Growth · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to SunTrace3D
Check any roof for solar with 3D shadow analysis
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
- 1
Shadowmap▲292Interactive 3D maps app to visualize solar shadows worldwide
2021 · app.shadowmap.org · its alternatives →
- 2
I've been working on this project for about 4 years. It began as terrain only because world wide elevation data was publicly available. I then added buildings from OpenStreetMap (crowd sourced) and more recently from Overture Maps data. Some computer vision/machine learning advancements [1] in the past few years have made it possible to estimate tree canopy heights using satellite imagery alone making it possible to finally add trees to the map. The data isn't perfect, but it's within +/- 3 meters of so. Good enough to give a general idea for any location on Earth. Happy to answer…
2024 · shademap.app · its alternatives →
- 3HW
Plug-in solar panels (no electrician needed) have just become legal in the UK and will go on sale soon. Helios estimates how much electricity a typical installation could generate at a given address and what that's worth against your tariff. It uses UK government LIDAR data to reflect the actual skyline, so it knows whether there's a building or a hill blocking the sun. Caveats: - Outside LIDAR coverage (most of Scotland and Wales) it falls back to a synthetic horizon (less accurate). - Trees and recent developments (post-2022 or so) may not be in the data, and some address placements could…
May 2026 · helios.southlondonscientific.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Hi HN! I quit my job two years ago to have more time to work on my side projects. The main one is an automated solar concentrator. I've just open-sourced it, it's not perfect nor finished, and I still have a lot of ideas for further development, but I'm interested in knowing what you think of it. There are many applications where concentrated solar power could be a viable environmental and economic solution, I hope this technology will one day be more widely used. Feel free to give any feedback and ask questions.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- 6SV
Discover The Sun for Everyone with Shadowmap: your global 3D map for sunpath visualization, shadow analysis and solar planning for homes and projects.
2020 · shadowmap.org · its alternatives →
- 7G3
I made a web app to generate 3D models of real places on earth from land cover and elevation data. Click anywhere on the map to get a polygon, and then click "generate". It should work at most scales, but if your watershed or region selection is too large, the result can be less exciting because it's so flat. As a warning, the 3D models can sometimes be too much for my phone. It's nicer on desktop. I'm still working better on mobile support. The land cover data I'm using gives a cool effect, but at some point I'd like to add in global imagery and clouds. The backend is a Python thread…
2025 · topography.jessekv.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Hi HN, Shawn here. My rooftop system lost about half a year of production and nobody told me. Not the installer, not the monitoring app, not the utility. I found out from an electric bill that made no sense, then spent weeks digging through the monitoring portal by hand. SunRanker is what I wished existed that day. Connect a system once (Enphase OAuth, or a SolarEdge site ID plus API key) and it reads production daily, shows it in plain language, and emails you when something actually changes. Three alerts only. The connection broke, the monitoring went quiet, or output has been well below…
Aug 2026 · sunranker.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Live NASA solar imagery in 12 wavelengths, the moon phase tonight for 200+ cities, and real space weather. Free on iOS and Android. No ads, no signup.
Apr 2026 · lumara-space.app · its alternatives →
- 10AR
2018 · tylermw.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Virtual Sun▲101We built CircadianLab, a free in-browser tool for lighting design. It uses webGPU shaders to calculate melanopic equivalent daylight illuminance (mel-EDI, formerly EML, relevant for circadian rhythm and WELL v2 compliance), photopic illuminance, UGR glare per CIE 117, and actual daylight through windows and skylights. It has a database of 400,000+ IES files from 81 lighting manufacturers and supports easy sharing of scenes/configs with other people. Daylight uses the NREL Solar Position Algorithm and a Perez clear / intermediate / overcast sky model, mixed into the same…
2020 · innerscene.com · its alternatives →
- 12
This is a little hobby project that I hope you enjoy. You can see where the International Space Station is now, with live HD video from NASA, on a realistic 3D globe. The positions of the sun and moon are also accurate, though distances aren't to scale. The clouds are also near-realtime; I span that out into a separate project at https://clouds.matteason.co.uk, where the cloud images I create from EUMETSAT data are freely available. I've got more features almost ready to go, like the ability to turn off all UI, toggleable clouds and turning off the day/night cycle I'd love for…
2024 · iss.matteason.co.uk · its alternatives →
- 13
Detect objects in drone videos and plot them on a map - roboflow/dji-aerial-georeferencing
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
AstraPixelsfree tier, from $5/mo▲267A pixel-art solar system at its real current positions.
Aug 2026 · astrapixels.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Google released an API in May to get fetch 3D Tiles of anywhere on Earth. Using this in standard 3D engines like Blender is tricky because (1) the tiles are in a geographic coordinate system (2) you get a lot of little tiles at varying quality levels I wanted to simplify this so all you need to do is get an API key, select a map region and a zoom level, and get one combined glTF file that you can throw into any engine. Especially if you're just prototyping and want to see how this data looks in your engine before investing in figuring out all the nuances of the API & coordinate system. (Note…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
I’ve been experimenting with Rust lately and wanted a project that would help me explore some of its lower-level and performance-oriented features. Inspired by Sebastian Lague’s videos, I decided to implement my own ray tracer from scratch. The initial goal was just to render a simple 3D scene in the browser at a reasonable frame rate. It evolved into a small renderer that can: • Run locally or on the web using wgpu and WebAssembly • Perform mesh rendering with a Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) for acceleration • Simulate both direct and indirect illumination for photorealistic results • Be…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Search for your home. Discover your solar savings potential.
2019 · sunroof.withgoogle.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Sun Seeker▲86Augmented reality 3-D viewer that shows the solar path
2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 19
3D movements telling you the time to the next sunrise
2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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- 22
Financial-grade solar analysis for your roof — in 3 minutes
May 2026 · roofsolars.netlify.app · its alternatives →
- 23
This is a service I've built to provide equirectangular cloud maps of the whole Earth, updated every 3 hours, for free. It's based on infrared and visible light data from EUMETSAT, processed to enhance the clouds and try to reduce the impact of surface temperatures on the final image. I built it because it's surprisingly hard to find these kinds of images in a format that's useful to developers and hobbyists. I was building a 3D ISS tracker and wanted to include live clouds but couldn't find anything good, so I got sidetracked, and here we are.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
UpToWhere▲28The idea came to me after spotting the sea peeking through mountains on a drive near Barcelona. It left me wondering what else was visible from different locations. Some of the features I later added include 3D maps, sun path calculation, adjustable elevation (calculate from a drone/plane POV), and mountain detection. To celebrate the launch, the first 100 HN users can get 1 month of free premium access with the code: UTWfirst100. I’d love your feedback, questions, and suggestions. What would you use this for? What features would you like to see?
2025 · uptowhere.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Shadowmap alternatives
- Every mountain, building and tree shadow mapped for any date and time alternatives
- Helios – what plug-in solar could generate for any address in Britain alternatives
- Homemade automated solar concentrator alternatives
- Solar alternatives
- Shadowmap visualizes solar shadows on an interactive, global 3D map alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →