Show HN: Guess average country colors from 20 years of satellite data

2 jcattle 2 5/13/2025, 9:11:06 AM guess.landshade.com ↗

This uses MODIS data (MCD43A4.061). For more details on how the data was collected see here: https://landshade.com/details

Comments (2)

latexr · 12h ago

Scientifically, this is based on an interesting curiosity. As a game, it isn’t really fun; all we’re doing is moving some colour sliders around without any real payoff.

The daily gamification doesn’t help. It’s OK to let people enjoy a couple of levels of a game for a while then move on, this artificial constraint of “you can only play once and need to come back every day” was interesting the first time, but now it just looks like yet another avenue to get people addicted to their devices.

jcattle · 11h ago

True, I agree that the game mechanics and the payoff isn't great. If you have any suggestions on how to improve I'd be all ears.

In the end for me this game was just a way to present the data in a more interesting way. You can look at all the raw data more nicely presented anyway at the main page https://landshade.com

I can't and won't monetize this, so in no way was my intention to get people addicted to their devices. I see it as just a fun novelty.