5 ms·

Melown – 3D mapping implementation in JS, smooth and silent

79 points by tomslavkovsky 10y ago

jeremyleach 10y ago
Very smooth. And it seems you can tilt the angle of the plane so you are almost at street level. I haven't seen that yet on google/apple maps etc.
underbluewaters 10y ago
Something is wrong with navigation on my machine. Mouse movements are opposite my expectation (I guess just a preference), and the movements are so sensitive it jumps around a lot and I can't really navigate where I intend to. I'm on an iMac w/magic mouse.
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  The magic mouse is really bad with maps. I get the same problem with Google Map. As for the direction of the movement, think of it as pushing a globe and not moving a camera.
  - badlucklottery 10y ago
    >As for the direction of the movement, think of it as pushing a globe and not moving a camera. It's not the style of navigation that feels weird. It feels like they're doing the usual arcball but with some weird multiplier attached to rotations so it doesn't feel 1:1 but something like 1:4. It's really obvious if you zoom out enough to see the entire globe and grab one horizon then drag it 180 degrees to the other. The globe rotates almost twice in that span instead of ~1/2 rotation. Edit: or at least it does on my PC and phone.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    That issue has actually been fixed. Google Haps is completely useable with a magi mouse (before, it was approximately 50x too sensitive, because of the magic mouse's higher resolution). It's difficult to see how the magic mouse is responsible for the problems here. If I click and drag a point on a map, I expect that point to remain under the cursor. But – as described above – the map moves too fast.
  - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
    It's not specific to any particular mouse. The clicked on point doesn't stay under the cursor as you drag, even slowly. There is too much easing applied after releasing the button.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Linux with a touchpad, here, and yes the movements appears to accelerate at a ridiculous rate for me. It's by far the worst navigation I've experienced on a map.
- joakleaf 10y ago
  I am on a Macbook Pro w. magic mouse in Safari. I don't think it works as intended.
- yellowapple 10y ago
  I noticed that when using the touchpad on my laptop (Thinkpad E545, Slackware64-current, Firefox 50.something). The trackpoint + physical mouse buttons seems to be less sensitive, but still registers direction really weirdly.
Lio 10y ago
Works very well on my iPhone 6S+.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dgreensp 10y ago
Wow, looks and feels great! Better than Google!
- bpicolo 10y ago
  Have you tried Earth lately? Google Earth is insanely awesome. https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.8129142,-122.4335323,748a,20y,127.03h,74.63t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff!8m2!3d37.7749295!4d-122.4194155 https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.8129... This is good too, but Google is doing it more performantly as far as I can tell.
  - tomslavkovsky 10y ago
    Google has a different budget, Melown is a startup based in Prague with 10 great developers.
    - bpicolo 10y ago
      And that's great and fine. It just doesn't match up with the OPs claim.
  - sorenjan 10y ago
    Google Earth is a native program, you linked to Google maps, their web based map app. While it's pretty good, it's still not as good as a native program, although I'd be very surprised if Google ever updates Earth again.
    - bpicolo 10y ago
      I mean, it's the Earth view on Google Maps. I'm aware of the separate product, but they're the ones with colliding namespaces. ;)
ovidiup 10y ago
For Jollyturns (https://jollyturns.com https://jollyturns.com) I'd like to overlay my users' ski tracks data, as well as various ski resort objects (lifts, runs etc) on a 3D Earth, to be displayed inside a browser. Why would I use Melown instead of CesiumJS (https://cesiumjs.org/ https://cesiumjs.org/)? Especially since the latter appears to be free?
- harwoodr 10y ago
  It looks like their hosted solution has a cost - but the software is open source.
- tomslavkovsky 10y ago
  Cesium will not work for large datasets and generaly it's very slow, otherwise Melown allows you to upload enourmous large data scales and works fast.
mempko 10y ago
Reminds me of the old HERE maps fully JS webgl implementation. (source used to work at HERE). They have since discontinued it. Glad to see others doing it. Very smooth. Good work.
whiskers 10y ago
This is, sadly, a total clunker on my Macbook Retina Pro 2015. The loading was slow, the rendering seemed to be just a couple of frames per second. Using the touchpad the actions seemed to be inverted (zooming in the opposite way to what I expected). I couldn't find any way to tilt the view, but didn't spend much time looking because the frame rate was so painfully low.
whiskers 10y ago
This is, sadly, a total clunker on my Macbook Retina Pro 2015. The loading was slow, the rendering seemed to be just a couple of frames per second. Using the touchpad the actions seemed to be inverted (zooming in the opposite way to what I expected). I couldn't find any way to tilt the view, but didn't spend much time looking because the frame rate was so painfully low.
btown 10y ago
