Show HN: Algorithmically Finding the Longest Line of Sight on Earth

Source: Hacker News

Overview

Tom and Ryan built an algorithm in Rust using SIMD to exhaustively search for the longest line of sight on Earth. They confirmed that the previously speculated view between Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan and the Hindu Kush in China is indeed the longest, measuring 530 km.

Interactive Map

Explore an interactive map with over 1 billion longest lines covering the whole world:

• https://map.alltheviews.world

Click on any point to load its longest line of sight.

Technical Details

For an in‑depth look at the algorithm and pipeline:

• Tom’s blog post: https://tombh.co.uk/longest-line-of-sight
• Ryan’s technical breakdown: https://ryan.berge.rs/posts/total-viewshed-algorithm

The computation required hundreds of AMD Turin cores, hundreds of gigabytes of RAM, several terabytes of disk space, and ran continuously for two days across multiple machines.

References

• Original discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45485227
• Comments thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46943568