Even on M1? Didn't Google Earth run smoothly when it came out? (Which was apparently 25 years ago, oh my goodness!)
Kugelblitz – Mac-Native Google Earth Alternative (apps.metaebene.me)
182 pointsby luoc8 hours ago51 comments
andai 5 hours ago
> Kugelblitz shows the Earth and its neighbors as a globe and as an atlas you fly over smoothly like a pilot, even on an M1.
Nekorosu 4 hours ago
I was going to highlight the same thing. M1 is very powerful and this kind of application would be more limited by the amount of unified RAM. If it works well on 8Gb it's a good one. Mentioning M1 like this actually makes the app look bad.
kiwibyproxy 4 hours ago
did you check out the page? this features a "flying mode" in 3D terrain, streamable to Vision Pro
flohofwoe 4 hours ago
It's still doing nothing that a 20 year old flight simulator wouldn't be able to do. The one potential performance problem on a laptop with HighDPI display might be the pixel fillrate to render at full resolution, but the pixel shaders in Google Earth should be extremely cheap, and if that's not enough it could drop down to half resolution with 4x MSAA without much quality loss (but an M1 GPU easily has enough oompfh per pixel on a Retina display for what Google Earth needs to render).
echoangle 4 hours ago
FSX from 2006 had 3D terrain you could fly over and streaming to a VR headset isn’t that hard either. An oculus Quest has effectively mobile phone power and can run VR games on device.
someguyiguess 3 hours ago
Yeah in 480p
walrus01 4 hours ago
There's a ton of single threaded performance problems in Google Earth Pro if you watch its activity closely, when you have something like 150MB-300MB of KML placemark lat/long locations and lines loaded. Moving to a new geographic area will cause it to re-read the entire KML for an area and render the placemarks/lines onto the map using *only one CPU core* no matter the capability of your system. There's tons of other things it does with only one core.
Load the fiber maps for a facilities based ISP that spans a few county size up to a whole state size of scale, with good granular detail (like splice case and pedestal locations, etc) and watch Google Earth Pro slow to an absolute crawl even on a $599 current gen Intel core-whatever or AMD Ryzen single socket workstation CPU.
To be fair to it, people are trying to do all kinds of things these days with KML files that it really wasn't designed for, or ever intended for, and are much better done with professional grade GIS software.
tomaskafka 4 hours ago
For agents, M1s are the ancient machines, made long before they were born, and, the horror, barely enough to provide enough nutrients to even a small LLM.
VMG 3 hours ago
There is a Netflix miniseries about how two German underdog hackers built the first Google Earth precursor in 1994(!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Billion_Dollar_Code
(IIRC the premise was that the underdogs invented something like mipmaps, which I found hard to believe. The core tech was probably already invented by 3d shooters at that time)
LukaD an hour ago
It's not the same mipmapping that games use really, but dividing the map data into a quadtree with progressively finer resolutions.
It's more like turning mipmapping into a paging system.
motoroco 7 minutes ago
what data sources are you using for the global satellite imagery? I’m building mosaics for my own app but don’t have the pockets to pay for licensed data right now. NAIP is fantastic for the US but I’d really like to get z16+ coverage for Europe, too
richardstahl 4 hours ago
Kudos to Tim for creating this! In the last Freakshow Podcast he gave a walkthrough of how he created it.
https://freakshow.fm/fs313-der-tripelpunkt-der-metaebene
As other commenters said: TerraVision vibes.
rob74 7 hours ago
In case you're wondering, "Kugelblitz" is German for "ball lightning" (literally "spherical lightning")- probably refers to showing the "sphere" (the Earth) as fast as lightning?
marcelox86 41 minutes ago
this kind of app would really benefit from having NSScrollEdgeEffectStyle set to .soft. the huge toolbars (which tbf, is the fault of Liquid Glass, not the developer) and their opaque background takes away a lot of space that could be a peripheral for the map with NSScrollEdgeEffectStyle.
also, the Hide Toolbar option hides the traffic lights too...? this isn't standard macOS behavior...
sebslomski 6 hours ago
Terravision
jttnr 6 hours ago
Context: Kugelblitz is by one of the guys who made the original Terravision, which Google copied to make Google Earth.
