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Show HN: America – Road Trip Simulator (4m3ric4.com)
663 points by 0x389 on Oct 15, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 183 comments
APIs are a little like the open road—always waiting, full of opportunity, but hardly utilized. So here’s America, composed of several APIs that paint a vivid, real-time picture of a good old-fashioned road trip. Get local classifieds and photos. Tune into local radio stations. Talk wit other drivers. And more.

Exploring the country by car was an invaluable experience for me during my time in the states. I’ve since moved to Barcelona, and find myself missing the territory. This is my attempt at recreating the magic.



I have no real comment on the site, but just some awesome coincidence. I'm currently on the west coast in a hotel room watching a Nebraska football game on the television. I pull this site up and it puts me in Smith County, Kansas. I turn on the radio and it pulls up the local AM radio call from Superior Nebraska of the exact same game I'm watching on TV. Awesome.


The radio part is the most interesting to me. I would be curious how this effect is achieved.

Are there APIs to trade lat/long (or zip) for radio stations’ streaming audio?


It's probably not like this but there are some streaming sites that real time stream the broad radio spectrum at various locations around the world and you can tune in a particular radio station using a radio application that just works like the real thing.


Maybe https://radio.garden


TuneIn radio?


I could not find an obvious API for it.

It appears from my cursory investigation their APIs primarily help broadcasters send data to tunein. I haven’t found any way to programmatically interact with their services as a listener.


Some feature requests:

* Show number of users connected

* Incorporate real weather, easy to get an API key for free like I did at https://weather.baby/

* Not sure if the Camera Roll is automatically scrolling for me, most of the roads look the same in Kansas or something

* I'm sure this has been suggested but: Mute the radio when talking

* Show other users on the map

* Light/Dark mode during day/night

Love it!


> Show other users on the map

I like the idea of a CB-style radio where you can only talk to people nearby and this is your way of interacting with other people. Not only does it make sense in a simulation-sense, I think it's also in the 'spirit' of the app which is trying simulate connecting to the wider-world in a way that's become increasingly rare since Jack Kerouac wrote 'On the Road'.


Also in love with this. Will be using this as background 'noise' a lot in life now.

Some more requests:

- be able to zoom in/out on the map

- be able to choose my location and route

- be able to follow me in google maps as I drive along (yes, much more complicated and would need to be an actual app on a phone, I know. Still, I'd love to have craigslst things come up on my actual roadtrip)

- local air traffic in the map, for a plane or copter to fly overhead and have that experience too

- night mode photos, if possible

- if possible, police/fire/ems/wildlands radio chatter

- option for ambient noises. Could change by time of day/year. Animal and insect noises, environmental, etc.

Really realy love thins, thanks for all the hard work, it really shows and has made my weekend!


Thanks for checking out the website and for the feedback! Compiling everyone's requests into one ranked list right now. Showing the number of users nearby is the most requested one and I love the idea.


By the way, the weather shown in "status" is real, comes from openweathermap.org


> most of the roads look the same in Kansas or something

Working as intended it seems


There's also https://openweathermap.org/api for weather. Really easy to use


My wife and I have driven all over the eastern seaboard, to the west coast, the southern tip of Texas, and to Alaska. Would love to retrace some of these routes on a bicycle one day.

We’ve traveled to many places in the world, and there are of course countless great people and sights, but all that really helped provide perspective on just how much we have available to us just in North America: Canada, the US and Mexico contain an incredibly diverse set of landscapes and cultures.

Whenever we go on trips, we will pick a song and listen to it over and over, and then when we hear it later, it helps the memories come back. One of the songs we’ve used is, aptly, America by Simon and Garfunkel.

There are a bunch of books about hitchhiking across America. We have hitched a few rides ourselves. We picked up one called The Last American Hitchhiker by Mark Kneeskern, that we read aloud to each other during journeys. Fascinating vignettes of the culture across the continent.

Thanks for the fun game and for bringing back some memories.


Fantastic point about listening to one song over and over again. I have typically purchased an album before a trip, and then listened to that throughout the trip, so any song on that album can hopefully bring me back to that trip mentally.

I unintentionally tried your approach on a recent trip to Iceland, and the same song kept coming on. Over a year later, that one song reminds me of so many parts of the entire trip. I'm going to pick just one song per trip from now on - thanks for pointing out that this approach works!


Your point about music is spot-on. Most of the music in my library has a memory associated with it, and I found that it's usually the moment I listened to it the first time.

