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Off-topic from the update, but sometime in the past 2 years the quality of their universal photogrammetry became jaw-dropping.

by psyc 10y ago

danmaz74 10y ago
Yes, I was blown away when I first noticed this. And I was thinking how much this data, which is free for everybody, would be worth in case of a war...
- zeptomu 10y ago
  It's not really free. It's free in the sense, that you can browse around, but if you wanted to do some analysis on it, you would need access to the raw bulk data, and this is very expensive. There is free aerial imagery data available (e.g. ESA's Sentinel-2), but it has lower resolution (10m/Pixel). If you want to do the 3D building thing, I estimate you need data with something like 1m/Pixel and from different perspectives. This data volume is rather big (Exabyte-scale) and it is non-trivial to host and access it, so currently only the big players have it.
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    San Francisco definitely has resolutions better than 1m/pixel it feels like (for buildings downtown) At least, you can clearly identify segments that would be < 1m across.
    - zeptomu 10y ago
      Yeah, there is high-resolution data available, but it is scattered around small-scale web portals mostly built by the government in this local area, and aggregating and polishing this data is a non-trivial huge effort (they come in different scales, projections and quality). Furthermore most data is orthographic only, so you can built a nice 2D map out of it, but to do 3D I estimate you need images from specified angles (e.g. 4 views per place), and I think this data is still behind closed doors and quite expensive.
folli 10y ago
Absolutely! I recently tried the Google Earth VR on Vive where the photogrammetry really comes into play, and I was awed just like back when I was a kid and hooked up my computer the first time to a color CRT. Except getting motion sick 5 minutes later.

Off-topic from the update, but sometime in the past 2 years the quality of their universal photogrammetry became jaw-dropping.

by psyc 10y ago

Off-topic from the update, but sometime in the past 2 years the quality of their universal photogrammetry became jaw-dropping.

danmaz74 10y ago

Yes, I was blown away when I first noticed this. And I was thinking how much this data, which is free for everybody, would be worth in case of a war...

zeptomu 10y ago
It's not really free. It's free in the sense, that you can browse around, but if you wanted to do some analysis on it, you would need access to the raw bulk data, and this is very expensive. There is free aerial imagery data available (e.g. ESA's Sentinel-2), but it has lower resolution (10m/Pixel). If you want to do the 3D building thing, I estimate you need data with something like 1m/Pixel and from different perspectives. This data volume is rather big (Exabyte-scale) and it is non-trivial to host and access it, so currently only the big players have it.
- bpicolo 10y ago
  San Francisco definitely has resolutions better than 1m/pixel it feels like (for buildings downtown) At least, you can clearly identify segments that would be < 1m across.
  - zeptomu 10y ago
    Yeah, there is high-resolution data available, but it is scattered around small-scale web portals mostly built by the government in this local area, and aggregating and polishing this data is a non-trivial huge effort (they come in different scales, projections and quality). Furthermore most data is orthographic only, so you can built a nice 2D map out of it, but to do 3D I estimate you need images from specified angles (e.g. 4 views per place), and I think this data is still behind closed doors and quite expensive.

folli 10y ago

Absolutely! I recently tried the Google Earth VR on Vive where the photogrammetry really comes into play, and I was awed just like back when I was a kid and hooked up my computer the first time to a color CRT. Except getting motion sick 5 minutes later.