God’s Eye View

--:--:-- UTC

Open source · MIT code · Bilawal Sidhu

God’s Eye View

A spy-satellite simulator in your browser — then you realize the sources are public and the data is real.

The project README opens on a photorealistic 3D globe: live aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, traffic, and public cameras, plus hands-free voice when you add a key. With no keys you still get Esri satellite imagery and keyless terrain — OpenStreetMap if Esri is unreachable — not Google’s 3D tiles. It runs locally. You can read every line.

No place left behind.

GitHub Pinokio one-click Get Pinokio
  • Start without API keys
  • 17 of 19 layers have a keyless path
  • localhost only, until you opt in
God’s Eye View Blew Up. Here’s What You Can Do With It.

From the README

What the globe actually does

These are the capabilities named in the project README. Badges say whether the app can do them with no key. This page does not run the globe.

01Keyless

Cockpit view

Ride inside a tracked flight. The camera holds the terrain under you all the way down, and sensor styles come along for the ride.

02Keyless

Contacts

A 250 km roster of everything near your target. Step through live aircraft and drop into any cockpit.

03Keyless

Click-to-track

The camera locks on, draws a fading trail, and opens metadata. A tracked fire or vessel hands you to the nearest live camera in one click.

04OpenAI key

Voice and whiteboard

Speak camera moves, or lay real boundary polygons, marks, and routes on the world. Without an OpenAI key the app still runs; the mic says voice is unavailable. DISPLAY ▸ Draw is the same whiteboard with a mouse.

05In the app

3D hangar

Per-class aircraft models — 787, ATR-72, Citation, Bell 206, MQ-9. A tracked contact swaps from a glyph to a 3D model as you close in.

06Keys 1–7

Sensor reskins

GLSL looks over the normal globe: CRT, NVG, FLIR/thermal, Noir, and Snow.

07Key D

Detection overlay

Screen-space bounding boxes and IDs on everything in view.

08Key H

Military HUD

A tactical heads-up display with intelligence-style telemetry. The short AI scene summary uses the same OpenAI key as voice.

09In the app

Scene director

Capture cinematic camera tours for clips and demos. Director scenes import, preview, and share as files or bundles, with camera anchors, authored moves, and data packs.

10In the app

Share links

Camera, style, layers, and one tracked target serialize into a URL. A live target is a handoff, not a bookmark. Reset Globe — a control, or one sentence — returns to the full Earth.

11Keyless

Weather

Animate NOAA GFS or ECMWF IFS forecast wind, replay observed radar, satellite clouds, and lightning on one timeline, and follow NHC/CPHC cyclone tracks. No key.

12Keyless

ALPR cameras

License-plate-reader locations tagged in OpenStreetMap, one city-sized view at a time. Locations and tags only: no plate data, no video, no key.

13Catalog keyless

Satellite passes

CelesTrak supplies an 838-object catalog, propagated with SGP4. Voice — which needs an OpenAI key — can ask when any loaded satellite next rises: rise, peak, set, and whether you can see it.

14AISStream key

Ships

Thousands of vessels worldwide from AISStream, after a free signup. The README notes that terrestrial AIS goes quiet mid-ocean.

15FIRMS key

Fires

Live NASA FIRMS detections for the trailing 24 hours. The layer stays empty until you add a free map key.

16Keyless

Earthquakes

Global seismic activity for the last 24 hours from the USGS. U.S. public domain. No key. The map below reads that same feed.

17Not MIT

Undersea cables

The bundled TeleGeography submarine-cable map — 712 cables and 1,917 landing points — sits with datacenters (4,351) and dams (704). Cable data is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Commercial use means delete that folder or license it.

18Simulated traffic

Traffic and public cameras

Road traffic is simulated on OpenStreetMap using aggregate location data, not live vehicle positions. A TomTom key adds flow speeds and congestion colors. About 3,900 public cameras project into the 3D scene. Positions are published. Poses are estimated priors you calibrate by dragging a gizmo on the camera.

o_FJ1NIH9yw

Video chapters

Each stamp opens the privacy-enhanced player at that time. The film is “God’s Eye View Blew Up. Here’s What You Can Do With It.”

  1. Blew Up
  2. Install
  3. Interface, flight tracking, radio
  4. Contacts and cockpit
  5. Voice
  6. Area 51 easter egg
  7. Traffic and cameras
  8. Ships and ride along
  9. Camera tours
  10. Fires, earthquakes, physical internet
  11. Nepal floods
  12. Building together

No account required

Quick start

Both paths open the same app. Flights, military traffic, satellites, earthquakes, public cameras, radio, and launches are available without keys. Keys are upgrades, pasted later inside the app.

