AllTheLines/viewview

    • rrrpdx1 ・ 5 hours ago

      I had a slightly different question (that wasn't googleable), that you may be able to answer with the data you have.... What two points on earth are furthest from each other when taking into account the earth is an ellipsoid? I'm guessing Chimborazo and whatever is diametrically opposed to it, but is there anything else that's close?

      • tombh ・ 4 hours ago
        ・ 3 more

        Do you mean like if you drew a line from the surface on one side of the planet, through the Earth's core, to the other side of the planet. What is the longest line that could do that?

        • rrrpdx1 ・ 4 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          Yup... Figured it would be interesting if two people stood on opposite sides of the earth and could claim they were as far apart as possible, or if someone visited both "antipoles" and stood at the locations that were furthest apart.

          • tombh ・ 3 hours ago

            Wooah, both "antipoles", I've never thought of that. What a great idea. In theory yes, we have the data, but I haven't begun to consider the maths to figure that out.

rob74 ・ 10 hours ago

Cool project! Unfortunately our planet has this pesky (but very useful!) thing called atmosphere, which makes all these extra-long lines of sight only theoretical, I guess? Ok, the longest line of sight is mostly over the Taklamakan desert, so probably very dry air (which might however have some dust/sand in it), but still?

  • tombh ・ 10 hours ago

    Thanks!

    Well the record for the longest photographed line of sight is in the same region as our #3 longest line, at 483km https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/66661-lon... So not far off. And I think that even takes advantage of some favourable refraction. So not only might it be possible to see the longest view. But there may even be longer lines if we were to take into account extreme cases of refraction. Which is certainly something we'd love to try.

    • rob74 ・ 10 hours ago

      Wow, that's an impressive amount of dedication, but I guess you need that if you want to set a world record:

      > He monitored weather conditions closely to find the right window and right location. After a lot of travelling he arrived at Aksu village. The village wasn't accessible by car due to snow and ice so he hiked to the summit. After 10 hours of climbing, he stood on the summit with moonlight providing enough light to set up his equipment. At midnight, he recalls that the temperature was around -12°C with winds around 8 m/s. He remained there all night capturing panoramic photos. Before sunrise, the wind picked up to roughly 20-25 m/s and the battle of capturing his world record image began. He planned to capture the image at sunrise to improve contrast and whilst he is pleased with the final result, he is already making plans for his next record-breaking image.

      But still, that kinda confirms my observation about the pesky atmosphere: even with optimal weather conditions, he still needed the sun lighting up the sky behind the mountains just before sunrise, otherwise they would have blended in with the sky at the horizon...

      This also applies for much shorter distances: despite what the publicity photos suggest, you can't see the Alps from Munich most of the time (or only as slightly darker shapes on the horizon), although they're "only" ~ 75 km away. You need really good weather to see them clearly...

      • codethief ・ 9 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        > This also applies for much shorter distances: despite what the publicity photos suggest, you can't see the Alps from Munich most of the time (or only as slightly darker shapes on the horizon)

        You won't usually see them from the ground of course but from a couple floors up with a clear line of sight you do see them quite often.

        • ofrzeta ・ 7 hours ago

          In the northwest of Munich we can see the alps quite often (around 100km from there), and sometimes they appear quite huge. It's due to the Föhn that makes the atmosphere act as a magnifying lens. Interestingly the explanation is not in the English Wikipedia

          https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%B6hn#Optischer_Vergr%C3%B...

          Sure, you can see the mountains only as "slightly darker shapes" as the parent put it but you could identify individual summits I think.

      • avisser ・ 8 hours ago
        ・ 4 more

        Putting on my pedantic hat, does this qualify as a picture of the mountains? As in, is there any light hitting the mountains, then hitting the film/sensor?

        Or is this just an elaborate silhouette?

        Is that a difference? I don't know.

        • tshaddox ・ 7 hours ago

          Is a silhouette not a "picture"? Perhaps "picture" isn't the best term to quibble over, since it is quite broad (arguably its primary use is referring to paintings or drawings).

