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Google Earth 3D Models Now Available as Open Standard (GlTF)
- pininja 3y agoAs a contributor to deck.gl, I’m super excited to use this! Contributors added a TerrainExtension [0] to drape or offset 2D data onto 3D surfaces in 8.9, which is huge for 3D visualization in general since common 2D layers would often be occluded by anything 3D. It’s great to see Google using open standards and openly governed projects for rendering too. Carto developed a story map [1] to showcase the new features, and played a big role in the integrations and extensions. Documentation has been updated, so it’s all ready to use. Happy mapping! [0] https://deck.gl/docs/api-reference/extensions/terrain-extension https://deck.gl/docs/api-reference/extensions/terrain-extens... [1] https://3dtiles.carto.com/ https://3dtiles.carto.com/
- prox 3y agoWould it be possible to load into Blender?
- Maxious 3y agoYes, blender already has glTF support https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.5/addons/import_export/scene_gltf2.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.5/addons/import_export/...
- andybak 3y agoIt's slightly more complex than that. This is in 3D Tiles format which uses GLTF but I don't think you can simply grab a GLTF from an API endpoint. It's been sliced into cubes with hierarchical level of detail and other things I barely understand.
- OmarShehata 3y agoYou can simply just grab the glTF! Here's Google's doc page on making requests to the .glb (binary version of glTF) https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/create-renderer https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/create...
- andybak 3y agoOh that's interesting. You probably still need to jump through hoops to figure out the right url for the grid square and level of detail you need. And the session parameter - so you still need to make the initial tile request to get the JSON.
- pininja 3y agoThey’ve built a set of framework-agnostic loaders to help sort out which tiles to request for any given viewport https://loaders.gl/docs/modules/tiles https://loaders.gl/docs/modules/tiles All of the data loading and parsing can be done in loaders.gl, check out the repo 3D-tiles examples for a good place to get started.
- andybak 3y agoYou presume I'm doing this in a browser. :-) I'll have to parse the json myself but it looks doable.
- mrguyorama 3y agoDo a little googling and you can probably find code on github to take care of the "get me terrain for these coordinates" part for you. That's how I managed it a few years ago when I was programmatically downloading tiles from google earth without understanding how to convert from coordinates to their url scheme. Might have to wait a week though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- RobotToaster 3y agoI was wondering the same, would be interesting to be able to 3d print models of cities.
- _giorgio_ 3y agoPlease let me know if this worked for you!
- tppiotrowski 3y agoI haven't looked at the specs yet so maybe you can help me understand if the TerrainExtension, which uses raster DEM data can work with a point cloud data like Googles tiles? My understanding is that with raster data, you cannot have arches, trees, or any object which has a thin component, like a tree trunk under a thick component like the tree canopy.
- pininja 3y agoIt’ll work in the situations you’ve described. The TerrainExtension can be applied to the TerrainLayer or the 3DTilesLayer. The TerrainLayer uses the 2D raster data to dynamically generate 3D meshes, and your understanding is correct in that this won’t have any overhangs. As far as I know, google doesn’t offer an api for the terrain layer, but AWS hosts a free open dataset for that. 3DTilesLayer renders GLTF meshes, which can contain overhangs. I’m not sure what the overhang behavior is, but it’d probably be something like “use the highest value”. In this case, Google’s api serves 3D textured meshes rather than point clouds. I’ll caveat that this is all pretty new to me as well, and I might be missing something.
- twelvechairs 3y agoThanks for the links and your work on deck.gl. Have to say for anyone looking into this space though cesium was there first Deck.gl is far and away the best choice for almost any 3d mapping library now. Much much faster than cesium. And its great with 2d too even though it hardly gets a mention amongst leaflet, maplibre, openlayers etc.
- pininja 3y agoThanks! It’s been a great community to collaborate with. The deck.gl group works pretty closely with MapLibre these days in react-map-gl, and Cesium as well on 3D tile loaders in loaders.gl
- prhrb 3y agoTitle is misleading
- vore 3y agoIn what way? https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/use-renderer https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/use-re... Photorealistic 3D Tiles are in the OGC standard glTF format, meaning you can use any renderer that supports the OGC 3D Tiles spec to build your 3D visualizations.
- janosdebugs 3y agoNot the OP, but the editorialized title (please don't do that) seems to suggest that it's freely available, which it is not.
