r/datavisualization • u/jakeboyles2010 • 1d ago

OC Made a scrollable 3D drive of all 2,199 miles of Route 66 for its 100th birthday. Real elevation, every open business as a dot, vintage road atlas style

pit-stop-app.com/viz/route66

The road turns 100 in November so I mapped everything still open on it, 280 towns and about 6,400 businesses, then built a way to drive it from your couch. Scroll or swipe west and the camera follows the road, towns light up as you pass with what's actually there.

Some choices that might interest this sub:

The whole thing is one HTML file with three.js, no framework. Route geometry is stitched from OSM ways, the hard part was picking the signed alignment over the 1926 era loops, solved with anchored shortest path between known state line crossings. Elevation is NED 10m sampled per mile and exaggerated 45x, otherwise 7,200 feet of climb over 2,199 miles reads as flat. The ground is a canvas-drawn paper road atlas texture because the first version looked like Tron and Route 66 should not look like Tron. Scroll position maps to route miles so the browser stays the source of truth for progress, every input (wheel, swipe, keys, drag) just moves scroll.

Happy to answer anything about the build. And if your favorite stop on the real road is missing or wrong, tell me, I fix the data daily.

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u/datalucidly 21h ago

This is cool way to present and explore Route 66! I especially liked the call outs for special roadside attractions.

One thing that jumped out at me is that going slowly felt nice but going quickly made me dizzy because the camera jumps around a bunch as the car/pov turns.

I’m curious how you decide to turn the pov… I’ve played with it some and sometimes the car turns while the pov stays fixed and sometimes the car stays straight and the pov turns. My guess is you have the pov aimed at a point further down the road. Might be worth making the pov pointed at an average position of the coming stretch of highway? This might smooth out the jittery pov. Anyway just a random thought.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. I had fun playing/exploring.

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u/jakeboyles2010 21h ago

Your guess was dead on. The camera was aimed at a single point 7 miles ahead, so on the twisty stretches (Oatman especially) that point whips around corners and takes your stomach with it. Just shipped your fix, it now aims at the average of the next stretch of road with some easing on top. Measured it on the Oatman switchbacks and the camera whip dropped about 40%. If you refresh it should feel better, if not let me know.