12mo ago

A map app for mobile phones with fog of war

Hello everyone, I have an idea to make a map with fog of war, when you walk you explore new areas and points of interest but you can't see unexplored areas. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, what is your opinion?

18 comments

That would be really cool and show just how much of your local area you forget is there. You'd be encouraged to get out and explore like you said.
It would be really depressing (for me) since it would mostly be a fog with a little clearing around my house 😆
- haha lol

This exists! https://fogofworld.app/
It’s a great idea, yours sounds a bit more restricted in viewing which I think is cool
- great, thanks... now i have less motivation to work on it💀💀💀
  
  FWIW I don't want to pay $30, so you still have a market!
  There's also an app for iPhone that's similar, called Super Local. Don't let it get you down -- look at what features these are missing and implement your own! All sorts of visual designs, custom mapping, all kinds of stuff could be done :)
  
  Oh no 😅 this app has been around for over a decade so I’d be curious what a modern version would look like
  
  You could make yours a Geocaching app with fog-of-war. They've got an API for third-party apps too, so it should be easy enough to develop, and actually fun to play.
  If you're feeling ambitious, add some RTS elements like from Age of Empires - eg if you add someone as your ally, you can share their line of sight. Finding certain types of caches, or POIs, increases your resources (gold/stone/food/wood - maybe visiting Pizza Hut gives you extra food lol). And with these resources, you could build virtual structures like castles etc. Other players could spend resources to take it down (but they need to be physically at that location), and you could spend resources to defend your building.
  Kinda like Ingress basically, but with medieval/RTS elements and geocaching thrown into the mix. How's that for a challenge? :)
  
  Then work on one generating heatmaps instead fog-of-war!
- Experience a Richer Life Today
  What a slogan for an app that hides away surroundings :D

It's a great, fun/funny idea!
Assessment of your question depends on your goals. It's not something I myself would invest time in, but it sounds like a fun project that some people may even be interested in using as a form of exploring areas/their surroundings.
- That will be my college project(probably), and I have been thinking about it for a while

There’s a startup in Switzerland working on something similar: https://mapuncover.com/
They also publish papers on it, since it’s a university start up.
I think they don’t have the fog of war feature, but I think it’s interesting! If you are somewhat familiar with the academic space and interested in collaborating with them, you could maybe reach out to them?
- why do you need a startup for this?
  
  It’s not mine lol idk