          But if we instead quibble over the term "photograph," I'd argue that a photograph of a silhouette of a mountain is absolutely a photograph of a mountain. Similarly, I'd argue that X-ray photography is indeed photography.

        • bratbag ・ 8 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          Its a really interesting question.

          Lets take it to its farthest extent: can you take a picture of a black hole?

          • tshaddox ・ 6 hours ago

            Or how about this: can you take a photograph of a shadow?

      • ColinEberhardt ・ 9 hours ago
        ・ 3 more

        > Wow, that's an impressive amount of dedication, but I guess you need that if you want to set a world record

        Dedication, mmm, dedication. Dedication, that’s what you need. If you want to be the best, and if you want to beat the rest. Dedication way you need.

        Hopefully that means something to Brits of a certain age ;-)

        • tombh ・ 8 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          Roy Castle!

    • ja-mf ・ 8 hours ago

      funny to know that the record has just been broken, the latest I knew of was by Roberto Antezana, astrophotographer from Universidad de Chile, capturing the Aconcagua (6950m) peak from Cordoba, Argentina, taking advantage of the peak's altitude and the Argentinian pampa (very flat grasslands), and of course, thorough planning + lucky cooperative weather [1] [2]; he was well known before from his long distance photos of the same peak from Valparaiso bay [3], I'm from Valparaiso and the times it was possible to see that peak with the naked eye given some perfect blue sky was truly overwhelming, since then I've been thinking about how to achieve such excursion planning heuristically from topographical data available. Congratulations on your project, I will look more into the technical details but looks amazing, beautiful art and technique!

      [1] https://uchile.cl/noticias/205455/astrofotografo-logra-nuevo... [2] https://dalekiewidoki.pl/2025/07/world-record-andes.html [3] https://api.flickr.com/photos/robertoantezana/4994301227/

    • CGMthrowaway ・ 8 hours ago

      Do the two points have to be on land? I would think since you can see the ocean from Aconcagua you'd be able to see all the way to the horizon and that would be the longest sightline

      • LorenPechtel ・ 3 hours ago

        Out of the question. The higher up you are the farther the horizon, I wouldn't be surprised if the longest horizon is from Aconcagua. I have been at 18,000' on Kilimanjaro, the view was absolutely stunning. (But we were tourists, not mountaineers, and had no traction gear. At the time that meant progress became impossible very soon after sunrise. Now the ice has retreated so far that you can expect to summit by daylight without traction gear.)

        But the longest possible view isn't to the horizon, it is to another point that can see the same spot of horizon on a reciprocal bearing. And ocean has no such points.

      • allan_s ・ 8 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        I think the main insight is that the ocean horizon arrives quite fast.

        • CGMthrowaway ・ 7 hours ago

          I see, that's why the longest are peak-to-peak

    • metalman ・ 9 hours ago

      ok then, If I read you right, what counts is someone going and doing the actual seeing , VS drawing a line on a topigraphical map. there are groups on another quest flying gliders into the high stratospher riding atmospheric waves rolling up against mountains who might also qualify for setting records for the longest possible views through the atmosphear, they got started buying surplus soviet space suits as that was what made attempts possible.

brucehoult ・ 10 hours ago

I tried the summit of Mt Ruapehu here in NZ and got 358.8 km to Mt Owen. Not bad as I was expecting Tapuae-o-Uenuku which is a little shorter at 342 km.

One advantage in NZ is that on a nice day you actually have a good chance of seeing it.

Oh ... clicking on Mt Owen doesn't return the favour ... or the other nearest peaks. But Culliford Hill does show a return back to Ruapehu, 355.4 km. Clicking on Tapuae-o-Uenuku also, as expected, gives a line to Ruapehu: 342.3km.

Mt Cook is high, but has too many other high peaks near it.

Mt Taranaki is isolated, but doesn't turn up any very long distances.

I don't expect any other candidates in NZ.

Update: actual and accidental photo of Tapuae-o-Uenuku from Ruapehu (342 km), seven months ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1m9p0bh/tapuaeo...