So whenever one of my favourite artists puts out an album, or I find one that I might like, I save it and listen to it when I know I can do the whole thing, no peeking. I absolutely love how every album brings back a memory.


Love it. As a EU, always dreamed about listening to real country music. In the car in Nebraska, its even better. Suggestions:

1. Optionnally display other's cars

2. Mute radio when talkie talkie

3. Display talkie radius if any

4. Some way to regroup (im not sure)

5. Apk that continues in background

6. Some way to make/add plugins

It's wonderful as it is. Thanks for making this.


Dreamed?!? Well let me make your dreams come true. Have you heard of radio garden? I found a station for you in Nashville, Tennessee. That's a pretty great place to find good country music.

http://radio.garden/listen/103wkdf/S7xSIpaS - In Nashville

http://radio.garden/listen/want-fm-98-9/2I82DH2y - Nearby in Lebanon, TN

If you want the truly authentic experience, stick to stations that have their four letter code in the title (starts with a W), because those are 100% real FM radio stations. Enjoy the authentic country music experience. As you head toward the central US, you'll find more and more country music.


Radio stations east of the Mississippi River start their stations with 'W', and stations west of the Mississippi with 'K'. So any call letters starting with K or W are real.


Thank for that call to action. I think that i will adopt radio garden forever!


That radio site/app is genius idea.


Thanks for great suggestions and kind words! For EU I'm experimenting with a special version called 3ur0p4. Same stuff, but you can only take public transport or a bicycle.


Funny. I just got back from a 3 month European road trip, basically following the Med coast from Gibraltar to Greece. Probably 15 times, people lectured me under the guise of a question "Why did you rent a car? Why not just take trains?", and maybe 10 times "That's so American".

But, I'm glad I did. Literally every one of my favorite experiences/places of the trip was completely inaccessible through public transit, and honestly I would not have even found those places or people if I wasn't driving around aimlessly. On top of that, every one of my least favorite experiences was in a place that was highly accessible to public transit, and mobbed with tourists.

You know what I'm not going to remember? Standing in a mob waiting for a train in Cinque Terre. Standing in a mob in Rome looking at the Vatican. Standing in a mob in Dubrovnik while "Game of Thrones" tours pass.

What will I remember? Watching the sunset over Andalusia from an abandoned monastery, sharing a meal with some migrant workers on an olive orchard in Tuscany, giving Goran and his hobbled sheep a ride and subsequently living with him for a week on his lavender farm in Croatia. None of that would have been open to me without a car. But, I guess that is just the American in me talking.


Oh, I'm Croatian, having lived in Canada for a quarter of a century, and fully agree. I've rented a car last few times in Croatia. My wife is Canadian and our favourite time was when we got sick of phenomenally over-crowded tourist destinations, turned off gps, and followed smaller and smaller roads we were convinced were taking us in right direction, until a dirt path petered out in somebody's vineyard :)


> Probably 15 times, people lectured me under the guise of a question "Why did you rent a car? Why not just take trains?", and maybe 10 times "That's so American".

As a European (Italian) myself I find that odd, as for all but trips that are either to a single city, or very specific limited area with superb train/public transport access, I'll definitively use a car, as do most people I know.

But that may also come from the fact that I did not grew up in a big(ger) city, and while I took the bus and train for going into school, a car was still quite the requirement for a lot of other things anyway.

Definitively agree, when I went camping with a few friends in tents around Sweden in 2017 we met some wondeful people in quite remote areas, and it just wouldn't work with trains or the like, that was only OK when staying in Göteborg for a few days.

Same in Madeira, we rented a car there and without that we'd have been confined to basically the main city Funchal only, but with the car we could explore the whole island nicely, basically spending a day or two in each corner.

> You know what I'm not going to remember? Standing in a mob waiting for a train in Cinque Terre.

Well, it seems it left an impression ;-P

That said, I went to Cinque Terre in 2020 by car, parked in Monterosso and was fine using the train between the five towns, but then most US/UK tourists did not visit that year, so it may have been quite a different experience. I really do not think that traveling between the towns using a car would be better than the train, as Monterosso is the single one that is _somewhat_ car accessible, at least for smaller ones.


> Standing in a mob waiting for a train in Cinque Terre

Same here! I just did a road trip from UK to Italy, and standing on the platform at Vernazza was by far the worst part of the whole trip.


as someone who crossed half of europe by bike and train myself, i would absolutely love that!

where can i check for updates?


> Same stuff, but you can only take public transport or a bicycle.

hahahah this got a laugh out of me. Really fun app you have here. What inspired you?


