Relatedly, I just started playing this game where the concept is you're lost in the corridors of a Japanese subway station looking for Exit 8. Very authentic feel.
Too bad it doesn't seem to include the railroad tracks and the staircases/escalators to the platforms, which are the most prominent features to people who use the station as passengers.
I was able to make sense of the parts by looking at the surrounding road network, but without these, it's hard to make sense of.
I stayed at a capsule hotel just a block away from the station this summer, that was quite the experience. I was there for not even 3 full weeks but I think I'll feel nostalgic for Japan for the rest of my life, a strange and stunning country.
I don't know the overlap of anime & HN, but it would be really cool to see the events of Jujutsu Kaisen mapped out on here too. They do a really good job of using real landmarks and scenery in the show.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JuJutsuKaisen/comments/17w7v9x/juju...
early 2010's, i land for the first time in Japan, with vague instructions to meet my AirBnB host "by the entrance to Shinjuku Station"
story ended happily after finding a hotspot and sending an email, but this visualization makes that instruction seem even more hilarious in hindsight
a pin pointing out a location using this map would be a perfect waypoint!
Technical write-up (in Japanese) here: https://qiita.com/satoshi7190/items/23d192372877af75b283
Pretty confusing to have a map that doesn't show the train lines - of course a station doesn't make much sense once you leave out what a station is for. Also the area around the Miraina Tower exit looks smaller than it should be? It seems weirdly inconsistent about what's included or not too - the Odakyu station isn't there, but the Toei and Tokyo Metro ones (and even the bus station) are?
You might also like a similar thing for London Underground stations from 2012: https://stations.aeracode.org/
I just came back from Tokyo and while I was there I stayed at a hotel in Shinjuku. I used the train station so frequently that I can now navigate easily within the station, but if you are not used to Japanese train system, it is not so friendly to foreigners. For example, in Korea, Seoul metro subway system is so well organized that you do not have multiple platforms in each subway station. In Tokyo, there are multiple platforms in each station and each of the platforms can have different subway lines. Sometimes, a particular subway line can change to a totally different line at some station, and sometimes if you are not paying attention you are now all of a sudden going in a totally different direction. Also, there are multiple railway companies operating in Tokyo, which means if you buy a paper ticket, you need to exit the subway and buy another (or rather different ticket) to transfer if you need to transfer to a different line managed by different railway company (fortunately I have an iPhone, so I added Suica card to my apple wallet and used it to pay for subway as well as transfers). I started to wonder the reason why Japan has such complicated subway system. Then again, I am not an expert in this area so there might be reasons for it which I am not aware of
If you like this, you must check out Tomoyuki Tanaka’s hand-drawn 3-D illustrations of several Tokyo subway stations:
https://www.wired.com/2016/07/lose-tomoyuki-tanakas-x-ray-il...
(Tokyo Station, Shibuya Station, Shinjuku Station)
Fun side note: I liked these so much I contacted Tanaka-san directly and he agreed to sell me prints :)
This is the first time I've "seen" Shinjuku Station. What a beautiful introduction. I first read about the station in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and always wondered what it looked like. Neat.
Looks amazing!
Off topic: I like how I understood the technical article below despite not knowing a single Japanese word, only by reading the code, would be interesting sometime in the future that people are using programming languages as a mean of universal communication!
I'm guessing the reasons why the escalator angles are so steep is because the height between the floors haven't been increased for greater clarity and are not to scale.
When visiting Japan, I heard from the locals that Tokyo has three dungeons: Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Tokyo Central (Kayabacho, Nihombashi, Otemachi): these 3 station complexes are confusing and easy to get lost, even for locals.
OTOH, with some travel experience, Google Maps and my very basic Japanese, it was quite easy to navigate these. I only got lost once in Tokyo central area for 5-10 minutes (out of <= 100 metro usage). Shibuya and Shinjuku was much easier. I guess this is what happens when a city has 37 million people and some metro stations having dozens of exits. Google Maps navigation was incredibly useful, too: showed me which vagon car to take so I'll be closest to the stairs I should take when I get off the train.