Their landing page and interaction model doesn't do their technology justice. Take a look here: https://www.melown.com/intergeo2016/?pos=obj,10.740010,47.246125,fix,881.58,-51.36,-69.21,0.00,152.72,55.00 https://www.melown.com/intergeo2016/?pos=obj,10.740010,47.24... - you can drag around, and drag the edge of the compass disk to rotate the camera. From this press release https://www.melown.com/blog/official-launch.html https://www.melown.com/blog/official-launch.html - it seems that 3D exploration in-browser is only part of their innovation; the other is the ability to create detailed 3D maps of entire cities simply from simultaneous-localization-and-mapping of aerial imagery feeds. I'm not sure if Google's been able to do something similar, but I recall at one point that in order for buildings to appear as 3D in Google Maps/Earth, they'd need to be added manually by the community in their 3D editor. There are certainly glitches, and it's hard to know how much manual cleanup was required for these examples, but it's clear that not every building here was manually modeled. Regardless, it's quite an accomplishment to be able to do this type of thing from photographic data alone.
- bri3d 10y ago
  Google have used photogrammetry to produce 3D meshes for Earth/Maps since 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 They also use LIDAR data from street view to provide 3D data when you're in that mode as well.
  - btown 10y ago
    That's awesome! I stand corrected.
alexmuro 10y ago
I am getting a 503 for all their js files hosted on the cdn.melowdown.com
- chrishacken 10y ago
  As am I. It also crashed my browser somehow.
nathancahill 10y ago
The state of the art in open source 3D mapping right now is CesiumJS[0]. From browsing their docs, it looks like it's in a similar place, capabilities-wise. Unfortunately, the limiting factor for most projects isn't the JS library, but it's the availability of high-resolution DEMs (digital elevation models). These won't become widely available until we do something about the price of lidar. Fortunately, there's a lot of interest in reducing the cost of lidar right now for self driving cars, so maybe the situation will improve soon. I've seen really high resolution scans of small areas (Boulder, Colorado had the entire town scanned a couple years ago), and it truly blows you away. Every detail down the the shape of trees is available. [0] https://cesiumjs.org/ https://cesiumjs.org/
- dualogy 10y ago
  DEMs: how high-res do you really need the DEMs, how many petabytes will you sacrifice for sub-meter accuracy? Unless the app is for mountaineers, what's out there for free in lower-res (to be interpolated by varying to-be-experimented-with smart algos/heuristics throughout academia) and affordably handle-able on a global scale [1] should be a perfectly sufficient starting point until users actually complain about minor inaccuracies. Whether we're talking 30m or 90m resolution.. it's not "high" but for all sorts of startups but the most exacting surveying/etc pro-level b2b offerings, a fine starting point. (Of course I'm only talking DEM here, since you mentioned them, whereas Lidar proper kinda covers details such as houses and other structures as 3d points.) [1] http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html seemed to be the best in the "free" (for prototypes / MVPs and such) space when I last played in this space on-and-off from 2011 through 2014~ish.
  - acemarke 10y ago
    We use Cesium in a couple applications. We actually generated some imagery and terrain datasets using open-source tools in 2014. In late 2015, I spent a couple weeks researching GIS data conversion utilities, Cesium's formats, and potential improved source datasets we could use to generate higher-quality imagery and terrain data. I can't haul out the relevant writeup atm, but I concluded that the EarthEnv DEM90 dataset appeared to be highest-quality free terrain source I could find ([0]), and the TrueMarble collection was the best free imagery source ([1]). I generated our earlier terrain dataset using the Cesium-Terrain-Builder utility ([2]). It generates Cesium's "heightmap" format, but does not yet support the "quantized-mesh" format. I have seen a couple other tools that appear to deal with quantized-mesh tiles, though. On my list to dig into at some point. As a related note, using the MBTiles format ([3]) for storing and moving tile datasets around is great. Multiple gigabytes in a single SQLite database file (or possibly a few files split by zoom level), rather than trying to move around millions of individual 10KB images on disk. Highly recommended. [0] http://www.earthenv.org/DEM.html http://www.earthenv.org/DEM.html [1] http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/download http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/dow... [2] https://github.com/geo-data/cesium-terrain-builder https://github.com/geo-data/cesium-terrain-builder [3] https://www.mapbox.com/help/an-open-platform/ https://www.mapbox.com/help/an-open-platform/

79 points by tomslavkovsky 10y ago

Very smooth. And it seems you can tilt the angle of the plane so you are almost at street level. I haven't seen that yet on google/apple maps etc.

underbluewaters 10y ago

Something is wrong with navigation on my machine. Mouse movements are opposite my expectation (I guess just a preference), and the movements are so sensitive it jumps around a lot and I can't really navigate where I intend to. I'm on an iMac w/magic mouse.

