# God’s Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade ![[images/Gods Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade.webp]] **Channel:** Bilawal Sidhu · **Published:** Oct 10, 2026 · **Length:** 25:18 · [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3toZwkrQQE) Code and setup: <https://github.com/bilawalsidhu/gods-eye-view> · One-click install: [Pinokio](https://pinokio.co/apps/github-com-bilawalsidhu-gods-eye-view) · Hosted waitlist: <https://halfpixel.ai/> > Source: the English auto-captions returned 429 through yt-dlp, so I pulled them from the timedtext URL in info.json. The outline follows the creator's chapters. ## Outline ### 0:00 Look what y’all built - The repo hit #1 trending on GitHub. The community has added weather, recent satellite imagery, live buses and trains, more CCTV, license plate reader locations, and SDR plane tracking. ### 0:40 Weather, radar & hurricane tracking - A weather panel with wind from the GFS and ECMWF forecast models (ECMWF preferred), showing speed, pressure or temperature, and the motion can be paused. - Layers for rain radar (reflectivity in dBZ), satellite clouds (clouds-only vs. full geostationary imagery, with a North America or lower-res global mosaic), lightning density, and cyclone advisories. - Hurricane Rachel shows its predicted track and cone of uncertainty. You can scrub back through historical imagery without an API key. - Tip: use Esri satellite instead of Google 3D tiles for weather views. It's free and keyless. ![[images/Gods Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade-t0110.webp]] ### 3:06 Live buses, trains & traffic - Voice command: "take me to Boston." The traffic layer can now use TomTom alone, OSM, or a hybrid. - A new transit layer shows live buses, metros and trams. Click one for its position and speed, and it leaves a trail. Trails only record while the app runs, since there's no historical feed. - It's powered by GTFS, which was originally created at Google Maps. ![[images/Gods Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade-t0310.webp]] ### 4:28 More public CCTV cameras - NVG and FLIR display modes, with the UI staying readable. Many more cameras that are within terms of use: Austin, Oakland, Sacramento, London, Finland, Sydney and more. - A "next" button hops between cameras, and descriptions say what each camera is looking at. Sussex County has recorded video clips, not just stills. - "A static 3D model of the world is cool… when you bring the globe to life it is a different experience entirely." ### 6:17 License plate reader locations & directions - Under Infrastructure: data centers, dams, submarine cables, mapped installations, and now **ALPR cameras** from OpenStreetMap. It shows the vendor (Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola) and which way the camera faces. Choke points such as bridges are densely covered. - OSM routing directions for walking, biking and driving: set A and B, then "fly" the route while ALPRs light up along the way. - These are only mapped locations, not plate feeds. You have to zoom in to load them. Example: San Francisco, where the nearest ALPR faces the Castro Theatre. ![[images/Gods Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade-t0640.webp]] ### 8:47 Active fires & fire perimeters - Active fire hotspots come from NASA FIRMS (global, and many are industrial). Fire perimeters with containment percentages (color-coded red to green) come from NIFC WFIGS (Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services), but cover the US only. Example: the Bitter Creek fire. ### 10:26 Recent satellite imagery: before & after - Cameras → Recent imagery: a daily overview at 250 m and more detail at 30 m (Sentinel-2 / Landsat). Draw a box to pull every recent pass, then compare before and after. The arrow keys step through passes and cloud cover is shown. - This was implemented from a non-coder's community idea. ### 11:34 Satellite comparisons: Hormuz & Ukraine - In the Strait of Hormuz, vessel AIS coverage is weak, but free imagery from a few days earlier shows ships. - A/B compare with opacity, swap and export, for change detection such as damage. Kharg Island compared Sep 4 vs. Sep 12. Ukraine hotspots from FIRMS can be checked against Landsat imagery (Sep 30). - Planned: browser and WebGPU change detection that draws boxes automatically. He asks for feedback, issues or PRs. ![[images/Gods Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade-t1235.webp]] ### 14:38 Track planes with your own SDR antenna - The context menu lists nearby and military flights and installations. The