The Iditarod is an annual sled dog race that takes place every March in Alaska. At over 1000 miles, and with wind chill tempatures as low as -100 °F, the race tests the endurance of huskies and mushers alike. The current record time was set in 2014 by Dallas Seavey at 8 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes, and 19 seconds. Using new features in Turf, along with the Mapbox Winter Wonderland map, we were able to visualize the race in an exciting new way.
Turf is able to calculate the approximate location of every team every 20 milliseconds (and it could go a lot faster). With this kind of speed, real time 60fps animations with hundreds or thousands of data points are well within reach.
Since the launch of Turf at Mapbox last month, we have put a lot of work into making it the easiest way to analyze route data at scale. This example uses Turf's ability to snap points to lines, measure geodesic distance across routes, and much more. With Turf 1.4.0, available now as a Mapbox.js plugin, you can perform the same types of analysis with your own data.
Building something awesome for transportation with Turf and Mapbox? We would love to hear about it, so let us know @mapbox.