- bilekas 3y agoSorry but how exactly? There is another comment too that hints towards this sentiment but I really don't know how you can mistake "open standard".
- pasmafaute 3y agoI understand many people are familiar with what "open standard" means. There are lots of other people that are somewhat new to the phrase. Consider these related terms: - Open Source - Open Data - Open Standard For people who encounter these terms in the listed order, "Open Standard" may or may not be understood by analogy. Some people will assume that it also includes the concepts of Open Source and Open Data. It does not.
- andybak 3y agoThis is huge news. Nobody comes close to having the 3d coverage that Google has there have been no viable competitors on the horizon. Until now there was just no way to use that gorgeous data. From a more personal point of view - Google Earth in VR is one of the most stunning experiences I'm aware of and it's been on life support since Google lost interest in VR. Now it looks fairly simple to build something similar on top of the same data source.
- fouronnes3 3y agoAgreed, google earth VR is the most incredible experience I've had with my VR headset.
- andybak 3y agoAnd I just made a crude clone of it in Unity in about 30 minutes! (and most of that was spent trying to add billing to my Google API account)
- IIAOPSW 3y agoOne day you'll be able to add your billing...IN VR
- actuator 3y agoWhich VR headsets are you guys using?
- andybak 3y agoCurrently Quest via Link cable. Previously at various times Vive, Rift and Windows MR.
- kroltan 3y agoStill on my trusty Vive due to third-world-itis, but would upgrade to another PC-tethered device like the Index or some other SteamVR-compatible (since I'm on Linux), as to be less at the mercy of the manufacturer. Stern look at requiring a FB account to enable developer mode on the Quest
- jakecopp 3y agoOpen Standard != open license, in case you the title also made you think that!
- bilekas 3y agoThe title certainly wouldn't make you think that..
- RobotToaster 3y agoDidn't Meshwerks v. Toyota Motor Sales U.S. rule that 3d reproductions of real life objects don't pass the threshold of originality for copyright?
- jonplackett 3y agoFree… in the experimental phase. Then it’ll probably be super expensive
- andybak 3y agoIf they are genuinely aiming for mass market applications like gaming and AR then it can't be too expensive. Their last attempt at this was a flop because they had no open sign up and "call us for pricing" bullshit. This looks like they might have come to their senses.
- wiz21c 3y agoMaybe FlightGear could make use of that ?
- anthk 3y agoCustom Flightgear builds could already use GMaps' scenery, but not models.
- jimmySixDOF 3y agoMeanwhile Apple does not support glTF or WebXR or ...
- knolan 3y agoYou can convert glTF to USDZ in their Reality Converter app.
- archerx 3y agoYes Apple does support GLTF, I have a site that renders 3D models that are GLTF format with no issues on an iPad with iOS 13.7. iOS does not support GLTF with draco compression though which is unfortunate but easy to work around by having a separate non compressed model to serve to those devices. On iOS I would much prefer a second non safari browser than a second app store.
- jimmySixDOF 3y agoApple does not support Draco Compression on USD [1] which still sucks & any glTF you are seeing was converted using one method or another. An interesting way to hackdoor open 3D immersive standards is this project using [2] App Kit. And anyway this all might be moot if Apple announces support at WWDC June 4th with the xrOS [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/validating-usd-files#Review-general-and-media-features https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/validat... [2] https://launch.variant3d.com/ https://launch.variant3d.com/
- secretsatan 3y agoIt's a bit of a strange thing to say. At what level? Apple doesn't support lots of formats, neither does Microsoft, people can build tools in their apps to support them, and publish them, and hence new formats are born, that, although may have been created on a platform, the owner of that platform does not 'support' them. As this is an open format, you can, or very likely, someone else, will write something to parse it on an apple platform, will Apple support it then?
- pheelicks 3y agoI was involved in building the interactive story map using deck.gl that you can view at https://3dtiles.carto.com https://3dtiles.carto.com It’s really cool to have access to all this amazing data! Shout out to Google for working with us to bring support to multiple open source rendering engines. Happy to answer any questions
- jatorre 3y agoHaving Google followed an OGC standard is an incredible good step forward for the google maps ecosystem. This can really speed up developments on the clients side. It was not that useful to have the best client if there was always a place where the data looked better. Kudos to google.