default data comes from the volunteer ADS-B network. - New: connect your own software-defined radio. It supports 1090 MHz and 978 MHz UAT decoder feeds (readsb and similar), and your own detections show in magenta. Credits: Sam built the prototype and "MA" made the initial integration. - An RTL-SDR can also tune FM radio. He mentions his earlier Wi-Fi and millimeter-wave mapping videos. ### 16:28 Reconstructing a flight in 3D - A flydubai flight to Tel Aviv that diverted was reconstructed from flight-radar ADS-B data with a coding agent, in third-person and cockpit views. The plane was rolling and was reportedly about 30 seconds from disaster before it was leveled and other crew landed it. - "We're not going to pretend to give you the truth." He presents it as observable data for forming your own opinion, with the black box being the real ground truth. ### 17:56 Cyber radar display - Display settings → Cyber (instead of the Tactical "keyhole" look) gives a radar-sweep UI with adjustable rings, inset or outset, and opacity. It's meant for a side monitor. ### 18:43 Draw & annotate the world - He follows the helicopter "Mondo A8" doing loops over Fort Rucker (Lowe Army Heliport), where Google 3D tiles show rows of helicopters. - The Draw tool makes outlines (for example an amber "helicopter area") and paths such as a hike plan. Saving and sharing will come with the hosted version. ### 20:32 Director Mode: reconstructing Nepal floods - A community-made reference scene steps through the Nepal flood: the outline, observation points, flood direction and route. Embedded YouTube Shorts and X videos (geolocated by people on Twitter) play in context, with high-res Vantor disaster imagery draped over terrain. - You can write scenes with your coding agent ("look at the reference implementation in the scene editor"). Export a data pack, JSON or an asset bundle. There's a camera zoom and focal-length animation and a full clock. Community reconstructions are welcome as PRs that follow the reference format. ![[images/Gods Eye View Just Got a Massive Upgrade-t2040.webp]] ### 23:19 iPhone, iPad & trackpad fixes - Better rendering on iPhone and iPad when the app is self-hosted, plus Mac trackpad pinch-to-zoom. Overpass requests were throttled after an OSM Germany maintainer asked them to slow down, and the hosted version will serve its own tiles. ### 24:07 The community & hosted waitlist - Thanks to contributors, there are too many PRs to merge quickly, and the team is growing. The hosted version is in internal testing, with licensing plus create, share and remix in the works. Join at halfpixel.ai. - Watch next: *I Built a God’s Eye View of Time*, the "geospatial memory palace" built from 500 TED 2026 photos. ## Things mentioned **Software and projects** - God's Eye View (open source on GitHub) - Pinokio - halfpixel.ai (hosted version) - Coding agents - The Director Mode scene editor **Map and imagery sources** - Google 3D Tiles, Google Maps - Esri satellite - OpenStreetMap, Overpass, OSM routing - TomTom traffic - Sentinel-2, Landsat - Vantor high-res imagery - Geostationary satellite mosaics **Weather and hazard data** - GFS, ECMWF - Radar reflectivity (dBZ), lightning density - Cyclone advisories (Hurricane Rachel) - NASA FIRMS - NIFC WFIGS fire perimeters **Transit and tracking** - GTFS - ADS-B volunteer network, 1090 MHz and 978 MHz UAT, readsb, RTL-SDR - AIS vessels **Surveillance** - Public CCTV - ALPR vendors: Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola **Display modes** - NVG, FLIR (Iron Bow), Tactical, Cyber radar **Places** - Boston, Austin, San Francisco (Castro Theatre), Sydney, Sussex County - Strait of Hormuz, Kharg Island, Ukraine-Russia border - Fort Rucker / Lowe Army Heliport - Nepal - Tel Aviv **Events** - The flydubai flight diversion - The Nepal floods - The Bitter Creek fire - TED 2026 (the memory palace project) ## People and subjects - **Bilawal Sidhu**: the creator and narrator. He's a former Google product manager who worked for years on Google Maps, Google Earth and 3D/VPS, and now makes videos on spatial computing, AI and geospatial OSINT. He leads God's Eye View and its hosted version at halfpixel.ai. - **Sam**: community member who built the first SDR integration prototype. - **"MA"**: contributor who brought the SDR feature into God's Eye View. The handle comes from the auto-captions and may be wrong. - **OSM Germany maintainer**: asked the project to reduce its Overpass load. Not named. - **God's Eye View contributors**: credited throughout. The community added weather, transit, CCTV, ALPR, fires and Director Mode.