Back when I worked at Samara (Aribnb's R&D) we needed to generate a dataset with more or less realistic road trip routes. With stops on the way and realistic destinations. Working on that and then exploring the results was fun and made me realise I could build it for everyone's fun too. That's from technical side, but also my wonderful 5 years in the United States and all the trips we had inspired me from sentimental side too.


That's so cool. I sure appreciate you for making this for us and it's cool that your job at the time had creative stuff like this to do. This hits that same spot that ProgressQuest or Blaseball hits.


> you can only take public transport or a bicycle.

Haha, perfect!


In the US, they usually call it "CB Radio" (Citzen's Band) not "walkie talkie" (unless the radio is hand operated and not mounted to the dashboard).


The frequencies displayed are UHF, in the European PMR446 band, which is nearly identical to American FRS but not close enough to use the same radios. Call that a minor miss on the author's part, change those 446's to 462's and label it FRS, it'd be good.

Exact numbers notwithstanding, it's UHF so the wavelength (roughly 70cm) is small enough to penetrate the window-sized openings in the car's metal shell, unlike the larger wavelengths of CB (27MHz, 11 meter wavelength) which require an external antenna.

I've used both FRS and amateur 70cm (440MHz) on roadtrips, and it's much more convenient than CB owing to precisely that -- simple whip antennas on handheld radios, no magnet-mount mess with a coax cable pinched in a door seal somewhere.

The audio is also somewhat unrealistic in that if multiple users are pressing push-to-talk simultaneously, their voices mix together. Realistically only the strongest one would get through, owing to the "FM capture effect", and the others you'd never know were there until they keyed up at a non-conflicting moment.


Where I lived in rural Nebraska, polka radio stations were more common than country radio stations. This reflected the ethnicity and immigration history of the region I lived in.

Blew my mind when I moved there, and still does. This was a long time ago, I would be surprised if there is still so much polka radio.


not for country music, but other country's music: https://radiooooo.com/


[flagged]


American "modern country" isn't right wing propaganda. It's something far more cancerous. It's insufferable. They sing about being rednecks drinking beer and fucking hookers. It's absolute dog shit. Randy Prozac mocks it in his (NSFW + NSFL) single "Budweiser, Me And Homeland Security"

You don't have to stick to pre 80s for quality country. Charley Crockett visits the topic in his song Music City USA (read the deep dives posts about that song).

These days we have some good options for country and there are even gangsta rap collabs with bluegrass (Gangstagrass):

  - Charley Crockett
  - Tyler Childers
  - Jason Isbell
  - Sturgill Simpson
  - Tyler Childers
  - Arlo McKinley
  - Benjamin Tod
  - Steve Earle
  - Dwight Yoakam
  - Brandi Carlile
  - Amanda Shires
  - Colter Wall
  - Lucinda Williams
  - Red Shahan
  - Jarod Morris
  - Ryan Bingham
  - TK and the Holy Know Nothings
  - Trent Cowie Band
  - Matt Williams
  - Read Southall Band
  - Treaty Oak Revival
  - Colby Acuff
  - Carson Jeffrey
  - Seth Ward
  - Dylan Wheeler


Don't forget Townes Van Zandt. Colter Wall and Sturgill Simpson are great examples of authentic-sounding country music that has nothing to do with "Bro Country."


Tangentially related, but I'm reminded a little bit of Desert Bus, which was an unreleased bideo game from the mid-90s which was designed to be the most annoying video game to play.

The idea is that you're driving a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas in real time. The maximum speed of the bus is 45 mph so it takes about eight hours. The bus constantly tilts right so you have to constantly correct it's course, otherwise you'll drive off the road and have to be towed back (also in real time).

The only break in the monotony is a bug that splats on the windshield at around hour 5.


The way I remember it, the bus didn't "tilt" so much as it was supposed to be a simulation of the alignment being off.


If you make the trip, you get 1 point. You can drive back to get another point. And then go on for more points. People have competed for high scores at this game.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/638110/Desert_Bus_VR/

It got modernized ;-)


https://youtu.be/RFi2vcseEz8 My favorite review of it.


Another detail: the game didn't have a pause option.


Was it possible to pull over or stop the bus?


I think if the bus stopped it was towed back to the start point. Stopping or leaving the road was a fail essentially.


I'm personally a fan of the Doom port of it, called Revenant Bus.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/31/18050018/desert-bus-doom-...


