The App you never knew you needed but will put a smile and sunshine on your face

The nature of this App’s launch tells its own story. No fancy press conferences, or live interviews on the usual fawning fintech media or broadcasters. A message on Reddit to those Londoners frustrated by the city’s unreliable weather and overbuilt urban landscape who have found it harder and harder to enjoy the simple pleasure of a drinking a pint in the sunshine.

The London-based entertainment bible Time Out perfectly captured the challenge in their preview of the challenges associated with quaffing beer in the capital city.

Simply put, the App maps out the details of which London pub gardens are in the sun, and which of them are in the shade. In real time. Plus there’s a time-bar slider so that you can project forward to understand what the future availability of the sun looks likes.

The person who built the web App is architect Mo Dawood [the App is also available in the Apple store with an Android version promised soon]. The mapping shows you cafés and pubs currently in sunlight, using real-time shadow simulation, Mapbox, and open data from OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap is the open-licence, wiki world map meaning that in theory the App, available also online at www.sunseekr.com, offers a global service too.

Dawood’s architecture interest was especially relevant as the App has to simulate how buildings and terrain cast shadows at different stages throughout the day and over the course of the various journeys of the Earth around the Sun.

The App uses Mapbox GL JS, Turf.js, Overpass API and a shadow simulation with terrain and building height.

Dawood admits that a big ongoing challenge is that that most cafés and pubs data from OpenStreetMap are placed inside building footprints — but the actual shadows are cast at the building’s edge. His solution is to project each café or pub location to the nearest road, find the midpoint, and test for the sun there.

One Reddit user helpfully suggested that the next App Dawood developed should be for beer drinkers in Dubai looking for top ten places in the shade.