And, as pointed out in a comment, also Mount Alarm 2.5 km further.

What is the longest in North America? Or Europe proper -- not Elbrus (which I've not been to but have been close enough to see, from several places e.g. from a house in Lermontov (~94 km only), summit of Beshtau (93 km), Dombai ski field (~63 km), somewhere on A157 (~50km).

  • tombh ・ 10 hours ago

    Wow, glad you had fun exploring. It suddenly made me think of a little feature that I'm not sure we made the best job of exposing. In the little trophy icon toggle on the right, there's the Top Ten list of views, then under those there's a little line that just says "In current viewport: 123km". Did you see that? Did it make sense? I implemented it, so of course I know that it's better than clicking all the points around a peak to find the longest view from a mountain summit. But maybe it's not obvious to other users? What I do is zoom in so that the viewport only contains the area of the summit (or indeed entire country for that matter) that I'm interested in, then I look at that "In current viewport:" line without having to click anything.

    So using that, I would say that the longest line of sight in North America is from Mount Rainier, at 390km, looking North West into Canada: https://map.alltheviews.world/longest/-121.76853942871094_46...

    • brucehoult ・ 10 hours ago

      Oh, I missed that!

      That gives a longest in NZ of 365.3 km from Ruapehu, skirting past close by Tapuae-o-Uenuku (in the Inland Kaikoura Range) to a point on the Seaward Kaikoura Range near the peak of Manakau. Clicking on the actual Manakau peak also gives 365.3 km back to Ruapehu.

      I can't seem to find a peak to get a reverse path back to Mt Ranier. Everything I try gets stuck in the Olympic Peninsular. (I was there once ... 1998 or so ... a place called Hurricane Ridge IIRC)

      • tombh ・ 9 hours ago

        Right, I think we need to make that "In current viewport" thing more prominent somehow.

        So this is the NZ longest line right https://map.alltheviews.world/longest/173.61386108398438_-42...

        One thing to note about finding reverse lines, is that they're not truly mathematically identical because the observer always has a height of 1.65m and the destination is always some point at the surface, therefore 0.0m. It doesn't always make a difference, but it sometimes can.

  • repelsteeltje ・ 10 hours ago

    Not a geologist, but interesting that many of these sites are close to equator. Suppose that's where mountains are higher because tectonic plates are more active?

    Anyone with expertise want to comment?

    • kmaitreys ・ 10 hours ago

      Not a geologist either but an astronomer. Never heard that tectonic activity has any association with proximity to equator.

      Mountains can rise higher near equator because you have the least gravity there. The whole Earth bulges along the equator. But I don't think it's measurable.

      • jmalicki ・ 10 hours ago
        ・ 4 more

        It's also interesting because the radius of curvature is smaller, meaning the distance to the horizon is shorter north south, and a lot of these views are north south. So the increase in mountain height more than overcomes the other effect!

        • rao-v ・ 4 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          Are we saying line of sights are not symmetric? Why not?

          • jmalicki ・ 4 hours ago

            The earth is an oblate spheroid to an approximation. It's not that they're not symmetric, but at the equator the north south axis has higher rates of curvature than anywhere else (but the east west has somewhat lower rates because of the larger circumference due to the bulge).

            So that large lines of sight are near the equator on a north south axis (or symmetrically south north) is crazy because the high rates of curvature in that direction at those latitudes should give the shortest distance to the horizon on earth, making those lines of sight even that much more impressive!

        • tombh ・ 9 hours ago

          Woah, I've been thinking about this whole project for so long, but never considered that!

      • iso1631 ・ 9 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        While Everest (8849m) is the highest point above Sea Level, Chimborazo (6267m) in Ecuador is further from the centre of the Earth (about 2000 metres further), due to the equatorial bulge. It's very measurable.

        • kmaitreys ・ 6 hours ago

          Well that's not what the claim and clarification was about. The question was: can a mountain rise higher in the equator as compared to higher latitudes?

