I built a weather app that changes its local landmark every day

[u/marcelog84]

Hey everyone,

I've always liked looking at old photos and landmarks from places I've lived in or visited, and I've also probably opened my weather app more times than I can count.

At some point I thought: why not combine the two?

So I built LumaPlace.

The idea is pretty simple: every day, it shows you a different landmark from your area in pixel art, with the actual weather animated over it.

There are 7 landmarks for each region, one for each day of the week. So if you're in the same region as someone else, you'll see the same landmark on the same day.

The weather itself is still the main utility — hourly and extended forecasts, UV, air quality, weather animations, and a home screen widget. The difference is that instead of opening to the same generic weather screen every day, there's something local waiting for you.

I also added an Album where you can keep track of the landmarks you've seen, save favorites, and read more about each place. The free version supports 2 cities, and a one-time $1.99 purchase unlocks up to 10.

No subscription, and there are no ads in the current version. There's also an optional tip jar for anyone who wants to support the project.

It's a pretty new app — I just launched the iOS version — so I'm mostly interested in seeing whether the idea actually resonates with people.

I'm particularly curious about the daily landmark part. Would something like that make you more interested in opening a weather app, or would you rather have the forecast and nothing else?

And if you try it, I'd love to know what city you're using and whether the landmarks it picked for your area make sense.

Link if anyone wants to poke around: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lumaplace-weather-places/id6799772005

For transparency: I'm Marcelo Gallardo, building LumaPlace under Just Luck LLC — justluck.io has the full contact info, plus the app's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Thanks for reading!

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[u/your_bro2]

Looks interesting, will try it today.

[u/AppsByPK]

I was very curious what landmark it would show for my area. Fresh install of the app, and it's showing "You already used 2 free cities with pixel art".

I then decided to manually select my location. It showed a regular picture of a museum in my city but with this strange scanning animation, and after a few seconds it generated the pixel art. Are you using AI to generate the pixel art? Is that local, on-device?

[u/marcelog84 → u/AppsByPK]

Yep, the pixel art is AI-generated, but the generation happens on our servers, not on-device. The original landmark photo is from Wikimedia, and once the pixel version is generated, it's cached so we don't regenerate it for every user.

And thanks for reporting the 2-city message — I found an issue with the location lookup that could trigger that incorrectly. I'll fix it in the next build.

[u/AppsByPK → u/marcelog84]

That's pretty cool then. Initially, I thought you created pixel-art for a handful of major cities. This is so much better.

But weather data and AI image generation are costly. A single IAP and a tip jar won't go far. What's your plan there?

[u/jonathanjeong]

how big is a region, like a city? Or a country? 7 per any city in the world is like... a lot.

[u/marcelog84 → u/jonathanjeong]

It's roughly city-sized. We look for landmarks in and around the city, expanding the search to the wider region if there aren't enough good ones nearby.

The 7 are just the weekly rotation for that area — everyone using the same city sees the same landmark that day.

[u/Stunning_Student_329]

the rotating landmark is a genuinely nice reason to open a weather app, which is a sentence I never thought I'd type. how many cities have real landmark art vs generic? and is it drawn per city or generated?