And this 3D scanning makes things much easier. I'm looking forward to see Shibuya and Tokyo central versions.
I find these 3D maps exaggerated reality a bit.
e.g. London Bank - nowhere near as insane, but even after going through it for years daily I still couldn't make heads or tails out of the 3D internet map.
Reality <> Internet
I can believe this is an accurate 3D map, because I’m looking around, and just as I was in the real thing, I’m totally lost and confused again.
This place has to be my nemesis when it comes to public transport :D
I remember my wife and I being lost at Shinjuku station several times trying to find a particular exit and random Japanese people seeing lost tourists would stop and do their absolute best to speak to us and help us out. One gentleman insisted on guiding us to the exit and walked with us for about 10 minutes
Very cool!
I also like these hand drawn 3d illustrations of stations: https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/x-ray-visio...
I really wish Google Maps et al did a better job for subway/metro/transit stations with multiple entrance and exits. Oftentimes a station is shown as a single point on the map, while in reality the point(s) of entry can be a block or more away from what's shown. Likewise, choosing the right exit when you leave the station can save you multiple blocks of walking, depending on your final destination.
Even just showing the general shape of the station in 2D on the map would be helpful, though obviously this can be tricky when there's other points of interest above/below the train line.
Reminds me of the beginning of ghost in the shell in all the right ways.
It's crazy to me how well this works, especially on mobile.
If league or even TFT was as accessible as a tab like this it'd be the end of me.
Okay this is awesome!
I feel like 3d visualisations are under utilised in general, for wayfinding, for organising stuff or files, revealing flows like here.
It's like we're stuck in a 2d paradigm somehow, but everytime i see even rather simple visualizations like this, i'm reminded of 90's cybernetic future that never happened.
Very cool, I visited Shinjuku station earlier this year and got lost in it more than once. Google maps does a decent job of giving walking directions through the station but finding my current location was difficult.
I think something like this would have helped me build a mental model of the station.
This does not include the 1km+ underground passageway you can take (exit E1) that takes you all the way through Shinjuku Sanchome station and then out near Golden Gai. I know it's technically a different station but you can get there without ever going above ground.
I'm not able to rotate or manipulate the view except to zoom in and out on Chrome on a Mac, but I can rotate and do all kinds of fun stuff with this page with Safari on my iPhone. Am I just missing the keyboard commands to get this to work properly on a desktop?
Reminds me of the Resident Evil's scene of the Hive schematics used through out the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktn8w3-RyNs
Fun story: Visited Shinjuku station in 2014 and left luggage on those machines that store luggage for coins to go on a quick stroll in town
Came back later, and had to spend almost an hour to find the place where we left them
That place is big
Cool, but I am completely unable to read it. I'm not very apt in graphical design, so I wonder how it could be improved to be actually usable.
I’d never heard of Three.js until I saw a talk on it at a conference this summer. Really mind blowing what you can do with it.
Stayed near Shinjuku for a few days, never managed to come out the same exit twice!
Some sort of a Digital Twin, fascinating. Nice model to play around with.
This definitely needs inverse mouse control for moving the map around.
Reminds me of how hacker scenes are portrayed in Hollywood films
Very cool, I've been to shinjuku station last summer.
Impressive, and interaction on an iPad touchscreen is fun.
Would love a library of these maps for places all over
Please do Les Halles next. I need that!
I thought it's from Alien
Amazing. And even as a game …
zooming in or out with the touch-pad is a nightmare (way to slow)
> Web doesn’t scale
> You can only do X in native
I wonder where are the Web haters now?
I never go to Shinjuku station, just isn't worth it.
Beautiful map!
now do one of Kisaragi station
greatest train station in the world
This is really lovely, it looks like something I'd see in a Deus Ex game on a giant screen.
On a different tip, this Catalan chap has done nearly 900 3D models of stations, ranging from huge and complex, to tiny and simple. They've been quite a hit in r/nycrail.
http://stations.albertguillaumes.cat/