          It is not about highest point from centre of Earth. That's is related to equatorial bulge but irrelevant to the discussion.

mrb ・ 8 hours ago

Hi Tom it's Marc, I'm glad to see you finished your sightline project ! Any clue why you report the longest sightline as "530.8 km" when it seems to be actually 538.1 km? That's what my code calculated (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45512970) that's what Dr. Ulrich Deuschle also calculates (https://www.udeuschle.de/panoramas/panqueryfull.aspx?mode=ne...) You, Deuschle, and I all use the same DEM data (https://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/Coverage%20map%20viewfin...) and the same refraction coeff (0.13), and nearly the same camera height (1.5m for me, 2.0m for Deuschle, and 1.65m for you—and these differing heights make no difference given the coarse DEM resolution). Something must be slighly off in your computations? Or do you think both Deuschle and I are wrong?

Edit: to be clear the difference stems from our coordinates. Our starting points are:

41.059167,77.683333 (me)

41.0181,77.6708 (you)

And our end points are:

36.295364,78.755593 (me)

36.314,78.7654 (you)

Also I calculate the distance assuming the Earth is spherical (which gives 538 km) not the standard geodesic (which would give 537 km).

And in the DEM data I measure the distance from the center of a cell to another (not the edge), while measuring from edge to edge may explain a difference of at most 0.1 km as the DEM resolution is 3 arcseconds.

So clearly we disagree on the coordinates of the exact actual sightline as we have a 7 km difference :-)

Edit #2: clearly the error is on your side. I should have checked this first, but the coordinates you give for the "To" point (41.0181,77.6708) land in a valley with the south view completely blocked so it's impossible to view 500+ km south as you claim. Look at where the marker lands on this Google Maps Terrain: https://maps.app.goo.gl/PgBWxi31WZC6vk3V9

  • ryanbberger ・ 6 hours ago

    Hey Marc, Ryan here. Tom may respond as well

    There's two forms of interpolation going on here that I'm not sure you or Dr Dueschle are using. We interpolate a "band of sight" of single a degree for our azithmual projection, but uniquely we also rotate the DEM elevations around all the observers rather than the observer around to see all the elevations.

    The effects of the first can be lessened by lowering the band of sight such that we only process half a degree at a time so that we make sure we get more coverage further away. We plan on running some more experiments by rotating to cover more points.

    The algorithm is already fairly expensive to run against the whole world so we weren't particularly interested in that level of coverage for the full earth.

    For total viewshed area, our algorithm comes in at roughly a percent or so difference which was what we used as our benchmark for correctness.

    All this to say, no, we don't think you both are wrong, we've been looking at making ours more accurate. At a world scale that's quite computationally expensive, so we didn't use that methodology for our initial launch. We see our results as validation of yours, not as something we've disproved.

    Edit: grammar

    • mrb ・ 5 hours ago

      Ok that makes sense, thanks for the reply! Maybe document this "percent or so" error in the FAQ since it is about 16 times bigger than the (other?) ~0.0685% error you mention that can be caused by the AEQD reprojections.

      • ryanbberger ・ 3 hours ago

        Good idea, I'll add it to the FAQ later today. Under a section of "why don't these results match the other tools". The projection error is separate as you mentioned.

        The error I've experienced hunting bugs tends to be within about .5-2%. That's a vibe, not an empirical "I've calculated the error to be 1.5%". We definitely expect that bound to tighten as we get access to more computational resources.

        I do not think this is numerical however. I think it's more directly related to rasterization, interpolation, and not enough angle coverage. We have fairly good numerical and viewshed tests to double check we don't have weirdness going on there.

  • mrb ・ 6 hours ago

    Reply to my edit #2: I realize the "To" point 41.0181,77.6708 is just the coordinate of the center of the 1°-wide horizon line. The actual farthest visible point according to your analysis is probably this peak in the west half of the 1° field of view: 41.014862, 77.647818 So I retract my comment about the error being "clearly" on your side. However this does indicate that we definitely calculate things differently. In my analysis Pik Dankova at 41.059542, 77.684808 which is a few km further can actually be seen and that's the source of our differences. I don't know who is right.

