What it is
God's Eye View is an open-source app that puts live public data on a photorealistic 3D globe: aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, traffic, transit, weather radar, public cameras and mapped licence-plate-reader locations. You can click any object to track it, switch to thermal, night-vision or CRT looks, record camera tours and share a view, including a tracked target, as a link.
Its AI part is a realtime voice agent that flies the camera and answers questions ("take me to LAX and select the nearest airborne aircraft"). Voice needs an OpenAI API key, or a Gemini key as an alternative. Most data layers work without any keys; photorealistic 3D needs a Cesium ion token or a metered Google Maps key. Keys stay on a local server and are not sent to the browser.
It is built by Bilawal Sidhu and Sameh Khamis at Halfpixel, growing out of Sidhu's "God's Eye View" video series, and released under MIT, with some bundled data limited to non-commercial use. It installs through Pinokio or from the terminal; version 0.2.1 came out on 3 October 2026.
Our review
God's Eye View is the most convincing case so far for a voice agent as an interface rather than a chat window. Asking a globe to find a ship, follow it and show the nearest public camera works because the agent drives about 30 map tools rather than describing them, and the plumbing is careful: private keys stay behind a server-side proxy with SSRF protection, the server binds to localhost by default, and most layers need no account. Its README says it reached number one on GitHub Trending in August 2026, and it has about 59,000 stars.
Voice is the only part that costs real money, and the README handles it well. The default model, gpt-realtime-2, is billed at $32 per million audio input tokens and $64 per million output on OpenAI's price list; a MINI toggle switches to a model at $10 and $20. API-key sessions show live spend, warn at $2 and stop at a $5 hard cap. Google's photorealistic 3D tiles give 1,000 free events a month and then $6 per 1,000, or come free through a personal, non-commercial Cesium ion account.
Commercial use is where it gets complicated. The code is MIT, but DATA_SOURCES.md says the TeleGeography submarine-cable data is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, the Nepal flood pack is CC BY-NC 4.0, OpenSky's flight data is licensed for non-commercial research and education, and the Google News headlines are restricted to personal, non-commercial use. A company building on it has to remove or relicense each of those first.
The project is honest about its ceiling. It calls itself a foundation rather than a hardened production service, warns that data may be delayed, incomplete or wrong, and notes that older installs broke when OpenStreetMap's Overpass servers began refusing them. Halfpixel's planned hosted version may change the cost picture, but for now the expensive part the maintainers point to is history, not the live view.
Where it earns its place
A newsroom data journalist
Show readers where ships and aircraft were during a breaking story
Track vessels with a free AISStream key and record a camera tour to share as a link. Free to run; the README warns the data may be delayed or wrong, so every claim still needs checking against the source feed.
A front-end engineer building a voice interface for a mapping product
Study how a realtime voice agent can safely drive an application
Read the voice/ folder and the server-side key proxy as a reference design. Testing voice on gpt-realtime-2 costs a few dollars per session at most under the built-in $5 cap.
A geography teacher with a class of 30
Give students a live view of earthquakes, satellites and weather
Run it keyless on one laptop and project it. Do not share it over the school network with keys loaded: anyone who can reach the server can spend them, and app throttles are not billing caps.
Before you commit
- Setup
- One click through Pinokio 8.2 or later, or clone it and run npm ci and npm run dev on Node 24 or 26; Docker is also supported. It starts with no keys.
- Integrations
- OpenAI or Gemini for voice, Cesium ion or Google Map Tiles for 3D, plus free keys for AISStream, NASA FIRMS, TomTom, OpenSky and Mapillary.
- Data and privacy
- Runs locally and binds to localhost; private keys are held server-side, while the Google Maps and Cesium tokens reach the browser and should be restricted at the provider.
- Cost at scale
- A solo user can stay at $0 apart from voice; OpenAI voice is capped at $5 per API-key session, and direct Google 3D tiles cost $6 per 1,000 events after the first 1,000 each month.
- Limits
- Not for navigation or operational decisions by its own warning; HLS video allows two concurrent sessions; commercial deployments must strip several non-commercial datasets.
What's good
- Most layers work with no keys or signup
- Voice agent operates the map through real tools
- Hard $5 cap on OpenAI voice spend
- Binds to localhost; private keys stay server-side
What's not
- Several bundled and live sources are non-commercial
- Public feeds can lag, break or disappear
- Voice needs a paid OpenAI or Gemini key
- Sharing on a LAN exposes your keys to that network
Best for
Journalists, OSINT hobbyists and developers who want to explore live public data, or study how a voice agent can drive an app.
God's Eye View: common questions
- Is God's Eye View worth it?
- A dazzling demonstration of a voice agent operating real software, built for exploring public data rather than relying on it. We rate it 3.9 out of 5.
- How much does God's Eye View cost?
- Free and open source under MIT. Voice uses your OpenAI or Gemini API usage; Google 3D tiles are metered.
- What are the downsides of God's Eye View?
- Several bundled and live sources are non-commercial; public feeds can lag, break or disappear; voice needs a paid OpenAI or Gemini key; sharing on a LAN exposes your keys to that network.
- Who is God's Eye View best for?
- Journalists, OSINT hobbyists and developers who want to explore live public data, or study how a voice agent can drive an app.
- How much does God's Eye View cost for a team or in production?
- A solo user can stay at $0 apart from voice; OpenAI voice is capped at $5 per API-key session, and direct Google 3D tiles cost $6 per 1,000 events after the first 1,000 each month.
- Is God's Eye View safe for company data?
- Runs locally and binds to localhost; private keys are held server-side, while the Google Maps and Cesium tokens reach the browser and should be restricted at the provider.
Answers checked Oct 23, 2026.