Like most of my projects, Terra originated from a personal need - the desire to gamify everything around me. The idea of being able to "reveal" the map around me while walking and cycling had been in my mental backlog for quite some time. However, I recently came across the app MysteryHike, which implements this mechanic. I tried using it and felt that it really works - there is motivation to explore new routes and discover new places. At the same time, MysteryHike was developing very slowly and clearly fell short in terms of gamification and social mechanics.

I put together a web-version prototype in a few days using leaflet.js and simple masking logic over the map. During the process, it was discovered that animated map exploration looks interesting on its own, and I decided that focusing on animated visualization could be a unique feature of this project. I added track import from Strava and basic aggregated statistics. The next necessary step is a tracking app that will allow recording walks - with the import from external sources, the "exploration" mechanism gets slightly disrupted. So far, the project is an early prototype, but the interest in my internal priority list is quite high. I will post updates as they come.