🗺 A DeepMind engineer built a full map of New York without writing code

The project is an interactive isometric pixel map of NYC, styled like SimCity 2000. Streets, blocks, and buildings are laid out at city scale, and you can explore it directly in the browser.

The workflow is the point:

🔸 3D city data from CityGML and Google Maps 3D Tiles is rendered with an isometric camera to create a structural base

🔸 Those renders are transformed into pixel-art scenes using generative models, including Nano Banana Pro and a fine-tuned Qwen Image-Edit

🔸 Building coordinates and metadata are tracked so generations are placed consistently across the map

The result is not hand-drawn art and not traditional programming either.

This is what happens when agents replace manual pipelines, even for visual world-building.

📊 @tech

🔭 James Webb captures the sharpest image of the Helix Nebula

🔸 The James Webb Space Telescope released its most detailed image yet of the Helix Nebula, also known as the Eye of God. The nebula sits about 655 light years from Earth, making it one of the closest planetary nebulae we can study.

🔸 The image reveals dense cometary knots. These pillar shaped structures form when hot gas from a dying star collides with colder dust and gas ejected earlier. The interaction sculpts the nebula’s distinctive shape.

🔸 The colors reflect physics, not art. Blue marks the hottest gas under ultraviolet radiation. Yellow shows cooler regions where hydrogen forms molecules. Red orange edges trace the coldest material where gas thins out and dust begins to form.

It is a direct look at the final stage of a star’s life, with material that can later seed new systems.

Full resolution image is available here

📊 @tech