It's a game from a Penn & Teller collection of games..


And will brilliantly subverted into an annual charity event: Desert Bus for Hope


VW bus? Mine tilted left due to bent axle. Still drove from Arizona to DC that summer.


It's a standard full-size (nominally ~40ft) bus:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/SCD_Penn_%26_...


Sounds like the Truck Simulator series! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Simulator


Wow that is really awful - thanks for sharing


Geoff Marshall, an English railroad YouTuber, recently did an American road trip to "clear [his] head and refresh [his] mind." In his video about it titled I've Not Been Happy[0], he talks about "beautiful Kansas," and "[the] amazing town White City Kansas," and marvels at many things that are mundane to me. It was strange to watch but seeing someone else appreciate these simple things reminded me to appreciate whats around me.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QXktBQnOBc


Have an endorsement!

"I've done 3 cross-country road trips and this captures everything I remember about Kansas excluding the IHOP in Wichita where we met an overworked waitress nearly running the entire place."


That happens a lot at Waffle House, too.

Also hundreds of teenagers in cars hanging out in a parking lot on Saturday night is a thing in a lot of small midwest towns where there's not much to do after the chorin' is finished.


I've driven coast-to-coast three times, and from the East coast to Texas many times. In the 1980's we still had the 55mph (88 kph) national speed limit, so driving from San Antonio to El Paso was excruciatingly boring. The only stations on the radio were the million-watt Mexican stations that would overpower any weaker US stations on nearby frequencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4hja0snEHw

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


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adnNrK11pu0


How is the speed limit situation nowadays?


Not too bad. Most of the east coast is 65 or 70 mph. Out west and middle states you'll find roads marked for 80 mph. No idea about the west coast (California to Washington). For about a year or two after the 55 limit was repealed, Montana had a "reasonable and prudent" speed limit, which attracted people from all over the country to drive recklessly.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a14511978/montana-was-...

And then there's SH-130 east of Austin, which now has America's highest speed limit at 85mph (136 kph). It was built as a toll road, and the Lieutenant Governor of the time was a big Hennessey Performance fan, so he got them to test the toll transponders at 220 mph (352 kph). The toll was successfully read, so don't try and skip out on it by going really fast. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_0von_5SRk

I'm sure the Germans here will laugh at our low speed limits, but our roads aren't maintained as well as the Autobahn is (which is amazing, btw), our distances are much longer (Interstate 40 is 4000 km long and it doesn't even go all the way across the US), you can't stay at Autobahn-levels of alertness for a full day of driving, and our drivers aren't as well trained (something I wish we would fix).


Thanks. Interesting. German Autobahns aren’t perfect either. In many places, there are construction sites and speed limits.

130 kph seems to be a very reasonable travel speed. Most European countries have a limit somewhere around that speed.

Re US: What I have never clearly understood though is how a country so fixated on personal freedom is limiting speeding that much.


From what I heard (even from americans themselves) it's likely because the idiot to good driver ratio is way too high and they'll just start killing themselves.


For the record, crossing by bicycle is also a delightful way to see the country. It makes side trips a little less appealing, but you do get to meet great people.

Adventure Cycling has established routes. They have great maps and established relationships for camping and other resources (bike shops, for instance).

Equally fun is just winging it. I did 7000 miles just before smartphones. I put together some stretches with a road atlas and the yellow pages I found in phone booths along the way. Embracing the serendipitous things and never quite knowing what's next are just wonderful.

I love the idea of being able to capture some of that serendipity virtually.


This is evocative and beautiful. Thank you for building this. As an implant in the US (25 years and counting), I was and still am awestruck at the variety the country offers in scenery, conversations, music and food.

I started driving all around the country when Rand McNally maps were the source, and visits to AAA for Triptychs, and Motel 8 for 20$ a night was life-altering for this 25-year old newbie. Not to mention the $10 Geo Metro car rental and 99cents gallon of Petrol (~3.75ltrs).

Now sitting in a fancy part of the country, where Burgers sell for $20, it is a sucker punch to read this Craig's List posting:

Darling Nigerian Dwarf Buckling Goat This little guy is a doll with a sweet disposition. Pretty tricolor with frosted ears. If you want to add a sire to your herd, a sweet pet or both, he'll fill the bill. His dam is one of my milk goats. Will band upon payment if desired. Current on CDT and has had first trim. Located north of Franklin NE.

Thank you again.


This is great. The camera roll is my favorite application.