Sadly, Kugelblitz is only available for Mac and is closed-source for now. And, of course, it's vibe-coded. He talks a little bit about his reasoning on his podcast (in German): https://logbuch-netzpolitik.de/lnp563-des-kaisers-neue-kleid...
a3w 6 hours ago
One out of two guys. Also, I listened to his podcasts for ten years, and he always had high standards. But
1. this gets really annoying, fast
2. Right now, he talks about a lot of stuff he does not know about as if he would know everything in the world.
Really can't stand him any more.
And yes, project is not even F/LOSS. 3D mouse recommended, this guy is aloft from the rest of human civilization.
unkeen 6 hours ago
Exactly my thoughts. In the end, he's just a pretty regular guy who exchanged his once high standards for the "enabling" factor of AI, striving for mediocrity now. Really sad and disappointing.
jttnr 4 hours ago
I partially agree. There was a time when Tim was hardly bearable, especially toward the end of CRE, but in my opinion, things have improved in recent years.
avhception 3 hours ago
Was there an official "end" of CRE? I was still hoping for new episodes some day.
jttnr 2 hours ago
Not sure, there is no indication on the website. Maybe its just an extra long pause.
rented_mule 4 hours ago
Are you saying Keyhole copied Terravision when they created EarthViewer? Google Earth was a rebranding, with continued development, of Keyhole EarthViewer after Google bought Keyhole.
manol74 4 hours ago
Terravision started much earlier than Keyhole, however the lawsuit agains Google wasn't successful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terravision#History
There is also a Netflix Mini-series inspired by the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Billion_Dollar_Code
carlos-cute 7 hours ago
Great ! I tried it on my apple M1Pro and it works fine :)
I would not put the grid at first lunching and I'd like that the earth keep spinning a bit when throwing it with the mouse !
dr_dshiv 7 hours ago
Cool! Want to add clouds? Here are some ideas to try!
Https://Earthlove.live
KaiserPro 6 hours ago
does it have all the tooling that the original google earth had, or is it more like apple maps?
ilumanty 8 hours ago
> Kugelblitz shows the Earth and its neighbors as a globe and as an atlas you fly over smoothly like a pilot, even on an M1
As if Google Earth wasn’t smooth on a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 in 2009
simmschi 7 hours ago
Ah, doesn't work on Sequoia 15.8.x. I wonder what features my Mac is missing to display a sphere with data.
elAhmo 6 hours ago
Same, such a shame developers are going this route, e.g. Raycast 2 as well won't work on older MacOS versions. I don't plan on updating to the liquid thingy as long as I can on my laptops.
dkmar 6 hours ago
macOS 27 min version lmao
ModernTimes 5 hours ago
To the developer, please just add this line to your prompt: "ensure it works on the 2 previous versions of MacOS".
planb 5 hours ago
Golden Gate Sidebar Layout. Designing for Sequoia is different than for Tahoe, and even more for the pre Liquid Glass OSes. Totally sensible for a new software to only care about future releases imho.
simmschi 3 hours ago
Yeah, sorry I didn't mean to sound salty. I was just a bit surprised, this is the first application that refuses to run on my M4 macbook. Maybe time to upgrade OSX :)
flohofwoe 5 hours ago
> Smooth, even on an M1...
Well, I would certainly excpect that an application that was already running smoothly on vanilla computers around 2005 also runs smoothly on a computer from 2020 ;)
vessenes an hour ago
Can we pay $4 to have the AI only build the software and not the marketing materials?
rrr_oh_man 6 hours ago
Is it really too much to ask to at least edit the slopscription?
Kugelblitz shows the Earth and its neighbors as a globe and as an atlas you fly over smoothly like a pilot, even on an M1. Imagery, road map and topographic map lie on real terrain, joined by thousands of open maps from the Library. Everything comes from freely available geodata, straight from its publishers, OpenStreetMap from the Kugelblitz tile server; you need no account.
Everything loaded stays in the cache, and Kugelblitz instances in the same network share it with each other if you wish. Status windows tell how far the view has loaded, where you are looking and where its data comes from, and every source is listed with its license in “Sources and Licenses”. Kugelblitz speaks German and English and uses the units of your choice.sofayam 5 hours ago
Strange, nothing in those two paragraphs sounds particularly LLM-like to me. What am I missing?
eproxus 5 hours ago
I had the same reaction. Some phrases stand out to me:
- "Imagery, road map and topographic map lie on real terrain"
- "joined by thousands of open maps from the Library" (what "Library"? Why capital L?)