    • tombh ・ 5 hours ago

      It sounds like we're just not casting enough rays then.

  • tombh ・ 6 hours ago

    Hey Marc!

    I'm afraid I don't have a good answer. I'm sure with future runs will get closer to you and udeuschle.de

    I thought of you when we saw Colombia appear so high up in the list, I remembered that's something you'd found too.

stevage ・ 33 minutes ago

I was in Kyrgyzstan last year and saw some distant mountains that I was able to work out were in Kazakhstan, over 100km away. Even that felt pretty amazing at the time.

500km? Whee...

fooker ・ an hour ago

Here's a potential bug report, but maybe it comes down to the resolution.

There seems to be some missing data here when it comes to the north face of most Himalayan peaks (for example: Annapurna).

I am willing to believe looking south gives you the longer view, but there has to be some points on the north faces that win out for a northern view.

Fun fact, the view north is so far, clear and reliable weather-wise that the CIA partnered with mountaineers to set up equipment to monitor China's progress with nuclear weapons several decades ago.

  • tombh ・ 30 minutes ago

    Could you post a link to a view that you think might not be right?

hdersch ・ 5 hours ago

"Viewsheds" of any location can be calculated and matched with photographs using "GeoImageViewer", an application I wrote a couple of years ago. Any feature in the photo can be interactively identified in a mapview and vice versa, including the boundary of the viewshed. See the link below for a couple of examples.

I wonder how atmospheric refraction is handled in the calculations for the longest line of sight. Since it (a) strongly affects the line of sight, and (b) depends on temperature and weather, how is a static "world record" possible, or even defined? E.g. objects may appear 400m higher in 200km distance under typical conditions.

https://hdersch.github.io/Viewing.html

  • tombh ・ 5 hours ago

    Oh hey, I remember you from the last time I posted something about our project. That's a great app you have.

    We actually have a plan to aggregate world runs together, so that one run as low refraction and a short observer, then another run with high refraction and tall observer. Then instead of rendering longest lines of sight as those singl triangles, we could render them as 2 triangles that represents the extremes of expected visibility.

danielsamuels ・ 10 hours ago

The website claims the longest line of sight in my city is 24.7km from someone's garden that is surrounded by houses. I walk past this particular spot on my way to the gym. I walk downhill from my house to get there. I seriously question the reliability of this data.

  • tombh ・ 10 hours ago

    The resolution of the underlying data is only ~100m. So most houses, vegetation, etc, gets blurred into the same smooth surface. There are actually higher resolution data sets, even up to centimetre scale, using LiDAR, of cities. We'd love to integrate these but it's a few orders of magnitude more data.

  • DiggyJohnson ・ 5 hours ago

    I think you're assuming more fidelity than the project is claiming

    • danielsamuels ・ 5 hours ago

      I'm assuming that when the project says you can see 24 km from a given location, that you can see 24 km from that location. That's not the case. Fundamentally, it doesn't do what it claims to do.

      Why allow the user to select any arbitrary location on a map and give an answer when you know the answer is most likely nonsense? You don't need to compute for 2 days to accomplish that; you could just make it up.

      • crazygringo ・ 5 hours ago

        Surely you understand it's based on limited resolution data, and therefore intended to be used at the scale of general topography like mountains and valleys?

        That it's not taking into account human construction or distances of tens of meters?

        Presumably you can walk a little bit and climb on someone's roof to see the claimed 24.7 km. Assuming a sufficiently clear atmosphere, and that there isn't a tall office building in the way or something.

      • wat10000 ・ 4 hours ago
        ・ 3 more

        Why not complain that there's a point inside somebody's basement and you can't see any distance from that? Why not complain that it's wrong any time you close your eyes? Those would be about as sensible.

        • danielsamuels ・ 4 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          Ironically, the site would probably say you can see 20 km from inside the basement.