One project that I’ve had in my mind for a while, but haven’t attempted yet, is to create a travel simulation based on Google street view pictures. For example, you pick a start and an end destination on a map, then the program plays a “video”, which is just a bunch of sequential street view images chained together in order from point A to point B.


I’ve wondered for a long time now why no game studios have developed any open world map game or exploring games - indie or big name studios -given that street view has existed for ten out or fifteen plus years now


Microsoft Flight Simulator lets you fly a plane anywhere in the world based on satellite images and 3D models of various cities.

I’d imagine that any other game studio would have trouble finding enough money to license the rights to satellite images or street view images from which they might build a world.


Reminds me of "Airplane Mode" a game available on Steam that is a simulator of a airliner trip -- no, not as the pilot like in a flight simulator, but as a passenger -- so you have to spend the time listening to podcasts, watching movies, or reading a book. It's simulating the utterly mundane which is amusing.


The 446Mhz was a nice touch, though it gives away that you're back in the EU; that part of the spectrum is firmly within the US amateur radio band plan (70 cm), and if this were a real road trip, transmitting without a license might bring some grief.

Might.

I am quite enjoying this simulator, though! I think I might leave it running during my workday, try different trips over the coming weeks!


Amazing. I do think I get the feeling you’re going for here.

At first, I thought this was some type of choose your own adventure or text adventure.

Anyway, good stuff.


Made me laugh that there's an Imperial or Metric setting but metric isn't available. After all, this is America.


I love the idea, adding a destination would be nice.

Here in the US, at night time, the local stations shut down, or go low power, so that the Clear Channel stations can be heard over much wider areas. One example, is WLS at 890 in Chicago, once described as "a 50,000 watt clear channel blowtorch".

You should be able to hear it in Kansas at night.


Just a point of clarification, that should be little-c "clear channel stations can be heard".

The lower-case term means "station that doesn't share its frequency with any others".

The upper-case is a trademarked brand for a radio conglomerate widely blamed for hastening the demise of the medium by homogenizing content and removing local newscasters and DJs from countless stations across the land.


Back in the 1990's, I used to drive across the US a lot. Not a professional driver, just some big road trips and also helping a few friends move to other cities. Our fave thing to do on these road trips was listen to small town radio, not the big channels.

I'd hear weird music and local news. Little Mom and Pop stations in southern Indiana that only play old timey bluegrass. Cow college stations playing stoner 60's rock. Country farm auctions on the radio, maybe talking about crop prices. And lots of storm chaser radio in Kansas and Nebraska.


Check out NC State student radio out of Raleigh. They got a transmitter upgrade a few years ago so now you can hear them beyond the city limits (FM 88.1). And of course they stream. It's a really well run station and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference from a commercial station, except there are very few ads and the DJs are allowed to pick the format of their time slot.

Friday nights are Penitentiary Request Rock - the inmates at nearby Central Prison will mail in song requests to the DJ. Only in America :)

https://wknc.org/


Can you not have a similar experience driving through rural Spain or France? Genuinely curious, the few road trips I took in Europe (Spain, Scotland) did not seem that different from those in the USA (except that roads tended to be narrower which gave me a more stressful experience).


You definitely can! I’ve driven from Ukraine to the Netherlands, going through Poland and Germany. The eastern parts of France were also quite nice.

I really like how when you are road tripping through Europe that there’s such different cultures and languages along the way, and old historical villages if you’re into that sort of thing. Mountains, forests, farms.. deserts in Spain, too, which I really want to see one day. That will probably be my next road trip.


I've road tripped hundreds of thousands of kilometers all around Europe.

The huge difference is that we don't have all the vast empty spaces the Americans do, so it never really ends up feeling the same.


Only tried Spain and a little bit of France so far. These parts of Europe seemed more urbanized than the US where some areas are still really wild and desolated.


See Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LtiHla1dNg


There's also a bunch of videos of Lærdalstunnelen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A6rdal_Tunnel) on youtube

And then there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistics_(film)

It lasts 5 weeks (51,420 min):

> In 2008, Erika Magnusson and Daniel Andersson asked themselves where modern electronic gadgets come from. They conceived the idea to follow the production cycle of a pedometer in reverse chronological order from end sales back to its origin and manufacture. The route of the journey commenced in Stockholm, then proceeded through Insjön, Gothenburg, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Algeciras, Málaga, and finished in Shenzhen at the manufacturer in Bao'an.