- Arathorn 3y agooh, wow. we have 3D Tile support in https://thirdroom.io https://thirdroom.io but had only ever found NASA’s Mars dataset as a good set of tiles to point it at. This could effectively turn Third Room into a FOSS, decentralised, E2EE multiplayer Google Earth running over Matrix!
- MayeulC 3y agoAs much as I like the third room concept (I like it, but didn't actually try it), I am wondering how much of a distraction it is for Matrix developers? As a datapoint, a good chunk of my social circles use Matrix, but they seem to incessantly complain about Element. Though very nice improvements have been made lately, I can say from what I've seen and experienced that a lot of improvements can still be made: - experience was night and day when I switched from my resource-constrained Galaxy S4 with LineageOS 18.1 to a FP4. The phone and most apps were fine, but Element was oh so sluggish compared to the others. I thought it was just the app, but it works much better on this new phone. It now takes seconds to sync after opening instead of multiple minutes. - my SO experiences constant glitching with Element on Chrome on Macos. The web app fights with the browser to draw over the URL and tab bar. It might be a chrome bug, I'll report this. Additionally, the UI appears to be rendered at single-digit framerates. - I've seen multiple serious bugs that end up clearing the local DB, triggering an initial sync that lasts for more than 10 minutes. - I only recently discovered that Android could handle conversation-level notification granularity, and don't have anything similar on my other devices. I don't wish to have the same level of intrusiveness from all chats: for some, I want to see the notifications, for others I want to hear them, etc. Some space-based device-specific controls would be nice to have. A lot of the issues can be improved by the upcoming sliding sync, and I know vector.im isn't in a brilliant financial situation. I can't really direct you to spend energy on some topics vs others, but it seems to me that there are more (potential or current) Matrix users with old hardware than VR gear. And since messaging is so reliant on networking effects, I would concentrate on being able to reach the largest possible audience. Now, I really don't want you to get the wrong idea, I love most projects at Matrix/vector, but I can't help but feeling uncomfortable when third room is talked up, while basic chat features leave a lot to be desired. On this specific point, you are right, and seeing such integration would be awesome. Just don't get addicted to Google-provided data :)
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoI live in Venice. The picture on the main page is St.Mark's Square, and "Focaccia e Figioli" does not exist there. There's Cafe Florian [0], the oldest cafe in the world - ops, I stand corrected, the oldest in Italy and one of the oldest in the world. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_Florian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_Florian
- pallas_athena 3y agoAlso wtf are "figioli"? Should be "fagioli"
- deserialized 3y agoPhoto realistic from the air, blurry up close sadly
- andybak 3y agoNot to pull the whole "Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy" on you but pause to consider the sheer scale of the dataset. 2500 cities have geometry data to the level where you can see details on individual buildings for areas extending well out into the suburbs. Yes - it's blurred up close but my god, isn't it still amazing?
- bmicraft 3y agoThe thing is, it does seem like it's gotten any better in therms of resolution over the past couple of years
- andybak 3y agoNot so sure. I've been using Google Earth VR semi-regularly for 4 years or so and not noticed a big change.
- deserialized 3y agoIs it cool? Yes, very Photo realistic? No If I was developing a competitor to Flight Sumulator its a fantastic asset If I'm developing a first person experience that isn't from an airplane, not so much I appreciate that this exists but it's far from the best, nor the only large-scale geometry asset for a cityscape, though by volume has more cities.even if the geometry is more rudimentary than other solutions
- andybak 3y agoHave you tried Google Earth in VR?
- deserialized 3y ago
- M3L0NM4N 3y agoI know nothing about GITF, but I wonder if Microsoft Flight Sim could automatically read these files in to overwrite the default Microsoft scenery. I have some scenery add-ons that are just a manual conversion of Google Earth's 3D models for some cities that were just generic buildings in Microsoft's version (ex. Dallas)
- andybak 3y agoIt's actually G(L)TF but in this case it's really 3D Tiles (a related format that uses GLTF) https://www.ogc.org/standard/3dtiles/ https://www.ogc.org/standard/3dtiles/
- M3L0NM4N 3y agoI see, that is an unnecessarily confusing naming convention in the title.
- moron4hire 3y agoI've never seen it stylized that way. Officially, it's "glTF", but people frequently use "gltf" or "GLTF" without confusion.
- dagmx 3y agoStands for GL Transmission Format if that helps.
- roschdal 3y agoHow can I use this in Fciv.net the free 3D version of Freeciv?