          • wat10000 ・ 2 hours ago

            What's ironic about that? Of course it would. It's working off of large-scale terrain features, not structures. It will also tell you that you can see distant mountains when it's cloudy or you don't have your glasses on.

amingilani ・ 7 hours ago

Now we just need to put two hams with 2m/70cm radios to make the longest line-of-sight QSO on the planet. Bonus points for QRP.

Definitions:

* Hams: Amateur radio operators.

* QSO: conversation or contact between two radio stations.

* QRP: Low power, typically under 5 watts.

  • tombh ・ 6 hours ago

    That's actually one of the legitimate uses cases we've consider for the algorithm.

    • stilldavid ・ 4 hours ago

      This is so rad! Here's a photo of me making a 1.2Ghz FM contact 244km away from the summit of a 14er to the summit of another 14er here in Colorado. That particular band is very line-of-sight, with not much propagation or reflections like even 2m SSB or the HF bands. This is a very fun tool that I can't wait to explore more!

      https://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2021/08/using-1-2-ghz-in-the-...

      • tombh ・ 4 hours ago

        244km! Oh wow, I never knew people did this kind of thing. Yeah this is exactly the sort of thing we want people to use the app for.

gfarah ・ 4 hours ago

Hi! Colombian here. I reviewed the second prediction and believe the tags are incorrect. They should be: Pico Lagos del Congo, Liborina, Antioquia to Pico Cristóbal Colón, Sierra Nevada, Magdalena.

Additionally, the GPS coordinates might need adjustment, as there are several prominent peaks near both Liborina and Pico Cristóbal Colón (the summit of the Sierra Nevada mountains).

[1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/6%2e75514,-75%2e7222/@6....

[2] https://earth.google.com/web/search/10%2e8467,-73%2e7029/@10...

  • tombh ・ 4 hours ago

    Oye, fui a Colombia un par de veces! Y mi profesora Español era Colombiana.

    So you're saying a better title for the Colombian line of sight could be "Pico Lagos del Congo to Pico Cristóbal Colón"? We can definitely change that.

    Thought I'm not sure what you mean about the coordinates being wrong? Are you saying that you should be able to see further from Pico Lagos del Congo?

jstanley ・ 11 hours ago

Neat. I did a related project a little while ago. I wasn't interested in how far I can see from everywhere, so much as what I can see from one place in particular.

So in mine you can click on a spot and it draws black lines over any land that is occluded by terrain, within 100km.

(But all with AI-generated JavaScript, not cool Rust and SIMD stuff)

https://incoherency.co.uk/line-of-sight-map/

  • eitally ・ 11 hours ago

    I am not sure if I'm experiencing what you describe. I just see a radiating circle of black lines, no matter where I click. I decided to click a local, notable "long line" viewpoint -- Lick Observatory outside San Jose. From here, on a clear day, you can see Half Dome in Yosemite, 120mi away. I still just see a black circle.

    • jstanley ・ 10 hours ago

      Are you standing on a raised platform when you see the Half Dome?

      This is what I get when I set the observer height to 20m, and increase the "max distance" to 300km (200km = ~124 miles so may not be enough).

      https://img.incoherency.co.uk/6478

      It's also possible that the half dome is too short and the sampling rate of the line-of-sight jumps over it!

    • 1e1a ・ 10 hours ago

      It seems that sometimes it fails to load the height map, try reloading the page. You should see terrain shading if it's loaded properly.

    • arethuza ・ 10 hours ago

      I think the lines indicate areas that you can't see?

      • jychang ・ 10 hours ago

        It's buggy. Mission peak shows much of the bay area occluded.

  • nottorp ・ 9 hours ago

    > But all with AI-generated JavaScript, not cool Rust and SIMD stuff

    Heh, I almost hit back at the "in Rust" mention.

    Would the end result have been different if it were done in python calling C libraries for performance? I strongly doubt it.

    • spookie ・ 4 hours ago

      Isn't cross language function calling expensive? I assume it is significant.

LorenPechtel ・ 3 hours ago

Observations:

1) Poking around our local peaks I find that the calculation appears granular, it's offering me things I could see from the summit that I could not see from where I clicked.