Raphmedia 10y ago
The magic mouse is really bad with maps. I get the same problem with Google Map. As for the direction of the movement, think of it as pushing a globe and not moving a camera.
- badlucklottery 10y ago
  >As for the direction of the movement, think of it as pushing a globe and not moving a camera. It's not the style of navigation that feels weird. It feels like they're doing the usual arcball but with some weird multiplier attached to rotations so it doesn't feel 1:1 but something like 1:4. It's really obvious if you zoom out enough to see the entire globe and grab one horizon then drag it 180 degrees to the other. The globe rotates almost twice in that span instead of ~1/2 rotation. Edit: or at least it does on my PC and phone.
- matt4077 10y ago
  That issue has actually been fixed. Google Haps is completely useable with a magi mouse (before, it was approximately 50x too sensitive, because of the magic mouse's higher resolution). It's difficult to see how the magic mouse is responsible for the problems here. If I click and drag a point on a map, I expect that point to remain under the cursor. But – as described above – the map moves too fast.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  It's not specific to any particular mouse. The clicked on point doesn't stay under the cursor as you drag, even slowly. There is too much easing applied after releasing the button.
vidarh 10y ago
Linux with a touchpad, here, and yes the movements appears to accelerate at a ridiculous rate for me. It's by far the worst navigation I've experienced on a map.
joakleaf 10y ago
I am on a Macbook Pro w. magic mouse in Safari. I don't think it works as intended.
yellowapple 10y ago
I noticed that when using the touchpad on my laptop (Thinkpad E545, Slackware64-current, Firefox 50.something). The trackpoint + physical mouse buttons seems to be less sensitive, but still registers direction really weirdly.

Lio 10y ago

Works very well on my iPhone 6S+.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dgreensp 10y ago

Wow, looks and feels great! Better than Google!

bpicolo 10y ago
Have you tried Earth lately? Google Earth is insanely awesome. https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.8129142,-122.4335323,748a,20y,127.03h,74.63t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff!8m2!3d37.7749295!4d-122.4194155 https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.8129... This is good too, but Google is doing it more performantly as far as I can tell.
- tomslavkovsky 10y ago
  Google has a different budget, Melown is a startup based in Prague with 10 great developers.
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    And that's great and fine. It just doesn't match up with the OPs claim.
- sorenjan 10y ago
  Google Earth is a native program, you linked to Google maps, their web based map app. While it's pretty good, it's still not as good as a native program, although I'd be very surprised if Google ever updates Earth again.
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    I mean, it's the Earth view on Google Maps. I'm aware of the separate product, but they're the ones with colliding namespaces. ;)

ovidiup 10y ago

For Jollyturns (https://jollyturns.com https://jollyturns.com) I'd like to overlay my users' ski tracks data, as well as various ski resort objects (lifts, runs etc) on a 3D Earth, to be displayed inside a browser. Why would I use Melown instead of CesiumJS (https://cesiumjs.org/ https://cesiumjs.org/)? Especially since the latter appears to be free?

harwoodr 10y ago
It looks like their hosted solution has a cost - but the software is open source.
tomslavkovsky 10y ago
Cesium will not work for large datasets and generaly it's very slow, otherwise Melown allows you to upload enourmous large data scales and works fast.

mempko 10y ago

Reminds me of the old HERE maps fully JS webgl implementation. (source used to work at HERE). They have since discontinued it. Glad to see others doing it. Very smooth. Good work.

whiskers 10y ago

This is, sadly, a total clunker on my Macbook Retina Pro 2015. The loading was slow, the rendering seemed to be just a couple of frames per second. Using the touchpad the actions seemed to be inverted (zooming in the opposite way to what I expected). I couldn't find any way to tilt the view, but didn't spend much time looking because the frame rate was so painfully low.

