CITY//ORBIT
A street from OpenStreetMap becomes a hologram: select places with a ray, lift their cards and change the city radius with a gesture.
- Type
- Art experience
- Platforms
- Headsets · mobile · desktop
- Technology
- Google XR Blocks · three.js · OpenStreetMap · Overpass API
The experience
A real city contracts into a hologram between your hands. Named OpenStreetMap places become abstract points around a point called YOU: place the model on a table or unfold it 360° around yourself, without using ready-made 3D buildings.
Interaction
- TABLE places a 1.2-metre orbital model in front of you; 360° surrounds you with it.
- Select, pinch or click chooses a POI and lifts its card.
- Two hands in pinch, spreading apart, change the radius: 200 m → 1 km → 5 km.
- Phone and desktop retain HTML controls and coordinates as a fallback.
Data and limits
The client makes bounded Overpass queries against public instances for named places. Results are session-cached and overloaded services enter cooldown. If the services do not answer, an explicitly labelled demo quarter near the Hermitage appears rather than being presented as live data. OpenStreetMap data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.
Google XR Blocks depends on WebXR. Required browser capabilities can be absent on iOS, including Safari, so this experiment may not start there. Quest 3 is the target platform; the desktop simulator is for testing the mechanics.