Pinokio, no terminal

Windows, macOS, Linux
  1. Install or update Pinokio to 8.2 or later.
  2. Open God’s Eye View in Pinokio.
  3. Click Install, then Start.

The launcher installs the locked dependencies, finds a free local port, and opens the app. If an older install failed, update Pinokio and try again. Do not type credentials into Pinokio 8.0.40’s Configure panel — use POWER UP inside the app.

Terminal

Node 24.14+ or 26.x

The setup doctor warns about Node 25, which is end-of-life. Then open http://localhost:4173 and pick Live Contacts, Space Missions, Environmental, or Explore Manually.

bash 
git clone https://github.com/bilawalsidhu/gods-eye-view.git
cd gods-eye-view
npm ci
npm run doctor
npm run dev

On macOS, ./scripts/dev-fresh.sh clears the Vite cache and can read keys from the Keychain. It starts keyless too.

Keyless default, then POWER UP

You do not put keys in a file to get started. The keyless landing is Esri World Imagery plus keyless terrain (Powered by Esri — Source: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community). OpenStreetMap replaces Esri if that service cannot be reached.

When you want more, click the POWER UP chip in the bottom-right. Provider Settings lists every supported key, what it switches on, and where to get it. Paste, hit SAVE KEYS, and the app restarts. The chip then reads POWERED UP. On a compact layout, ?setup=1 reopens the same panel.

Optional keys from the README: a Cesium ion token for eligible personal, non-commercial photorealistic 3D; a Google Maps key for the direct metered 3D route and Google place search; OpenAI for voice; AISStream for ships; NASA FIRMS for fires; TomTom for live traffic-flow speeds. OpenSky and Launch Library 2 already work anonymously — keys only raise their allowances.

DATA_SOURCES.md

What is live, what is modeled

Most feeds are live or regularly refreshed. The project’s own line is that traffic is simulated along real roads using aggregate location data, and that CCTV camera poses and rocket-launch trajectories are coarse estimates.

Live without a key

Earthquakes (USGS, last 24 hours), the CelesTrak satellite catalog, OpenSky anonymous flights with adsb.lol as the app’s fallback, military ADS-B from adsb.lol, public camera catalogs, Radio Browser, Launch Library 2, and the NOAA / ECMWF weather stack. The app brokers several of these through its local server.

Live after a free key

Ships need AISStream. Active fires need a NASA FIRMS map key; without it that layer is empty. TomTom is optional and only changes the traffic simulation’s speeds and colors.

Simulated or estimated

Traffic vehicles are a simulation on OpenStreetMap roads, not observed positions. Camera poses start as estimates you correct in the app. Space-mission ascents are labeled reconstructed estimates. Launch Library 2 does not provide continuous ascent telemetry.

MIT covers code only

The MIT grant covers God’s Eye View’s source code. It does not extend to third-party data or visual assets. TeleGeography’s cable file is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (non-commercial). The Bhote Koshi / Nepal flood pack is separate non-commercial data. OpenSky’s flight license is non-commercial. Bundled OpenStreetMap extracts stay under ODbL.

God’s Eye View is an exploratory visualization of public and third-party data. Data may be delayed, incomplete, modeled, inferred, or wrong. Do not use it for flight or maritime navigation, emergency response, medical or health decisions, investment decisions, or other safety-critical or operational purposes. Verify important information with authoritative sources.

That warning is the project’s, from the README. Full per-source terms live in DATA_SOURCES.md.

Keyless · your browser only

Live from the public sky

Two views, both in your browser. Quakes and the ISS sit on a dark CARTO map. Aircraft is a live tar1090 globe, embedded because those flight APIs do not send CORS headers. The globe starts over the continental United States. Globe, United States, and New York recenter whichever view is open. Polling stops, and the aircraft frame is removed, while this browser tab is hidden.

Quakes · ISS

Quakes waiting

ISS waiting

Aircraft Open the Aircraft view

The aircraft frame is adsb.fi. If that globe has not loaded in about eight seconds, the page switches to airplanes.live. Both are public tar1090 views. Labels are on, the base map is CARTO dark, and the sidebar and buttons are hidden so this HUD stays in front.

Quake and ISS basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO. Earthquakes: data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. ISS position: wheretheiss.at. Aircraft: adsb.fi, fallback airplanes.live.