whiskers 10y ago

btown 10y ago

Their landing page and interaction model doesn't do their technology justice. Take a look here: https://www.melown.com/intergeo2016/?pos=obj,10.740010,47.246125,fix,881.58,-51.36,-69.21,0.00,152.72,55.00 https://www.melown.com/intergeo2016/?pos=obj,10.740010,47.24... - you can drag around, and drag the edge of the compass disk to rotate the camera. From this press release https://www.melown.com/blog/official-launch.html https://www.melown.com/blog/official-launch.html - it seems that 3D exploration in-browser is only part of their innovation; the other is the ability to create detailed 3D maps of entire cities simply from simultaneous-localization-and-mapping of aerial imagery feeds. I'm not sure if Google's been able to do something similar, but I recall at one point that in order for buildings to appear as 3D in Google Maps/Earth, they'd need to be added manually by the community in their 3D editor. There are certainly glitches, and it's hard to know how much manual cleanup was required for these examples, but it's clear that not every building here was manually modeled. Regardless, it's quite an accomplishment to be able to do this type of thing from photographic data alone.

bri3d 10y ago
Google have used photogrammetry to produce 3D meshes for Earth/Maps since 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 They also use LIDAR data from street view to provide 3D data when you're in that mode as well.
- btown 10y ago
  That's awesome! I stand corrected.

alexmuro 10y ago

I am getting a 503 for all their js files hosted on the cdn.melowdown.com

chrishacken 10y ago
As am I. It also crashed my browser somehow.

nathancahill 10y ago

The state of the art in open source 3D mapping right now is CesiumJS[0]. From browsing their docs, it looks like it's in a similar place, capabilities-wise. Unfortunately, the limiting factor for most projects isn't the JS library, but it's the availability of high-resolution DEMs (digital elevation models). These won't become widely available until we do something about the price of lidar. Fortunately, there's a lot of interest in reducing the cost of lidar right now for self driving cars, so maybe the situation will improve soon. I've seen really high resolution scans of small areas (Boulder, Colorado had the entire town scanned a couple years ago), and it truly blows you away. Every detail down the the shape of trees is available. [0] https://cesiumjs.org/ https://cesiumjs.org/

dualogy 10y ago
DEMs: how high-res do you really need the DEMs, how many petabytes will you sacrifice for sub-meter accuracy? Unless the app is for mountaineers, what's out there for free in lower-res (to be interpolated by varying to-be-experimented-with smart algos/heuristics throughout academia) and affordably handle-able on a global scale [1] should be a perfectly sufficient starting point until users actually complain about minor inaccuracies. Whether we're talking 30m or 90m resolution.. it's not "high" but for all sorts of startups but the most exacting surveying/etc pro-level b2b offerings, a fine starting point. (Of course I'm only talking DEM here, since you mentioned them, whereas Lidar proper kinda covers details such as houses and other structures as 3d points.) [1] http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html seemed to be the best in the "free" (for prototypes / MVPs and such) space when I last played in this space on-and-off from 2011 through 2014~ish.
- acemarke 10y ago
  We use Cesium in a couple applications. We actually generated some imagery and terrain datasets using open-source tools in 2014. In late 2015, I spent a couple weeks researching GIS data conversion utilities, Cesium's formats, and potential improved source datasets we could use to generate higher-quality imagery and terrain data. I can't haul out the relevant writeup atm, but I concluded that the EarthEnv DEM90 dataset appeared to be highest-quality free terrain source I could find ([0]), and the TrueMarble collection was the best free imagery source ([1]). I generated our earlier terrain dataset using the Cesium-Terrain-Builder utility ([2]). It generates Cesium's "heightmap" format, but does not yet support the "quantized-mesh" format. I have seen a couple other tools that appear to deal with quantized-mesh tiles, though. On my list to dig into at some point. As a related note, using the MBTiles format ([3]) for storing and moving tile datasets around is great. Multiple gigabytes in a single SQLite database file (or possibly a few files split by zoom level), rather than trying to move around millions of individual 10KB images on disk. Highly recommended. [0] http://www.earthenv.org/DEM.html http://www.earthenv.org/DEM.html [1] http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/download http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/dow... [2] https://github.com/geo-data/cesium-terrain-builder https://github.com/geo-data/cesium-terrain-builder [3] https://www.mapbox.com/help/an-open-platform/ https://www.mapbox.com/help/an-open-platform/