15 ms·
Project Sunroof
- Navarr 11y agoIntroduction Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXf_h8tEes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXf_h8tEes
- ChuckMcM 11y agoA better link, although I find it interesting that this is primarily an advertising play. Take information they have (Google maps) and turn it into a "qualified lead" system for Solar installers. Has to pay pretty decently on a conversion. That said, it would be super helpful if they marked addresses as "already have solar" so I would stop getting robo-calls from solar companies trying to sell me solar panels.
- jdalgetty 11y agoNot available in Canada it seems
- alwaysdoit 11y ago> Project Sunroof is currently helping people save with solar in the following cities: San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno CA and Greater Boston MA.
- mikerg87 11y agoCurrently only Fresno, Bay Area and Boston. The list of locations they have processed is not prominent and a bit washed out between the white lettering and the bright background image.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Navarr 11y agoNot even available in most of the US. It's a "start"
- kuschku 11y agoNo, like, in Canada and Europe the site just returns 404.
- aps-sids 11y agoIt's a 404.
- giarc 11y agoOff topic but the Google Sunroof logo is very similar to MyHealth program logo in my province (https://myhealth.alberta.ca/ https://myhealth.alberta.ca/).
- Mithaldu 11y agoDear Google, you make me feel really uncomfortable when you share a video with the world wherein you describe a project which you will make for "the country".
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- srtjstjsj 11y agoWhere does it say "the country" ?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jonknee 11y agoIt hasn't reached most of the US either... Give it some time!
- kuschku 11y agoIn most of Europe, the website just returns 404. This is like... the worst link ever. I’d prefer if a mod would replace the URL with a link to either the About page or the video. Or to an archive.org cache of the site. Linking to a site that 404's for almost everyone is inacceptable.
- nathanm412 11y agoIt only works for three cities in the US as well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- shogun21 11y agoSo Google isn't trying to replicate Solar City, this is just an analysis tool if your home would be viable for solar panels. Almost like a middle-man for solar panel providers?
- melling 11y agoThey are simply trying to reduce the resistance to solar energy adoption. If people can perform discovery and analysis in a fraction of the time, those who will benefit will more likely do it. Take a 10 hour process and reduce it to 30 minutes, for example. Same idea as a one-click checkout.
- bri3d 11y agoThey're also trying to make money. Warm, qualified solar leads are worth hundreds or more.
- vishalzone2002 11y agowould be amazing to see sunroof and tesla power wall combine efforts on this...
- kirk21 11y agoHow do they make these maps? Do they have satellite images of different points of (sunny) days and run the analysis that way?
- ww520 11y agoExtrapolation. Use the time on the satellite photo to get the time reference, and thus where the sun is and how much sunlight going at a direction. Use the location and direction of the house get a sense of the facing of the roof. Use color level of the bright and shade sides to estimate the roof pitch incline. Given the roof's area, direction, and pitch, it's not hard to estimate the sun light received.
- ucaetano 11y agoFar easier, they have 3D models of all the buildings already, as well as weather info. They just need to determine what is roof, and calculate the exposure.
- vblord 11y agoWow. I can't believe how expensive solar panels are. This really is a great tool to give you an idea how much solar panels would cost. What about wind... does anyone know of any affordable residential wind turbine solutions?
- jpollock 11y agoResidential wind has some issues: 1) Performance - best performance is when the wind blows in a straight line, houses and other features will deflect it making it turbulent. 2) Noise - turbines are noisy, you're not likely to have neighbors appreciate it. 3) Mounting - Mounting one requires either a pole, or it can be mounted to the roof. However, roof mountings tend to cause issues (read damage) due to vibrations transferred through the mounting. Not good for a residential neighborhood, but perhaps if you've got several acres of clear land?
- wereHamster 11y agoAren't there turbines with a vertical shaft, which don't need a large tower? I saw one a few months ago, built especially for city rooftops where you don't have that much space and generally need something not that expensive. You'd still have the problem of turbulences though (i.e. non-optimal performance generation)
- thrownaway2424 11y agoYes but vertical axis windmills take more ground space and make even more noise than their horizontal-axis counterparts.
- lotharbot 11y agounder Solar City's finance model (and possibly others) payments on solar panels are less than buying the same amount of electricity off the grid. That includes maintenance on the panels for 30 years. This is assuming you get adequate sunlight, which we do here in Denver.
- swalsh 11y agoWeird, it says it covers Boston but when I put my Boston address (single family in the city of Boston itself) it says they haven't reached the address yet.
- arscan 11y agoI live just outside Boston and it worked for me (although it did consider my deck as part of my roof, which grossly inflated the estimate). Technically, they say "greater Boston area", so perhaps they don't actually include Boston itself.
- distantsounds 11y agoI put in my Medford address and got results. I don't own, but it's still interesting to see.
- sisk 11y agoWorked for me and my building is next to Copley. But Boston is very fragmented when it comes to service distribution—just see the broadband provider map: http://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/bos_cablecompetition_watermarked.jpg http://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/bos_cabl...
- dicroce 11y agoI put in an address and it couldn't find it... Then I cleared it out and put in the address more slowly... When I did that I noticed that it found it in the drop down... so I selected it and THEN it worked... It seems like unless you put in EXACTLY what they have in the DB, it won't work... (in my case, I left off the "avenue" in my address).
- JoshuaEddy 11y agoTry http://www.mapdwell.com/en/boston http://www.mapdwell.com/en/boston . The City of Boston has already done a solar survey with the MIT spinoff MapDwell.
- andyl 11y agoFusion of maps, 3d modeling, electricity & lease rates, solar intensity, installers. Easy to use. This feels like something new and powerful. For society: I wonder if it is safe for so much power to be concentrated in one organization. As a technical accomplishment: I'm impressed.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> For society: I wonder if it is safe for so much power to be concentrated in one organization. In general, it's probably not. But in this particular case it's been working very well for us so far.
- dkhenry 11y agoIts not really new, and its not really powerful. From what I can see all this does is give you an estimate based on the square footage of your rooftop. There is a lot more that goes into a real estimate then how big your roof is, namely how can you arrange the panels to cover the roof. That is a neat trick and this company does that http://www.modsolar.net/ http://www.modsolar.net/ I worked with their stack for a bit and from my understanding their tool has been doing what this site does and then some extra stuff to actually get the panels installed.
- rconti 11y agoAnd sun exposure.
- oaktowner 11y agoBut Google doesn't have power over electricity and lease rates or lists of installers -- they're just using publicly available data. There are other sources for maps data, and many people have 3d modeling software. So I'm not sure how this is "so much power" concentrated in one organization.
- andyl 11y agoTo me, what makes it powerful is the ubiquity - the 'full take' ness of it all. Sure the app is solar-related data, just for a few regions. But could include whatever data Google chooses, expanded to the whole world, for whatever audience Google chooses. I've worked with aerial surveillance systems, the types used on police choppers. Put the crosshairs of the flir camera on a house and it will tell you all kinds of stuff: age/race of occupants, arrest records, warrants, tax status, etc. Amazing for LE, but a bit big-brotherly for my taste. In the wrong hands, in the wrong circumstances, data fusion has incredible potential for abuse. IMHO. :-)
- thom_nic 11y agoI've seen a similar project where it lets you navigate to an address in google maps, shows the satellite image, then lets you draw an outline of your roof. (I can't remember if you had to estimate the roof angle or not.) I wonder if this is this "not available" in many areas because Google is using machine vision to automatically compute roof metrics, or if it's because they don't have rebate & utility info for many markets.
- ljk 11y agoThis seems pretty cool, so any downsides I'm not seeing?
- willyk 11y agoAgreed, this made my day. IMO only downside is that we don't have more of this sort of innovation happening at a smaller scale (akin to PG's recent tweet about the maturity of self driving cars relative to early versions of Google.
- melling 11y agoWant to see what it does, try City Hall: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#a=2600%20Fresno%20St%2C%20Fresno%2C%20CA&b=125&f=lease&np=18&p=1 https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#a=2600%20Fresno%20St%2C%2...
