Show HN: isometric.nyc – giant isometric pixel art map of NYC

Hey HN!

I wanted to share something I built over the last few weeks: isometric.nyc is a massive isometric pixel art map of NYC, built with nano banana and coding agents.

I didn't write a single line of code.

Of course no-code doesn't mean no-engineering. This project took a lot more manual labor than I'd hoped!

I wrote a deep dive on the workflow and some thoughts about the future of AI coding and creativity:

http://cannoneyed.com/projects/isometric-nyc

Not working here, some CORS issue.

Firefox, Ubuntu latest.

Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://isometric-nyc-tiles.cannoneyed.com/dzi/tiles_metadat.... (Reason: CORS header ‘Access-Control-Allow-Origin’ missing). Status code: 429.

Edit: i see now, the error is due to the cloudflare worker being rate limited :/ i read the writeup though, pretty cool, especially the insight about tool -> lib -> application

Nice, very cool!

Reminds me of https://queensmuseum.org/exhibition/panorama-of-the-city-of-...

amazing work!

gemini 3.5 pro reverse engineered it - if you use the code at the following gist, you can jump to any specific lat lng :-)

https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/c4c1a87277063430c26922b...

also, check out https://cannoneyed.com/isometric-nyc/?debug=true ..!

---

code below (copy & paste into your devtools, change the lat lng on the last line):

    const calib={p1:{pixel:{x:52548,y:64928},geo:{lat:40.75145020893891,lng:-73.9596826628078}},p2:{pixel:{x:40262,y:51982},geo:{lat:40.685498640229675,lng:-73.98074283976926}},p3:{pixel:{x:45916,y:67519},geo:{lat:40.757903901085726,lng:-73.98557060196454}}};function getAffineTransform(){let{p1:e,p2:l,p3:g}=calib,o=e.geo.lat*(l.geo.lng-g.geo.lng)-l.geo.lat*(e.geo.lng-g.geo.lng)+g.geo.lat*(e.geo.lng-l.geo.lng);if(0===o)return console.error("Points are collinear, cannot solve."),null;let n=(e.pixel.x*(l.geo.lng-g.geo.lng)-l.pixel.x*(e.geo.lng-g.geo.lng)+g.pixel.x*(e.geo.lng-l.geo.lng))/o,x=(e.geo.lat*(l.pixel.x-g.pixel.x)-l.geo.lat*(e.pixel.x-g.pixel.x)+g.geo.lat*(e.pixel.x-l.pixel.x))/o,i=(e.geo.lat*(l.geo.lng*g.pixel.x-g.geo.lng*l.pixel.x)-l.geo.lat*(e.geo.lng*g.pixel.x-g.geo.lng*e.pixel.x)+g.geo.lat*(e.geo.lng*l.pixel.x-l.geo.lng*e.pixel.x))/o,t=(e.pixel.y*(l.geo.lng-g.geo.lng)-l.pixel.y*(e.geo.lng-g.geo.lng)+g.pixel.y*(e.geo.lng-l.geo.lng))/o,p=(e.geo.lat*(l.pixel.y-g.pixel.y)-l.geo.lat*(e.pixel.y-g.pixel.y)+g.geo.lat*(e.pixel.y-l.pixel.y))/o,a=(e.geo.lat*(l.geo.lng*g.pixel.y-g.geo.lng*l.pixel.y)-l.geo.lat*(e.geo.lng*g.pixel.y-g.geo.lng*e.pixel.y)+g.geo.lat*(e.geo.lng*l.pixel.y-l.geo.lng*e.pixel.y))/o;return{Ax:n,Bx:x,Cx:i,Ay:t,By:p,Cy:a}}function jumpToLatLng(e,l){let g=getAffineTransform();if(!g)return;let o=g.Ax*e+g.Bx*l+g.Cx,n=g.Ay*e+g.By*l+g.Cy,x=Math.round(o),i=Math.round(n);console.log(` Jumping to Geo: ${e}, ${l}`),console.log(` Calculated Pixel: ${x}, ${i}`),localStorage.setItem("isometric-nyc-view-state",JSON.stringify({target:[x,i,0],zoom:13.95})),window.location.reload()};
    jumpToLatLng(40.757903901085726,-73.98557060196454);

This is very cool, it would be awesome if I could rotate it as well by 90 degree increments to peek at different angles! I loved RCT growing up so this is hitting the nostalgia!

This is so cool! Please give me a way to share lat/long links with folks so I can show them places that are special to me :)

Author here: Just got out of some meetings at work and see that HN is kicking my cloudflare free plan's butt. Let me get Claude to fix it, hold tight!

So, wait: this is just based on taking the 40 best/most consistent Nano Banana outputs for a prompt to do pixel-art versions of isometric map tiles? That's all it takes to finetune Qwen to reliably generate tiles in exactly the same style?

Also, does someone have an intuition for how the "masking" process worked here to generate seamless tiles? I sort of grok it but not totally.

I was most surprised by the fact that it only took 40 examples for a Qwen finetune to match the style and quality of (interactively tuned) Nano Banana. Certainly the end result does not look like the stock output of open-source image generation models.

I wonder if for almost any bulk inference / generation task, it will generally be dramatically cheaper to (use fancy expensive model to generate examples, perhaps interactively with refinements) -> (fine tune smaller open-source model) -> (run bulk task).

Nice work! But not all of NYC. Where's the rest of Staten Island?

Failed to load tiles: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource.

> This project is far from perfect, but without generative models, it couldn’t exist. There’s simply no way to do this much work on your own,

Maybe, though a guy did physically carve/sculpt the majority of NYC: https://mymodernmet.com/miniature-model-new-york-minninycity...

This is kind of beautiful. Great work! I mean it.

Insane outcome. Really thoughtful post with insights across the board. Thanks for sharing

> Slop vs. Art

> If you can push a button and get content, then that content is a commodity. Its value is next to zero.

> Counterintuitively, that’s my biggest reason to be optimistic about AI and creativity. When hard parts become easy, the differentiator becomes love.

Love that. I've been struggling to succinctly put that feeling into words, bravo.

Seems to have been hugged to death as of now

Some people reported 429 - otherwise known as HN hug of death.

You probably need to adjust how caching is handled with this.

Hugged to death? :(

Really nice.

beautiful!

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