Rank #8 · spotted on r/InternetIsBeautiful
ShadeMap: Sun-Shadow Simulator
See exactly where the sun and shadows will fall on any block — at any hour, in any place.
Why people love it
ShadeMap simulates where the sun and shadows will fall at any time and place on Earth. It sounds technical, but it answers a deeply practical, everyday question: will my afternoon coffee spot still have sun? Does the patio get baked at 5pm? Is the roof actually good for solar?
People love it because it turns sunlight into something you can plan with. Gardeners use it to pick planting beds by sunshine hours. Renters screenshot it before committing to an apartment with a shaded balcony. New-home buyers check whether the “sunny yard” in the listing photo gets any sun at all by January. Even the casual user gets hooked just dragging the time slider and watching shadows crawl across a street — it’s a tiny time-lapse of a day, on demand.
The best part is how intuitive it feels: drag the clock from sunrise to sunset and buildings grow and shrink their shadows like real ones do. It makes solar geometry — normally a physics-class abstraction — as tangible as a video game. Play with the time slider above, then try the real map on an address you care about.
Spotted on r/InternetIsBeautiful · try the original at shademap.app