Warsaw in Voxels: An Interactive 3D Map of the City Centre

A developer has launched an impressive interactive 3D map of central Warsaw built entirely in a voxel art style, drawing light inspiration from popular sandbox titles like Minecraft and MagicaVoxel. The project allows users to freely explore the city centre, adjust the time of day, change weather conditions, and even take control of individual pedestrians roaming the streets, a feature subtly influenced by classic strategy games.

Built to run smoothly primarily on desktop browsers while offering basic mobile compatibility, the application relies on a robust combination of open datasets. Key sources include OpenStreetMap for foundational geometry such as buildings, streets, sidewalks, and tram tracks, alongside official Polish geographic data from GUGiK for precise building heights and tree LiDAR imagery. Additionally, Warsaw’s municipal tree database was utilized to render realistic seasonal foliage changes based on specific tree species.

The project is fully open-source and hosted on GitHub, inviting developers and enthusiasts to inspect the code and repurpose the map as they see fit. Although the initial loading time can take a brief moment due to the density of the voxel data, the final result provides a unique and nostalgic way to experience the Polish capital from a completely different visual perspective.

Aggregated summary. Original: Hacker News