- "Everything loaded stays in the cache"
- "Status windows tell how far the view has loaded"
- "every source is listed with its license in 'Sources and Licenses'"
Many cases of inanimate subjects with animate verbs "Imagery [...] lie", "windows tell". Also, some of it feels redundant and doesn't feel written in a way a human would, e.g. "every source is listed with its license in 'Sources and Licenses'".
Also, things like "the cache" feels like it is obvious for the LLM since it probably has that in the context a lot, but for a user, what does "the cache" mean? For a user facing description I would have expected either "a cache" or another formulation like "Everything downloaded by Kugelblitz is stored in a local cache" or something along those lines.
coldtea 4 hours ago
"you fly over smoothly like a pilot" (so, with my view limited by the cockpit, and constrained to mandatory airways?)
"Everything comes from freely available geodata, straight from its publishers" (as opposed to using "freely available geodata" through mediators?)
"joined by thousands of open maps from the Library" (what Library? Of Congress?)
"Kugelblitz instances in the same network share it with each other if you wish" (yeah "if you wish" sure is how a human would phrase an optional setting)
"Kugelblitz speaks German and English and uses the units of your choice" (same)
and many more
It's slop writing.
paulhilbert 4 hours ago
No, it's not. It sounds exactly like Tim Pritlove when he speaks German. Not everyone is a native speaker, you know?
In one of his recent podcasts he explained that he wanted to create a mixture of Google Earth and a libray. So "Library" is specifically meant as a name for the mixed data source aggregation.
To be clear: The entire software is vibecoded in a language Pritlove doesn't even have worked with prior to that. But when it comes to talking about his ideas Pritlove surely does not need a LLM. This guy basically started the German podcast scene and has been talking about software for at least 30 years.
coldtea 3 hours ago
>No, it's not. It sounds exactly like Tim Pritlove when he speaks German
Germans are still LLM, just in human form.
morsch 2 hours ago
> as opposed to using "freely available geodata" through mediators?
I think that's the idea, yes. Usually the mediator is the publisher of the software who at least maintains a proxy, but often recombobulates the data in a way that makes for sense for their software. This is also doesn't leave the original publisher paying for the software user's traffic. Probably not much an issue for a first release.
nomnomno 4 hours ago
That's so typically German/Austrian... Someone has built some great software, something that would have been unthinkable just a few month ago. And you guys are whining that the website could still use some cosmetic improvements... Release your own software and make it better. But if you just spout bullshit on LinkedIn, nothing's going to happen.
frnz 4 hours ago
and, and! It's Mac OS 27 only!
I mean, really?
Edit: I can't switch since I need some older intel apps...
ilumanty an hour ago
Nobody hates Germans more than Germans
a3w an hour ago
He is working on this since at least 1993, as in: longer than Duke Nukem Forever.
And whenever HE talks about Software, his feedback is even much worse. Since this is about the piece of software, not the person, we should criticise at will.
As for the person: he usually claims other peope lack his standards in crafting good products with an intelligent choice of ... ? object oriented language X/Y/Z, whatever buzzword he claims is best. Coders gonna code the way they like, but he loudly claims his way if superior since it makes less mistakes. As we all strive, unless we embace the Cuck Coding and/or that perfect is the enemy of good.
Oh, the irony in defending even that guy against clones of himself.
luoc 4 hours ago
The author is heavily using AI and does not hide it. Quite the opposite, he embraces the technology and spoke quite a bit about it in one of his podcasts (German): https://freakshow.fm/fs313-der-tripelpunkt-der-metaebene?t=2...
unkeen 2 hours ago
Doesn't make it better, does it.
mikojan 3 hours ago
Please just fix Apple Maps
walrus01 6 hours ago
With the upcoming retirement of google earth (desktop), I'd also recommend looking into geolibre for this sort of thing. No it doesn't come by default with a nice full color photo mapped onto 3D terrain as google earth does, but for less technical users or those with less complex demands, it has a much lower learning curve/complexity than giving people a full QGIS setup with a bunch of back-end db connected.
bbaid 6 hours ago
Some features of KML and KMZ don't work on Geolibre, while working on Kugelblitz surprisingly!