> The project was filmed in real time during a trip to and in locations at a factory, following the route of the product's manufacture from the store in Stockholm where it was purchased to the factory in China where it was manufactured

Here's a 72 minute edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYFG0xP12yE

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32452372


Wow, this is more entertaining than I expected. Check the comments to see the highlight moment timestamps!


Is there a street view on this? That could be another dimension of fun!


There is a camera roll "application" that fills with photos taken nearby as you progress. I personally find it more intriguing than traditional street view services (e.g. google) as it captures the country in any condition whether it's snow or rain, day or night, highway or a dirt road.


I'm only going 22 MPH in Kansas. Ugh! Can I speed up? It's Kansas, afterall.


Crossing Kansas takes forever and is a mildly hallucinogenic experience at 80mph couldn’t imagine being limited to 22mph!


Hey, the save file breaks notepad++ when I try to open it. Is it ok if I ask you what's inside? Just curious :D

>edit: nevermind, I managed to open it after the third try, there must be something wrong on my end lol


Inside there is a JSON of the application state with LZ-compressed values.


This is a really neat concept. Fairly simple, but great execution. I'm digging the camera roll feature.


I've had this open in a browser window, glancing at it and listening to the radio for a few moments throughout the day, and now I'm feeling nostalgic for the road trips I took when I was younger, before the total control of smartphones. The serendipitous and unexpected places along the way are often more interesting than the destination. Thanks for building this!


Absolutely love the aesthetic/experience, the map w/ the music and the little crowdsourced flavor from Craigslist et al really add to this. Thank you for this.


This is truly amazing. This is a shining example of what's possible with open(?) apis. I don't know what else to say. This is just awesome.


This is great! Right now "locality" and the News application are not working (..loading) for me.

Other than that, would be great to be able to run it in the background so that I can have it there while I work and check it out every now and then to see photos, encyclopedia, and other stuff, while also listening to the radios.


I see that it now runs in the background...and would like to ask for another feature...being able to pause it would be great...I like to have it running in the background while I work, but don't want it running all weekend haha. Maybe if I close the tab it'll stop though, but just having a "pause" button somewhere could be useful.


I half-expected to hear Paul Harvey at some point. He seemed to be the only voice on the radio in the middle of the country in the 1980s.


I wonder if "Mr. and Mrs. Erotic American" would fall under fair use...

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Mr._and_Mrs._Erotic_American


Magnificent simulation game. Make commercial version of it and I will buy it.


This is so cool! I'm in a motorcycle somewhere in Oklahoma. I tried the Talkie but it didn't work, all the sound got very low pitched. Will try in something besides firefox later when I reach my first landmark.

Has anybody figured out how to take pictures yet?

I'm traveling at about 1 mile per minute in the motorcycle, so 60MPH. Is there a speedometer or fuel readout?


Thank you!

It takes pictures automatically as you progress. For the current speed you can check the "vehicle" application. There is no fuel data, but you can read tailpipe CO2 emissions in "metrics".


Thank you :)

- Are there any goals, high scores, etc?

- I noticed there is a meter showing what % I've explored and I'm curious if that is for the current route or the total number of drive-able routes, or if it corresponds to an achievement.

- Is there a way to know when I'm near other drivers who can hear my talkie or should I just give a holler and see who can hear me?

- How often does the camera take pics? I've gone 11 miles and it still says I haven't taken any pictures.


It is intentionally goal-less: there is no end, no achievements, you just explore.

The total for exploration percent is the US highway mileage according to the Federal Highway Administration, many many miles.

That's a good idea to indicate drivers nearby, let's see what I can do. Thanks!

You should have new pics every few miles, like 3 or 5. Perhaps traffic is limited, experiencing HN effect at the moment. Try to reload the page.


As another data point for you, I've travelled 71 miles so far with no photos taken yet. Firefox 106.0b9, various ad-blockers installed.

I'm seeing another possible bug, or maybe I just misunderstand what is happening. If I refresh the page everything is silent and the vehicle is moving, which seems fine. The vehicle window however has a button labelled "resume". When I click that the button disappears, nothing obvious seems to happen other than static starts coming out my speakers. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop the static other than refresh the page. Is that expected?

The classified are probably my favourite part, some of them are hilarious!


No photos might be caused by the Facebook Container extension - I'm seeing the same and I think that's what's happening for me.


Awesome I really like the aimless nature of it. I'll give it a shot and see if I gather pictures as I pass through other areas. Thanks again for building this. What's the best way for us to help or reward you? Do you have a github sponsor thing set up?

your site here remins me of this flash designer called cymru i think, who had a very similar layout with a little grey alien who'd morph into different poses when you interacted with the screen. https://the389.net/8/1/


Yes - Applications > Vehicle.


