The occlusion gap is closed

Wait for
the light.

What if your map knew exactly when the shadows would hit your table? WhatPatio ray-casts building shadows against the live solar position — so it knows which patios are in direct sun right now, and 45 minutes from now.

See the live prototype ↓ Standalone app ↗

3:30 PM · AZ 205° · EL 60° · 4/5 LIT

drag the timeline — shadows are computed, not drawn

Working prototype — not a mockup

The Sunlight Layer, running live in your browser.

Every glow you see is the output of a real ray-cast: 21 buildings with real heights, a mid-summer Vancouver solar model, and 10 patios flipping between sun and shade as the day plays out.

CONNECTING TO SOLAR MODEL…

if the demo doesn't load, open the standalone app ↗

SCRUB

Drag the 12-hour timeline. Shadow polygons sweep the grid; patios ignite the moment light breaks onto them.

GLOW

Amber pulse = sun inbound. Predictive 45-minute lookahead tells you where to walk now to be seated when the light arrives.

FLIP

Toggle Shade mode. The map inverts: on heatwave days, cool, fully-shaded patios become the prize. One toggle, two products.

TAP

Open a patio dossier. Sun windows, peak-sun time, facing and heat rating — computed per venue from geometry alone.

Open standalone ↗ Request the deck

Installable PWA — add it to a home screen and it runs full-screen, offline, like a native app.

Defensible by design

Shadows are computed, not crowdsourced.

Most "sunny patio" lists are static and wrong by 2 PM. WhatPatio's engine treats sunlight as what it actually is: a solvable geometry problem. Solar azimuth and elevation are computed for the exact minute; every building footprint casts a hull-projected shadow; every patio is tested against the result.

Because it's pure math over lightweight JSON geometry, it scales from this 21-building prototype to any city on Earth with existing 3D building data — no sensors, no cameras, no fleet of interns with lawn chairs.

The method — real-time occlusion mapping fused with predictive "sun-soon" caching and a functional sun/shade inversion — is the subject of a patent filing in preparation. The concept, product design and business model are being packaged for licensing.

21Buildings ray-cast

10Live patio nodes

45minPredictive lookahead

<50KBEntire engine

WHY IT'S HARD TO COPY WELL: the value isn't "a sun icon on a map" — it's the fused pipeline: minute-accurate solar positioning × per-building occlusion × forward-cached transitions × an inversion UX that doubles the addressable use case (sun-seeking and heat refuge).

Solar path diagram overlaid on an aerial photo of Vancouver — **FIG 01** — Solar path envelope, Kitsilano · Vancouver

Rooftop solar irradiance heat map across a dense city block — **FIG 02** — Per-building irradiance from 3D geometry

The product surface

Small app. Sharp edges.

☀️

Ray-cast hot map

Patios render as radial glow markers driven by live occlusion math — hot the instant direct light lands.

⏱

45-minute lookahead

Predictive caching flags "sun soon" patios with a pulsing ring, so users route to light before it arrives.

🎞

12-hour temporal scrub

A micro-animated slider replays the whole solar day. Plan a 6 PM booking at 9 AM with confidence.

◐

Sun / Shade inversion

Not a dark theme — a functional flip. In heatwaves the map hunts cool cobalt shade instead of gold sun.

📋

Patio dossiers

Per-venue sun windows, peak-sun time, facing and heat rating — generated from geometry, not reviews.

📲

Installable PWA

Manifest, service worker, offline cache, safe-area aware. Ships today on any phone, no app store required.

Built to license

A drop-in layer for the maps that matter.

The prototype runs on fully decoupled state — lightweight JSON geometry in, rendered layer out. It was architected from day one to transform into a native map-platform layer without a rewrite.

Data synergy — zero new hardware

Platform-held 3D building meshes plus solar azimuth math generate shadow profiles for every city on Earth, instantly. The expensive data already exists; this is the layer that monetizes it.

A contextual search layer

Nests beside Transit, Traffic and Satellite in the layers menu — and lights up exactly when high-intent seasonal queries spike: "patios near me."

Sunlight-priced ad inventory

Merchants sponsor their pin for the precise hours their patio enters prime sun — a net-new, time-targeted B2B placement no map platform sells today.

Google MapsPrimary licensing target

Apple MapsLook Around mesh-ready

Booking & delivery appsOpenTable · Resy · DoorDash

Strategic inquiries only

Contact Kevan.

Investing, licensing, or integrating? Review the engine, the filing strategy and the go-to-market — directly with the founder.

💬 Text / SMS

Prefer direct? [email protected] · 778-991-4897 · @WhatPatio on X

Wait forthe light.