- joesmo 11y agoSo City Hall would actually save less money (12k vs 13k/14k) than the two regular homes I tried in San Francisco. If the numbers are correct, we're looking at $650-700 a year in savings. Not bad, but not that great either, especially considering heating alone in both buildings I looked at ran $150-300 / month (including summer which is hardly warmer at night in SF). Can solar panels be installed at such a price on a regular home? I doubt there's any incentive for City Hall here. EDIT: I also doubt the calculations are correct considering that city hall's roof is many times larger than the two homes I looked at, yet saves less money.
- magicalist 11y agoIt looks like it's only tuned for residences (and maybe small apartment buildings) as you can only set the max electricity bill at $500 per month. I'm sure the city hall's bill is much higher.
- netfire 11y agoI'm guessing you left the average monthly electric bill slider at the $125/month position. You'd have to adjust the to what it actually is for City Hall, which I'd think is a lot more than $125/month.
- joesmo 11y agoThere's no such slider on my page, only a text box. Tried disabling privacy plugins, but they're not the culprit.
- anorwell 11y agoOne of the tunable parameters is the "size of your electric bill", which defaults to $150/month and maxes at $500/month -- far too low for a city hall, I should think. This is the limiting factor here, not the size of the roof. At $500/month, the recommended installation size is 765 square feet, but the total roof size is 50,171 sq feet. Only a small fraction of the roof area is being used. This has clearly been designed for residences and not larger buildings.
- jonknee 11y agoThis could be the source of an interesting direct marking mail campaign by an enterprising solar installer. In the mailer you can list actual numbers.
- djb_hackernews 11y agoI was recently thinking about a project to show how easy it would be to power the entire US on solar panels. It actually wouldn't require much land, in fact if you put panels on every building top and parking lot you'd be almost there. What I was imagining was something that'd show you "ideal" spots for solar farms. Ideal meaning proximity to population centers, orientation of land, environmental impact, etc.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoIf you just paved over Edwards AFB with PV panels you'd have 50% of US electric energy demand, and that's assuming a relatively modest 6kWh per day per square meter.
- dreamcompiler 11y agoGenerating enough PV power for US electricity needs is easy. Covering a few square miles in Arizona with PV would do the trick. But storing and transmitting that electricity is damn difficult.
- minthd 11y agoSo how big of a business this could be for Google ?
- sologoub 11y agoSolar lead gen (and this is a very fancy form of lead gen) is a reasonable size business within greater lead gen industry, but I doubt this will be noted for the revenue potential in any of Alphabet earnings calls.
- d215 11y agohttp://www.zonatlas.nl http://www.zonatlas.nl granted it is in dutch and made by a completely boring governmental institution. OTH it's made with openstreetmap.
- oever 11y agoIt's not a governmental institution but an NGO which unites many local governments and other participants. http://www.zonatlas.nl/home/over-de-zonatlas/ They use high resolution 3d surface information (elevation data) and weather reports to assess the efficiency of solar panels. The map for my house accurately shows how much efficiency can be expected on each part of the house. This takes into account neighboring buildings and trees. The site also calculates a number of scenarios and allows you to easily request offers and show how long it takes to earn back your investment. They cleverly compare this to interest rate. E.g. on my house, investing in solar now would yield 4.5% interest over 20 years (given certain assumptions). It is a very impressive site.
- Someone 11y agoAnd http://www.zonnekaart.nl http://www.zonnekaart.nl, which links to similar initiatives, such as zonnekaart.nl (gives detailed information about what parts of roofs are useful) and http://www.zonnig.haaglanden.nl http://www.zonnig.haaglanden.nl (cool color scheme)
- pilom 11y agoOther than the "buy now" aspect, this doesn't seem any better for calculating solar savings than http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ I used PVwatts when sizing my home system in Denver and thought it did a great job.
- Navarr 11y agoIt's "easier." I just logged into PvWatts, knowing practically nothing about solar, and I'm confused at Step 2. There's a billion variables that it wants me to fill out instead of trying to calculate them for me for optimal results.
- gregable 11y agoAgreed PVWatts is more accurate, and it's what a solar installer is actually likely to use when doing a roof assessment. But to use PVWatts you need to input things like the tilt and orientation of your roof, the size of the system you want to build, the cost of power from your provider, inverter efficiency, etc. This asks for your address and your monthly electricity bill to give you a rough estimate, both of which homeowners are much more likely to know.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoHrmm, I don't know, the Google one seems more accurate in the details. It correctly shows my house as being plunged in darkness pretty much all day long (it's near the bottom of a slot canyon) whereas the site you linked above gives some quite rosy and unrealistic projections.