- andybak 3y agodag - Can you edit the title? It should be GLTF (even that is misleading as this in 3D Tiles format: https://www.ogc.org/standard/3dtiles/ https://www.ogc.org/standard/3dtiles/ )
- Torkel 3y agoglTF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlTF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlTF (note Wikipedia capitalizes it weirdly in the URL but in the page title it is correct)
- andybak 3y agoJesus H. Christ. I've been saying it wrong for years. I just assumed - you know, WebGL, OpenGL. I've even bloody implemented support for it in an app whilst calling it the wrong thing! I need a sit down and a strong cup of tea... EDIT - Phew. It is GLTF - in my blind panic I thought it was actualy an "I" (I don't care how they tell me to capitalize it - that's not something I particularly care about conforming to)
- pjmlp 3y agoSeeing Porto demo was great, nice quality.
- luke-stanley 3y agoAm I the only one unimpressed with the quality? The render quality and the buffering is poor, it's not quite photorealistic as they claim, it might be possible to render it nicely such that it is photoreal but that's not what they are showing in their own videos. Stablediffusion and Controlnet exist but what this needs is probably just some better sampling and attention to preloading.
- circuit10 3y agoIt’s much better than anything that was publicly available before
- andybak 3y agoI refer the honorable gentleperson to my answer elsewhere on this page: > Not to pull the whole "Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy" on you but pause to consider the sheer scale of the dataset. 2500 cities have geometry data to the level where you can see details on individual buildings for areas extending well out into the suburbs. > Yes - it's blurred up close but my god, isn't it still amazing?
- sl0wik 3y agoIt looks like Aerial View API is working only in US. With any address outside US I'm getting "Address not supported".
- qwertox 3y ago> It's currently available for US postal addresses, with more countries to come in the future. At the bottom of the page below "Get started with Aerial View" https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/create-immersive-cinematic-video-experiences-aerial-view-api?hl=en https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/create-...
- searchfan 3y agoThis is super interesting. Does anyone have any clues as to what kinds of integrations We'll begin to see first? I'm envisioning tons in the long-term.
- qwertox 3y agoSo these are the usage limits [0]: --- 2D Tiles and Street View tiles Maximum 6,000 queries per day, calculated as the sum of all requests for all applications using the credentials of the same project. --- Photorealistic 3D Tiles Maximum 300 root tileset queries ["map-loads"] per day. This is calculated as the sum of all requests for all applications using the credentials of the same project. Maximum 250,000 renderer’s tile requests per day. This is calculated as the sum of all requests for all applications using the credentials of the same project. Rate limit is 12,000 queries per minute for the tile renderer. --- The Map Tiles API documentation does not contain a "Usage and Billing" section, which seems to imply that it is free to use, bound to the above mentioned limits. So the only thing to worry about is how Google showed us couple of years ago how relentless it starts to charge for a previously free service -- the Google Maps Javascript API -- after it sees that enough developers got technically invested into Google Maps. If you open the inspector on any of the examples [1] you'll see how many tile fetches it triggers per second. While my comment contains some criticism, I'm really excited for this new offering. [0] https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/usage_limits?hl=en https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/usage_... [1] https://storage.googleapis.com/gmp-maps-demos/3d-tiles/index.html#orbit https://storage.googleapis.com/gmp-maps-demos/3d-tiles/index...
- londons_explore 3y agoThey aren't hiding the fact they'll charge for it one day. I wish they'd say upfront how much any 'forever free' allowance would be. Then I could design my application with that in mind. I can see however that they want to see how users end up using it before deciding what any free allowance should be.
- andybak 3y agoIn some cases making users supply their own API key is the best solution - although it does put a fairly high bar on both commitment and technical understanding. (the latter mainly because the Google API UI is so damn complex!)
- 3y ago
- jss326 3y agoIm really happy with this, trying to implement this now for the startup Im working at. Unfortunately, the URIs in the request don't seem to follow the OGC (https://portal.ogc.org/files/102132 https://portal.ogc.org/files/102132 - When the URI is relative, its base is always relative to the referring tileset JSON file.) I'm using a custom viewer that does not seem to handle these URIs well...
