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How are they building the 3D views? Mapping cars driving around with sensors? I was under the impression that the shapes were inferred from satellite images, bu

How are they building the 3D views? Mapping cars driving around with sensors? I was under the impression that the shapes were inferred from satellite images, but the moment I step outside the major cities, it's back to flat maps. Even the couple hand-modelled buildings previously present in maps seem to be missing here.

Jaruzel 9y ago
This is exactly what I want to know. There's several towns in the UK that have all the houses in really good 3D (mostly the coastal towns) - I struggle to believe that there's a team of humans making these...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  There's a (yuuuge) public Lidar dataset for the UK: https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surveys-light-up-open-data/ https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surve... One of the motivations for the collection was flood analysis, which overlaps with your observation about coastal towns.
  - folli 9y ago
    I'm not sure that's it's only LIDAR data. There are e.g. some cranes and scaffolding that also are 3D modeled. I assume it's some magical machine learning pipeline that accumulates the aerial and street view imagery, LIDAR where available, and generates a 3D model.
tgb 9y ago
It's done by plane, though I'm not sure what sensors. More than just photography.
sorenjan 9y ago
It is possible to use satellite imagery for photogrammetry [1], but Google is using imagery from airplanes, possibly combining it with ground level data from their street view cars. [1] http://www.vricon.com/ http://www.vricon.com/
clarkmoody 9y ago
SLAM techniques allow reconstruction of a scene from video+position data. As the aircraft takes video of the terrain, it is logging its position. Large-scale batch processing can recover the 3D positions for each image feature that will minimize some error metric. Rural areas probably have lower-quality image data (or noisier aircraft position data).
farnulfo 9y ago
Google Earth’s Incredible 3D Imagery, Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suo_aUTUpps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suo_aUTUpps

Jaruzel 9y ago

This is exactly what I want to know. There's several towns in the UK that have all the houses in really good 3D (mostly the coastal towns) - I struggle to believe that there's a team of humans making these...

maxerickson 9y ago
There's a (yuuuge) public Lidar dataset for the UK: https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surveys-light-up-open-data/ https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surve... One of the motivations for the collection was flood analysis, which overlaps with your observation about coastal towns.
- folli 9y ago
  I'm not sure that's it's only LIDAR data. There are e.g. some cranes and scaffolding that also are 3D modeled. I assume it's some magical machine learning pipeline that accumulates the aerial and street view imagery, LIDAR where available, and generates a 3D model.

tgb 9y ago

It's done by plane, though I'm not sure what sensors. More than just photography.

sorenjan 9y ago

It is possible to use satellite imagery for photogrammetry [1], but Google is using imagery from airplanes, possibly combining it with ground level data from their street view cars. [1] http://www.vricon.com/ http://www.vricon.com/

clarkmoody 9y ago

SLAM techniques allow reconstruction of a scene from video+position data. As the aircraft takes video of the terrain, it is logging its position. Large-scale batch processing can recover the 3D positions for each image feature that will minimize some error metric. Rural areas probably have lower-quality image data (or noisier aircraft position data).

farnulfo 9y ago

Google Earth’s Incredible 3D Imagery, Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suo_aUTUpps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suo_aUTUpps