- larrys 11y agoThey use 20 years and in the past I have heard that the average time for home ownership is typically 7 years. I don't know the true figure today (wasn't able to find it when I just searched) but for most people a 20 year payback is way to long and I would imagine this certainly contributed to lack of adoption of solar in addition to other factors obviously. Edit: Note this: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/#financial-considerations https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/#financial-considerat...
- rconti 11y agoIt will raise your property value though.
- meentsbk 11y agoSeems also very similar to http://www.mapdwell.com/en http://www.mapdwell.com/en
- rwc 11y agoShouldn't this be the "S" or "P" in Alphabet? Why is this a Google project?
- ChuckMcM 11y agoBecause its "Google Maps advertising", the project is to help Google Maps make a bit more money by selling solar installs via their tool. The "G" company is all about the advertising :-)
- birken 11y agoI live in San Francisco and just had a solar system installed last week, so I have a few comments about this. 1) It vastly overestimated how big a solar system that could fit on my roof (by about 5x). It didn't care about chimneys or skylights (which are easily visible through Google maps), nor SF fire code which states that you need a 3-foot empty pathway on both sides of the crest of your roof [1]. So for almost every roof with a single ridge, this will cut out a large percentage of the best solar real estate. 2) It didn't include local SF providers in the marketplace which are generally higher rated than national providers and can offer additional SF incentives and cost-savings. So while the estimation of sunlight potential is really cool, the 3d modeling aspect and size of the marketplace leave a little bit to be desired. This site would probably be good at quickly seeing if your roof has any solar potential at all, but if it does, I'd recommend checking Yelp and having a highly-rated solar company come give you a detailed estimate (which would be free). 1: http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1232 http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1232
- TTPrograms 11y agoIs the cost primarily proportional to the size, or do inverters present a major fixed cost? For the former it doesn't really matter how much you can cover, as it's simply an investment with a certain rate of return that has the amount you can invest limited by roof area.
- birken 11y agoI think all of the hardware will be very proportional to the size. In my case I had micro-inverters on each panel, so it was directly proportional, but this was actually more expensive than having a single large inverter (though more performant). However, the marginal cost of things like engineering, installation and inspection will certainly go down with the size of the system. How much of that passes to the consumer I don't know, but some of it certainly does. You can imagine the cost of putting 1 solar panel on your roof is not going to be 10x less than putting 10 of them up there. It is hard to get exact numbers from solar sites as they are very sales-oriented, but it seems like the hardware cost is estimated at anywhere from 20-50% of the total cost of the solar system. The rest of it is engineering, installation, inspection, customer acquisition, profit, etc.
- justplay 11y ago404 when accessed with Indian IP
- krisgenre 11y agoSame even with a Canadian IP.
- josu 11y agoAlso Mexico
- pella 11y agohttps://www.google.com/get/sunroof/about/ https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/about/ https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/ https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/
- devy 11y agosame 404 when posting to facebook (where its spiders automatically extracts a title, blobs and images) where their server IPs are probably not all U.S. based. Weird.
- 0xffffabcd 11y agoWorks fine here with a French IP address.
- klunger 11y ago404 from Norway
- jvm 11y agoForgive my ignorance, what does one do during non-insolated hours? Do solar cells typically come with battery packs or does one just pull from the grid? If the latter then the cost savings are a bit less impressive than stated. Also can you put power back into the grid in San Francisco? Is that benefit included in the cost savings estimate?
- qooleot 11y agoOften, the most economical answer is heating a water heater rather than storing via a battery.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoSolar power systems don't necessarily come with batteries but a decent installation company should be able to propose and implement an integrated system. The Tesla battery pack is an example of some recent innovation in that area. You can sell power into the grid but PG&E only has to pay you wholesale rates, 3-4 cents per kwh, not what they are charging you to take the same amount of energy out, which is 34 cents per kwh at the top tier. It's basically a scam. You don't want to overbuild on the assumption that selling the surplus would be profitable.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoIs there no real solar power market then? If your local utility is a monopoly then you basically have to accept whatever the utility wants to pay you (even far below 'market' rate). You have no power to negotiate, only capitulate or try to get the local regulator to enforce fair trade.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoLocal conditions may vary, of course, but if just go with the completely unimaginative system, and you live in California in PG&E territory, there is no effective market.