Thank you!


This is like a version of Oregon Trail except real-time, and no hunting.

Overall, I like it.

I do wish it had the ability to set the pace to "grueling".


That was my first thought as well!

As soon as I got a car as a teenager, I started enjoying the country by road-trip, but long before that, Oregon Trail taught me about the vast distances and varied scenery, all mine to discover. This seems to capture both, and it's really cool.

Somewhere I hope I still have some early digital photos from one of those trips. It would've been 1998 or 99, shot on an HP Photosmart C200, taken on I-40 westbound through Texas approaching Amarillo, as the mother of all thunderstorms barreled eastbound over us. A friend was at the wheel and I was in the back "resting" for the next driving shift, which meant futzing with the camera I had bought just before departure. I was clicking away at the lightning, marveling at the ability to simply delete shots that didn't come out, rather than having wasted expensive film. And then 46 shots into my experiment, I got it, captured a bolt of lightning in a photo, which I'd never been moneyed enough to attempt on film.

I'm now moseying eastbound on state route 36 just outside Lebanon KS, feeling an absolute flood of memories. This is masterfully executed.


This is incredible, thank you for sharing!


Took me a minute to realize that the Vehicle app makes sound. I thought my computer fan was spinning up, lol.


Is the talkie functional? Just tried it a few times and nobody replied. Maybe everyone else is too shy?


It was functional for me; there was someone reading some rather bad (in the best way) jokes, "What kind of car do dogs hate? A cor-VET". It really felt connecting, since the people replying and cooperating on the channel are all going through the same experience. I saw a comment above about having a radius visible for the talkie (if there is a radius?)

Oh, and +100 points for the thing being anonymous.


It works, people are shy. I had a crack at talking to some folks, more to comment on how interesting the application itself is. I wonder how the app deals with many people connected? Maybe different instances?


Think, most browsers limit number of peers to 256. Not sure what happens after exceeding the limit. Never tested, honestly.

Having 256 people on a call must be a crazy experience, but the app only connects you to other drivers in vicinity, the radius is about 100 km.


Is there a way to mute the weird static sound? I turned off the radio, but the static persists. When I turned on walkie-talkie, the static moved to the speaker of the my mic/speaker combo. Turning off walk-talkie just moved the static back to original speaker.


Maybe you have the "vehicle" application open? It generate grey noise to simulate background noise in real vehicle. Can be turned off by closing the window.


The 'Talkie' was a little surprising.

"Someone here?"

Yes, I'm here.


Did someone really respond? I tried it just now but only heard static in reply.


There was a short outage. Had to upgrade a plan to allow more peers. It's back and I just chatted with someone very nice from Brooklyn, NY and few other people listening. Extremely intimidating for me as an introvert though.


Haha, thanks I tried it again and it works! Weird yet fun.


I was just in the middle of Kansas listening to the radio, and I hear two folks on the talkie. When can I pay for a Steam version of this?! Great job!

Feature Request: Can we see what our destination is?

Bug: After turning off the radio I was still getting static noise.


That's from having the "car" dialog up. If you close it, the static goes away.


Is there any way to set current location and destination? I very much like the radio interface, though I only seem to be able to get two stations. I'd like to explore the radio stations available in different metro areas.


There is no way to set current location and destination currently.

Starting point is always the geographical center of the US near Lebanon, Kansas. The route and general direction are not pre-determined and depend on the vehicle choice. There is no destination really, you can stop at any time.

Available radios change as you progress depending on your location in the game.


You might like https://radio.garden/


Amazing. This reminds me of Cross Country Canada, which I played to death at school.

https://youtu.be/jwwGY88ikFw (I played the colour Macintosh version though)


Turned it on to hear someomne playing Never Gunnu Give You Up through the radio...


The game is quite intriguing. However, I'm way more interested in the technology for building this web app. Does anybody know of any tutorials to learn how to build a hello world of this type of app?


Thanks for trying it out!

The frontend is built with Svelte. This was my first time using the framework and I found their website super helpful: https://svelte.dev/docs

Used Mapbox API and geolib (https://github.com/manuelbieh/geolib/) for building routes and for other geospatial tasks.

"Talkie" was built with simple-peer (https://github.com/feross/simple-peer) and WebRTC. Great tutorial can be found on MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/API/WebRT...

On the backend I use Vercel's serverless functions which are mostly acting as trivial proxies for various open API's.