2) It's offering me one I never even considered looking at (peeking just beside another mountain, the terrain appeared flat, I never realized there was a distant peak there) and one I knew about--and know I have no hope of actually seeing.

  • tombh ・ 2 hours ago

    1) So you're expecting to click and see a line of sight that you've seen in real life? Is it just that each point only every records the _longest_, which not be the best or most notable view? 2) As in, in a good way?

cozzyd ・ 16 minutes ago

I was wondering if this used a Gnomonic projection but the AEQD makes way more sense here (especially if defined in polar coordinates, as I imagine it must be? Then you only need to project the points you actually use?).

hybrid_study ・ 7 hours ago

Maybe including an actual picture of the sight would be helpful here?

  • tombh ・ 5 hours ago

    This has been common feedback today. I hadn't appreciated the appetite for photos, but of course it makes sense. I think what we'll try to do is automate linking to some other tool that can produce a 3D panorama, like Google Earth for example.

_whiteCaps_ ・ 5 hours ago

Oh, neat. I do an amateur radio challenge called SOTA where any peak with 150m prominence is a candidate. British Columbia has detailed LIDAR data so I figure it would be straightforward to do, I just don't know anything about GIS to make it happen. I'll have to browse the repo for some hints.

observationist ・ 6 hours ago

I found my big summer hike. It's the farthest point that can be seen from the highest point near where I live. I can make the hike and then get some pictures of that highest point, from the farthest point away it has a line of sight.

Thanks for this tool!

  • tombh ・ 6 hours ago

    Thank you! This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping people would use this for.

zoobab ・ 11 hours ago

Cool places to try wifi long shots.

I did some longshots back in the early days of wifi.

  • ErroneousBosh ・ 11 hours ago

    You'd need to do a bit of work to adjust the timing, I suspect. At 530km the time delay would be around 1.75ms which would be enough to greatly upset WiFi ;-)

    You could probably talk between ends using cheap crappy 446MHz 250mW walkie-talkies though.

    • galangalalgol ・ 10 hours ago

      This data base could be used to optimally place meshtastic nodes.

    • 1e1a ・ 10 hours ago

      You could just send raw 802.11 data frames and then receive them with monitor mode on the other end.

justjash ・ 7 hours ago

Pretty interesting. I recently got some cheap Meshtastic devices just to play around with and it looks like the longest line of sight from my house is about 20 miles. Might have to leave one at home and see if I can directly connect to it from the general area it is showing.

  • tombh ・ 5 hours ago

    Thanks, yes this is actually one of the legitimate usecases we hope for from our algorithm.

12ian34 ・ an hour ago

this is very cool, but i want to see photos!

1970-01-01 ・ 9 hours ago

There was a post here about 6 years ago for a site that calculated line of site for any two points on a map with both the max line of sight and 2D cross sectional view of the terrain difference between the two points. I haven't been able to find it since 2020, but it was awesome.

noosphr ・ 9 hours ago

Since you have the data could you show how far you can see in every direction rather than the longest direction?

  • tombh ・ 9 hours ago

    Yes, but, there's one small problem, storing this extra data for the whole world starts to run into the petabytes!

    • em-bee ・ 8 hours ago

      what if you put a limit on it? like only a dozen views per point, and only views that are at least 100km. or only do this for peaks or points of interest. or some combination like more views for higher peaks, less for lower ones.

      • tombh ・ 5 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        Ohh yes, nice ideas.

        • em-bee ・ 4 hours ago

          i don't know if that makes sense but it could be interesting to split the views of any point into multiple segments, and then for each segment find the largest distance. next between two of these largest views find the shortest view. if the ends of each view are connected by lines the result would be a zigzag circle around the starting point that gives you a rough idea of the visible area.

          most points would be on a slope so they would just have a half circle, only peaks themselves would have an all around view.

  • bartread ・ 9 hours ago

    This would be incredible - please add this!

alvsilvao ・ 10 hours ago

This is so interesting. Thanks for sharing. I have been working on a similar project where instead of finding all the sights I have focused on finding all the cycling climbs in the world. I think there is a sense of satisfaction in finding ALL of something.