- _delirium 11y ago
- uptown 11y agoAre firefighters any less likely to enter a house fire where the roof is covered in heavy solar panels? I've heard stories, but never dug into whether it was anti-solar FUD.
- VLM 11y agoIt smells of the anti-hybrid astroturfing from a decade or so ago where numerous Ford and GM employees would be glad to tell you on social media that if you get into a car accident in a hybrid, emergency services will leave you to bleed out and die because its a hybrid so you should have bought a SUV or truck like a RealAmerican(tm). My father in law did the volunteer fire dept thing in his rural area and its very depressing how quickly a typical house becomes unsaveable in a fire. So it is true that most houses with solar panels, in a fire, will end up a total loss, but that's true of most houses ... period, nothing to do with solar panels. My advice from the frozen north is solar panels are extremely light weight compared to slush/snow covered shingle roofs, which don't seem to slow down firemen very much. The total mass of a couple inches of rain soaked slush snow is unbelievable, many thousands of distributed pounds on a typical roof.
- uptown 11y agoSeems like it's likely mostly anti-solar propaganda, but I guess there is some concern regarding the electrified nature of solar panels rather than their weight. http://solarenergy.net/News/tackling-risks-solar-panels-pose-firefighters/ http://solarenergy.net/News/tackling-risks-solar-panels-pose... I care little about the house in a fire. I do care about its occupants, and also the safety of the firefighters attempting to extract anyone still inside.
- dreamcompiler 11y agoI've not encountered discussions of solar panels in firefighter training, but my intuition suggests it's probably not a big deal. For nighttime fires, the panels won't be generating any electricity anyway. For daytime fires, smoke and water will likely occlude the panels and decrease their voltage. Firefighters ventilating the roof would need to be trained to avoid HVDC wires connecting a series-connected panel array to the inverter. We might also just lob foam onto the panels and turn them off that way.
- fakename 11y agoMy pg&e bills have never surpassed $50/month, so project sunroof convinced me that solar is not a good investment!
- danielcljc 11y agoA similar site with more geographical coverage, but less computer vision. http://www.canisolar.com/ http://www.canisolar.com/
- dicroce 11y agoI live in Fresno, AKA, the surface of the sun. It says my yearly savings on a leased system is $2300! Wow. I may be installing solar soon!
- minthd 11y agoWhat's the difference for you , between leasing and buying ?
- drelihan 11y agoEntered my info. Got a call within five minutes and was then asked the exact same info. Company said I don't use enough electricity to make it worth it. Wonder how much they had to pay Google for that lead
- thuruv 11y agoLink dead. . Google error. .
- bliti 11y agoI'm also getting an error. Strange to see a google page down...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- MRSallee 11y agoCan anyone with more knowledge of solar technology speak to this? I know nothing about solar technology developments. I am interested in adding solar to my house some day, but concerned about spending a lot of money today for solar panels that will either (a) be much cheaper in 5-10 years, or (b) be replaced by much more effective panels in 5-10 years. Assuming that the economics of it are the only motivation for going solar, and that with current technology and pricing the panels pay for themselves only after ~10 years, am I better off waiting a few years to get more efficient/cheaper panels, or is it unlikely we'll make significant advancements in these areas, and/or do current government incentives (which may be ephemeral) make up for the advantages of future tech?
- randyrand 11y agoAnd advancements in fusion, fission, wind, etc that could make today's solar less worthwhile. No one can predict how much the landscape can change in that time and I wonder if Googles 20-year savings model tries to account for predicted advancements -- and also importantly if their "savings" accounts for the time value of money -- the amount that could be had just by investing generally instead of investing in your own solar. Time to investigate.... Edit: Google "Assumes 2.2% annual increase in electricity prices." That's interesting. We should be talking present value terms so inflation is irrelevant. Are they assuming no tech advancements in the next 20 years? What would be driving up those costs other than inflation?