Feel free to email me if you need more info.


Thanks for all the info. Quite helpful!


I've had it up for a half hour and am enjoying it. Great job. It would be cool if you could pick a place to go or stop, then create a travel log and have a travel diary.


Really cool. Curious - where are the photos pulled from? The 'Talkie' feature is great, was chatting to a couple of people before about the experience. Well done!


Mapillary, a crowdsourced Google Street View alternative run by Facebook/Meta.


Thanks! I'm guessing some other photos from landmarks are taken from elsewhere? For example, in Kansas there is a 'Geographical center of the 48 states' monument (sorry, I'm from Australia so not familiar with what this is called) that looks like a photo taken not from the road.


Some of the photos are not taken from the road, which I love, but they all come from the same API.


I don't think this is working for me, I just see the radio, map and status windows and the blue logo background. Am I supposed to see something else?


You can discover other features in the applications menu in the top left corner


thanks


zoom into the map to see the vehicle move in 2d


thanks


A Brit driving through Kansas listening to Led Zeppelin on a Sunday morning. Thank you for this. It must have been a fun project to create!


Really cool! But I would love some links to photos or street view if it's possible without you needing to surpass Google's free tier.


Did you see the camera roll button?


As a recent transplant to the US, this looks like a fun way to get my road trip plans going :). Thank you for this!


Am I supposed to be able to control or even know the destination, or is that only revealed by watching it run for many days?


The destination is not pre-determined and depends on the vehicle you chose.

Everyone start at the geographical center of the United States in Lebanon, Kansas and later statistically most likely find themselves on one of the coasts. Just because of the overall direction of the highways.

Ended up in Anchorage once. Must say rural Canadian craigslist is wild.


Are you saying the car picks random options at each intersection?


Not quite. Initially, it gets general direction, say the West Coast. Then, depending on vehicle choice, it has a list of preferred waypoint categories. After arriving to a waypoint it makes a decision where to go next.

For example, if you picked a camper van, your next stop may be a gas station (for snacks), after that it may decide to head for an RV-park, then for some natural attraction and so on.


The radio feature is super nice. Thank you for juggling all these API's for us OP. :)


Very fun, thanks!

I would love a feature to “use my location” so I could use it on real road trips.


One of my favorite features is the settings for units, where metric is disabled.


What am I doing?


Is this a riddle or an existential question?


I've discovered great music in Kansas radio stations.


"Driving North-East at 103 mph"

I like your style


This technology could possibly be modified to create a truth-detector. Which would be monstrously socially beneficial, as well as merely entertaining.


This is beyond cool!

That said, for me at least, being stuck in a car for days on end is marginally better than waterboarding. I never could stand it, haha.


Well... you're not forced to be in there


Well, no. However over my lifetime I've more or less been roped into them.

I actually had a family road trip as a kid across the entire United States. This was before ipods and iphones and reading in the car would make me sick... so I pretty much had a solid month of being stuck in one car seat for 9 hours a day ahah. Always hated being in a car since.


Ya that's no fun. It's different if you're just chilling with a friend and visiting places for no reason


You can install an armchair on the roof.


the intro suggests that you are not testing this on firefox. but while it seems broken on firefox right now it was actually working some time in the past hour so it seems it would not be to far away from being able to support firefox as well.


Really cool!

Reminds me of apolloinrealtime.org


Someday we'll have the simulated windscreen in full realtime 3D.


Make a kickstarter to turn this into a MMO.

This could be the 2048 of this generation.


I was expecting more video.


If this pulled snapshots from Google street view for the car view it would be complete.


Might not be fun to pay for.


Damn, this is fun.


Can speed be modified?


During the setup it offers to choose a vehicle. Think, motorcycle is the fastest. EV produces the least tailpipe CO2. Vehicle choice also affects route preferences.


Thanks!


this is awesome!


This is great


This is my new favorite idle game


I am getting poolsuite.net vibes


Unique and well made. I like it


is there a way to reset? I guess I could clear cookies.


Currently there is no accessible way to reset. You can try run "reset()" from the console though.


"reset" button has been added to "settings"


This is amazing!


super cool!


[deleted]


The site is interesting technically so I'll not comment on that. It is always amusing reading copy from Americans who assume America would be an interesting place to visit, however.


Less amusing than sad to see someone trolling on a site meant for substantive discussion; or to find someone who thinks a country of 10 million sq. km. representing almost every biome on the planet doesn't have something worth seeing.




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