Cheers

www.climbs.cc

kawfey ・ 5 hours ago

The ham radio microwave community thanks you.

em-bee ・ 9 hours ago

how close is this to the theoretical maximum?

if we put mt. everest on a sperical cow, i mean on a planet with only ocean, how far could you see there? how far away could a second peak of the same height be, before it gets hidden by the curvature of the planet?

  • laci37 ・ 9 hours ago

    If we have a 9 km mountain on an otherwise spherical planet (r=6371 km), the horizon would be 339 km away. With two mountains having a sightline between eachother the maximum theorethical distance doubles to 678 km.

    • tombh ・ 9 hours ago

      Exactly.

      And it could even be tweaked slightly with some favourable refraction.

      • stockresearcher ・ 7 hours ago

        Ah, well NASA left some mirrors on the surface of the moon so with some favorable reflection and infinite quality optics, you can theoretically see halfway around the world.

ourmandave ・ 10 hours ago

Hopefully this won't become a tool for the Flat Earthers. =)

  • emiliobumachar ・ 10 hours ago

    Might be a tool against them. Note that Mt. Everest isn't on the list. If the Earth was flat, all the tallest peaks would be seeable from one another unless a specific peak taller than one of them was exactly in the way.

  • tombh ・ 9 hours ago

    We're actually thinking of writing a SIGBOVIK paper where we explore running this whole thing for a Flat Earth!

alansaber ・ 9 hours ago

This is the geography I was promised in school

keepamovin ・ 6 hours ago

And yet all you have to do is look up to the stars and you can see millions, trillions of kilometeres away. Starlight straight line of sight in so many directions. Almost nothing in the way. Crazy.

This is cool tho. What about to an ocean point from a mountain? Was there anything longer?

sandos ・ 8 hours ago

I mean this is coming to the same result as heywhatsthat, apparently using the same dataset. Sadly it is not really correct, in that I think it blends a lot of things, including TREEs into the height. Its very obvious many places that some height is just not true, unless you account for buildings and treetops.

I believe I _might_ have a 33km view FROM MY ROOF, from 2m above ground I have much less than 1 km.

lutusp ・ 6 hours ago

On this general topic, guess how distant the horizon (the "vanishing point") is, across open water, assuming clear weather and a six-foot-tall observer standing on a beach? The answer is a mere six miles.

Next curious fact -- the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are perfectly vertical, but the top of one tower is 4.6 cm (1.8 inches) farther away from the other, compared to the bottom of the towers -- because there is a small angular tilt between the towers. Guess why ...

Okay, it's because the towers are independently vertical with respect the center of the earth, are horizontally separated by 4,200 feet, and each tower is 746 feet tall. These dimensions assure that the towers have a distinct angle with respect to each other. It's a small difference, but it's not zero.

I thought about these things (and many others) during my four-year solo around-the-world sail (https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/).

colechristensen ・ 9 hours ago

It's wild in the upper midwest you can SEE the glacial effects on the terrain better than any topo map I've seen before.

  • tombh ・ 9 hours ago

    I was wondering that too, that this might be a better visualisation of certain geological features. But I don't have much experience, so can't say for sure.

    • colechristensen ・ 9 hours ago

      It's a sort of high-pass filter I guess? Using the curvature of the earth to highlight local changes in elevation.

      • tombh ・ 6 hours ago

        I'm not that familiar with high-pass filters. But yes it's the way it exposes local changes in elevation that is unique. Indeed the heatmap is generated dynamically for every change to the zoom and viewport.

drcongo ・ 9 hours ago

This is my favourite kind of HN post, and I absolutely love this one. Would love to see photos from each of these views.

pestatije ・ 10 hours ago

It be nice to get the 3 or 5 longest distances from a specific point, not just the longestest

umpriel ・ 12 hours ago

Claps!

  • ryanbberger ・ 5 hours ago

    Thanks umpriel for the PR, hope you're well!