About the project
Step inside any moment in human history.
A street-view of the past you couldn't otherwise visit — drawn the first time someone asks for it, walked the way someone there might have walked it.
Scenes we've already drawn
A peek at the catalog
Each panorama is rendered from scratch. Click any tile to start a round.
What it is
is what street-view would look like if it could go backwards. Pick a place. Pick a year. We render the scene from inside — eye level, breathable horizon, the wear and weather of a real place — and you stand there. Then you guess where and when you are.
Every panorama is drawn from scratch the first time someone asks for it. Bosworth Field on the morning of 22 August 1485. Wenceslas Square the week the regime fell. A Damascus souk before the war. Imagined, not photographed, but assembled from period research: architecture, fabrics, the directional light at the right hour and latitude, the small surface wear real places carry.
We started from a simple wish: the interesting moments are the ones the camera missed.
Why we built this
Time depth, not just places
We started from a simple frustration: street-view services show you anywhere you can point at, but only this morning's anywhere. The Roman Forum exists as a tourist ruin in 2026 — you can't walk it in 78 BC. The Colosseum is missing its facing marble. Berlin's Potsdamer Platz lost its first century and rebuilt a different one. The interesting moments are the ones the camera missed.
The second frustration was choice. We wanted a Travel mode — a place you commission, not a place that's served to you. Type a location, a year, an optional detail. Wait a minute. Walk around it.
How a panorama gets made
Research, then render
Behind every image is a short research pass: what was built there in that decade, what materials it would have weathered into, what people wore, what the sky looked like at that latitude in that season.
Research
A thousand words on that decade
What stood there, what materials would have weathered that long, what people wore, how the light fell at that latitude and season. We assemble it into a prompt — dense, specific, never a single line.
Render
Sixty to ninety seconds
The image model draws a 2:1 equirectangular panorama at high quality. We tune it gently in post and ship it to the CDN.
Review
Two safety gates
One on the prompt, one on the finished image. About one in fifty comes back rejected; we keep a log of why so we can improve the template.
A high-quality panorama costs us around forty cents to generate and takes 60–90 seconds. We absorb that cost on the free tier within a daily limit — it's the only reason the limit exists.
Principles
What we're optimising for
- 01
Period accuracy over period drama.
No cinematic golden hour on every scene. No anachronistic objects. Crowds are individual, not clones.
- 02
Direct perception, not a photograph.
The viewer is standing there, looking around with their own eyes. No film grain, no sepia, no "old photo" aesthetic on scenes long before photography existed.
- 03
Honest about imagination.
These are informed reconstructions, not historical evidence. We say so at the bottom of every reveal.
- 04
Quiet design.
Editorial typography, a twilight and a library palette, nothing that screams. The panorama is the loud part; the chrome around it should disappear.
The panorama is the loud part. Everything around it should disappear.
Who's behind it
A small Czech studio
is built and maintained by inithouse.com s.r.o., an independent product studio based in the Czech Republic. We're a small team — designers, engineers, one historian we keep on speed-dial — and this is our public-facing project.
We're self-funded. No investors to please, no advertising, no data brokerage. The free tier is meant to stay free; if a paid tier ever appears, it'll be for people who want more travel requests than the daily allowance, not for unlocking features the rest of us lose.
Frequently asked
Questions we get a lot
Is timemachina free?
Yes. The game and a daily quota of Travel-mode requests are free. We absorb the rendering cost; that's why the daily limit exists.
Are the panoramas real photographs?
No. Every panorama is drawn by an image model from a research-backed prompt. We say so on every reveal — these are informed reconstructions, not historical evidence.
How accurate is the history?
We pass period detail — architecture, materials, fabrics, the light at that latitude in that season — into the prompt. Then every image goes through two safety reviews. Mistakes happen; report them on the round reveal and we re-render.
How is this different from GeoGuessr?
Geo guessing in the present versus history. GeoGuessr drops you in this morning's street-view; timemachina drops you in a past century. You guess both where and when.
Do I need an account?
No. You can play Solo and try Travel as a guest. An account adds your scores to the daily leaderboard and lets you keep a history of your travels.
Do you sell my data?
No. No advertising trackers, no data brokerage. See the privacy page for the short list of processors we actually use.
Can I suggest a place or time?
Yes — that's Travel mode. Type a location, a year, an optional detail. Wait about a minute. Walk around it.
Who's behind it?
inithouse.com s.r.o., an independent product studio in the Czech Republic. We're self-funded, no investors, no ads.
What we'd like from you
Feedback that helps the next image
If a panorama feels off — wrong building style for the period, a detail that doesn't belong to the era, a face that looks like someone real — use the report button on the round reveal. We re-review reported images and re-generate them when they need it. The reports tune the template; you make the next image better for everyone.
For everything else — feature ideas, partnerships, history-teacher use cases, press — there's a contact page with the right address.