- stjo 3y agoI work at a startup that uses similar technology to make large-scale 3D models, but using your own dataset https://www.one3d.ai https://www.one3d.ai. You can check a demo here https://app.one3d.ai/twins/9763/?invcode=7asheX17 https://app.one3d.ai/twins/9763/?invcode=7asheX17, but the surprising thing is that they have pretty good quality without close-up aerial photography. We need drones to take photos, but a doubt they used anything closer than a plane. I wonder if Google's photogrammetry Kaggle competitions are related to this https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/image-matching-challenge-2023 https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/image-matching-challenge...
- jss326 3y agoThe demo looks very good, great quality at street level. Is this just based off of pictures, or does it use LiDAR as well?
- stjo 3y agoNo LIDAR needed, just sharp photos from a consumer-grade drone.
- andybak 3y agoI remember reading Google uses a combination of aerial and streetview with some clever algos to combine the two.
- londons_explore 3y agoDoes this tiling data support overhangs and holes? For example, could it accurately model the Arc de Triomphe and let me fly 'under' the arch? Other approaches I've seen are effectively just a 2D map with a height per pixel, which is okayish for mountains, but quickly looks bad when you model human structures like bridges.
- pheelicks 3y agoYes, I’ve tried it with the Eiffel Tower. You can see overhangs on the tv tower at the start of this demo https://3dtiles.carto.com/ https://3dtiles.carto.com/
- NietTim 3y agoThis is neat. I've just so happen to have been playing around with GIS and blender recently and you have to jump quite a few hoops to get data, hopefully this will simplify things
- hoseja 3y agoLately, when I browse google maps, even in 2D, it seems to load not in square tiles but weirdly shaped polygons. Has anyone noticed this?
- sideband 3y agoWould love to see this added to https://kmzview.com https://kmzview.com. I could (almost) stop using Google Earth for my clients.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- s3p 3y agoIt looks like they're offering this as an API with a free monthly $200 credit. Huge kudos to the Google cloud team for this!
- a1371 3y agoI want to point everyone to the "No creating content" clause of the terms. I don't fully understand it but I think it'll substantially limit what can be done.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoLooking forward to MSFS refusing to use this because it's not Bing.
- andybak 3y agoBing has been stuck with the same handful of 3d cities for about 4 years. Seemingly no effort to expand coverage. I think Google's lead was maybe too intimidating.
- dimatura 3y agoThis is very cool. I remember during my PhD I briefly investigated using these 3D models for synthetic data generation, but there was no straightforward, non-shady way of going about it.
- gabereiser 3y agoWhere’s Patrick Cozzi? This is huge! Cozzi and Cestium helped define the whole glTF and glb formats (which are good!). Kudos to the Google Earth team for doing this. This is going to help in the simulation space so much!!!
- mthoms 3y agoDoes anyone know how the Aerial View API would work with billing? That is, can you cache the URL of the generated video and embed that for your users? Or, would you need to make a new request for the same video on every page-view?
- tppiotrowski 3y agoIn the Google IO talk they mention its compatible with deck.gl and three.js. Does anyone know of any projects or resources for using either deck or three as a custom renderer [1]? [1] https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/use-renderer https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/use-re...
- pininja 3y agoHere’s an example with code https://deck.gl/examples/google-3d-tile https://deck.gl/examples/google-3d-tile I usually recommend downloading the repo and installing this standalone example as a base to learn with.
- folli 3y agoI just made a proof of concept integration of the new model for my GPS visualization app (I call it the 'high res mode'): https://cubetrek.com/static/highresmode.html https://cubetrek.com/static/highresmode.html
- OmarShehata 3y agoFor anyone else who still feels like this is "too good to be true", here's a quick video clip I made of extracting a piece of Manhatten as glTF files and rendering them in ThreeJS (https://threejs.org/editor/ https://threejs.org/editor/) https://twitter.com/Omar4ur/status/1656841042279137282 https://twitter.com/Omar4ur/status/1656841042279137282
- garaetjjte 3y agoIt is "too good to be true", they don't allow for it: >Applications using the Map Tiles API are bound by the terms of your Agreement with Google. Subject to the terms of your Agreement, you must not pre-fetch, index, store, or cache any Content except under the limited conditions stated in the terms.
- OmarShehata 3y agoIt's even worse, you can't even use it for non-visualization purposes! Which limits a _lot_ of possible applications.
- flerovium 3y agoNote: it's a paid API. I misinterpreted it as "google open-sources 3d models". Google is notorious for deprecating/gouging APIs.