In a strategy game, fog of war is the dark that hides the parts of the map you have not scouted. A fog-of-war map app does the same thing to the real world: it covers the map of where you live, and clears only the ground you physically walk. What you get back is not a route line. It is a shape — the actual extent of the territory you know.
Three things happen, in order. First, the app draws a dark layer over the whole map. Nothing is revealed at the start, not even the street you live on. Second, your device's GPS reports where you are. The app clears a small radius around that point — typically enough to cover the width of a street and its buildings, not a whole neighbourhood. Third, the cleared area is remembered. Walk the same street tomorrow and nothing new appears. Turn down the alley beside it and a new sliver opens. That permanence is the whole point: the map stops being a picture of a city and becomes a record of your city.
A route tracker rewards distance. A fog map rewards novelty, and those are different instincts. On a fog map, the fastest way home is worth nothing you don't already own, and the long way round is worth a strip of new ground. People who use these apps describe the same small behaviour change: they start taking the parallel street. Not for exercise — because the parallel street is still dark. This is also why the map is a fair picture of familiarity. Most people, shown their own fog map after a month, find a dense bright knot around home and work, one bright thread to the shops, and an enormous amount of black within a fifteen-minute walk of their front door.
Fog-of-war map apps differ in a few ways that matter more than the feature list. • Does it need to run in the background? Continuous background GPS is what drains a battery. Some apps reveal only while open, which costs you nothing when you are not playing. • Where does your location history live? This is the most personal map you will ever make. Look for a plain answer about what is stored and whether you can delete it. • Can you try it before making an account? Fog is a mechanic you either enjoy or you don't, and five minutes of it will tell you. • Is there anything in the fog? A pure fog tracker is a beautiful record and a thin game. Landmarks, finds, and other people's traces are what give you a reason to go somewhere specific rather than just anywhere.
These three get confused, so it is worth separating them. A route tracker (the fitness kind) records lines: this run, that distance, this pace. It answers how far you went. A location history (the one your phone's map may already keep) records places and times, mostly for your own reference. It answers where you were on Tuesday. A fog map records coverage. It answers a question neither of the others asks: how much of my own city have I actually seen? You can keep all three — they don't overlap much.
Kartograf is a fog-of-war map that runs in a browser. There is nothing to install, and you can open the guest map at /try before making an account — walk a few metres with the page open and watch the first hole appear in the fog. What is under the fog, besides ground: landmarks other explorers have placed at real locations, treasures hidden for someone else to find, and gates into a fantasy overlay of the same streets. Skills — Explorer, Tourist, Cartographer — level as you cover new ground. An account keeps the map you have revealed, so the fog you clear this week is still clear next month.
The map starts covered in fog
Walk, and it clears where you have been. Kartograf runs in your browser — no download, and the guest map needs no account.
Open the fog mapIt is borrowed from strategy games, where the map is dark until your units scout it. In a map app, the dark covers the real world and clears only where your GPS says you have physically been. Everything you have not visited stays hidden.
It depends entirely on whether it tracks in the background. Continuous background GPS is expensive. An app that only reveals fog while it is open on screen — as Kartograf does in the browser — costs about what any map costs while you look at it.
Not in an app worth using. Driving or riding usually reveals something, since your GPS position genuinely moves, but the reveal radius is small enough that a car mostly draws a thin line. The map is only meaningful if it stays honest about where you actually were.
Yes. Kartograf runs in the browser at kartograf.pixygon.io, and the guest map at /try works without an account or a download. Installable versions exist for phones, but they are not required to start.
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