- URSpider94 11y agoMy take: Further increases in efficiency could mean that you could install more capacity on your roof, or the same capacity in fewer panels. Assuming that you can fit enough panels to cover 95% of your demand on your roof, installing more panels doesn't make sense (over-generation is not really profitable today). At the same time, a lot of the installation costs are independent of number of panels (permitting, estimates, wiring to the junction box), so installing fewer panels won't bring the cost down tremendously. At the same time, tax subsidies are scheduled to start phasing out, and utilities are making noises about discontinuing some of the more favorable rate plans that allow 100% net metering (generated power is credited at the full retail rate, not at the wholesale rate). Either of those changes would negatively impact ROI. It's hard to know what will happen in the future, but with the current environment, many people can lock in a favorable 20-year ROI for a system today.
- cookiecaper 11y agoThey really need to get Florida mapped. Florida is a great candidate for solar power, but the state government is pretty clearly in the power utility's pocket and they work to make it very difficult for solar providers out here.
- iamcurious 11y agoFor those who got 404 from their IPs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXf_h8tEes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXf_h8tEes
- nimitkalra 11y agoRisks to getting solar power (according to Project Sunroof) are something to consider. > As with any investment, there are some risks, though a well-installed system will make most risks extremely rare. Risks include PV systems catching fire, installations leading to roof leaks, theft, obsolescence, and hail damage and/or wind damage to the solar system itself. > Fast-growing trees can shade solar installations, reducing production over time. Utilities can change how much they charge their customers for electricity, changing the savings from solar.
- listic 11y agoWhy are so many people in the USA live in individual houses rather than condominiums (apartments)? The latter is just so much more economical.
- agentdrtran 11y agoBecause there's a lot of room in the US.
- jseliger 11y agoBecause zoning codes mandate it: see The Rent is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0...) and The Triumph of the City (http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/0143120549 http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...) for more. The short version is this: Property owners now have shocking amounts of control over what their neighbors do with property. Owners, especially of single-family houses, elect officials who restrict development through zoning and similar means. Height limits and parking requirements effectively mandate single, detached housing in most of the U.S. This only really got started in the 70s (see http://jakeseliger.com/2013/07/03/jane-jacobs-is-everywhere-even-when-you-dont-see-her/ http://jakeseliger.com/2013/07/03/jane-jacobs-is-everywhere-...), and it didn't get really bad until the 2000s, when the shift back to cities ran into insane urban zoning rules to produce huge affordability crises. By now, most developers who dare to build condos or apartments have to build luxury apartments: http://www.wsj.com/articles/rents-rise-faster-for-midtier-apartments-than-luxury-ones-1439769468 http://www.wsj.com/articles/rents-rise-faster-for-midtier-ap... because that's the only way to make the economics work. In the meantime, much of the population growth has shifted to Sun Belt cities in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Florida where development is easier and/or simply sprawls more.
- skwirl 11y agoBecause it's more pleasant and we have the space and money. If you want more economical, why not just have everyone live in barracks?
- toephu2 11y agoRemember the 30% federal tax credit expires at the end of 2016. Only valid if you buy not lease your panels.
- patrickmclaren 11y agoIt seems to think my apartment building is a parking lot - there's no heat-map.
- DirtyAndy 11y agoAnother take on this sort of thing: http://app.dumpark.com/sunlight/ http://app.dumpark.com/sunlight/ The guys behind this apparently wanted to know the best place to go for a beer at any time of the day. They use the zenith of the sun, the surrounding landscape and the surrounding buildings and have it modeled throughout the year. I think they then realised there may be more useful ways to use this data.
- toocute2care 11y agoAnyone have any ideas on the computer vision techniques used here?
- Rexxar 11y agoFor those with 404 errors, it works if you add "?hl=en" at the end of the URL. https://www.google.com/get/sunroof?hl=en https://www.google.com/get/sunroof?hl=en
- siddhartpai 11y agoHere is a link that doesn't 404 : https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/about/ https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/about/
- MichaelGG 11y agoHoly shit, Google is actually that idiotic/incompetent. 404s depending on its interpretation of my IP "location". From US (well, US IP that Google believes is in Hungary, because Google sucks as localization) it works, from other countries it doesn't. Amazing.