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Google Treks
- katmasteron 13y agoIt would be nice to try something like this with Oculus Rift and video. Would probably be a cool experience to view the trip down the Amazon Basin in a video and thanks to 360 degree camera / video capture, one would be able to move the head around and get an interactive experience out of it. I would like to try something like this just to test what kind of "being there" feeling would be achievable with the current tech.
- bytesmith 13y agoSee my link below for an Oculus demo using 360 degree cameras. It's doesn't feel nearly as fluid or 3D as the other Oculus demos, but it's promising nonetheless.
- Breefield 13y agoI have heard Google plans to do street-view of Burning Man, but it has never appeared. Perhaps this will be the venue if/when it finally does.
- pierlux 13y agoThey would have to blur far more than faces. Just sayin'.
- retr0h 13y agoshirt-cockers ftw!
- steve19 13y agoProbably not going to happen. The organizers require (or used to require) a percentage of all revenue made from professionally taken photos [0] [0] http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/burningman.html http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/burningman.html
- voltagex_ 13y agoThat's crap. Edit: damn, we need more people like jwz.
- benatkin 13y agoGoogle can't wait to usher in a future where people stay in their rooms and eat Soylent while being entertained and exercised by their VR-enabled computers.
- jac_no_k 13y agoPartly a reality for cyclists. http://www.tacx.com/en/products/trainers/i-genius-multiplayer http://www.tacx.com/en/products/trainers/i-genius-multiplaye... http://www.cycleops.com/en/products/software/virtual-training.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_soft.tpl&product_id=711&category_id=9 http://www.cycleops.com/en/products/software/virtual-trainin... http://www.minoura.jp/english/trainer-e/option-e/cogmon-e.html http://www.minoura.jp/english/trainer-e/option-e/cogmon-e.ht... Cycling on indoor trainers is boring without some sort of incentive.
- FPSDavid 13y agoiGenius + computer-controlled fan + Oculus Rift = give me NOW!
- johnyzee 13y agoSeriously. With a proper cycle mount with force feedback and swaying you could get very close to a real experience.
- sp332 13y agoI think Philips' amBX brand makes computer-controlled ambient lighting and fans. http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/exposure/pressreleases.html http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/exposure/pressreleases....
- corysama 13y agoYou laugh. My first thought was how to get this mashed up with https://github.com/benvanik/vr.js https://github.com/benvanik/vr.js
- 13y ago
- bytesmith 13y agoI hope they render some of these for the Oculus. Making View, a Norwegian company with similar 360 degree camera technology has released a few Oculus demo clips of people doing amazing things with their cameras. http://makingview.no/makingview.com/?page_id=1691 http://makingview.no/makingview.com/?page_id=1691
- jwheeler79 13y agoDid anyone else see the similarity between the examples and New York Times Snowfall?
- dmazin 13y agoHere's what the non-car-mounted camera machines look like, if anyone's wondering: http://i.imgur.com/BjHLoPh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/BjHLoPh.jpg
- v33ra 13y agoThe camera machine can be seen very clearly in this video: http://youtu.be/cn7AFhVEI5o?t=43s http://youtu.be/cn7AFhVEI5o?t=43s
- proex 13y agoFor the times you want to go outside while sitting on your chair in front of your computer ?
- wooster 13y agoFor anyone else confused, as I was, by the Everest trek photos: these were taken with tripods and not with the new Trekker gear.
- ohwp 13y agoThis is a little unrelated but I notice that all Google services are getting very slow. They eat up CPU and memory like it's nothing. It's nice what can be done with Internet these days but I prefer the old quick Google with almost the same features but less shine.
- jeffjose 13y agoYup. This surely is unrelated.
- ohwp 13y agoWell in fact it wasn't that unrelated. I can barely watch the special Google maps sites like this one: http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/treks/burj-khalifa/ http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetvie...
- defap 13y agoI have to agree, at least in terms of these Trek sites. The latest versions of Safari, Firefox, and Chrome constantly use 50%+ of my CPU to render these pages, without me having to scroll or interact at all. For a site that doesn't use any plug-ins, it sure heats up my laptop like a plug-in would. * Edit: I only meant to agree that these specific Trek sites feel very slow, not "all Google services."
- INSURGENCYmusic 13y agoI'm going to do one on Compton, CA.
- VLM 13y agoI see you got downvoted, but ruins of all kinds have always been popular, and a classic recent linkbait has been "pictures of the ruins of abandoned Detroit", seems like every popular magazine / website has tried that one as linkbait. It seems both inevitable, interesting, and on topic. Using census records I found the house some of my ancestors lived in about a century ago. The neighborhood has gone, uh, dramatically downhill since then, I wouldn't go there today without kevlar and a rifle, but it was interesting to view the original mostly unmodified house on streetview. There is also a whole "urban explorer" subculture out there and legally obtained pix of ruins would be interesting.
- INSURGENCYmusic 13y agoI actually wasn't even joking. I install a shit load of alarm systems down there. Around 10 a month, in abandoned properties. Thought it would be an interesting take on Trek.
- apunic 13y agoJust because it's from Google it must be special? Don't want to sound too negative but wondering if Trek would get any attention if done by some startup.
- swamp40 13y agoIf some startup comes along and provides stunning zoom-able StreetView pictures of some no-name street in Tel-Aviv and two clicks later it can show you the red light district in Bangkok, all for free and all taken in 2013, I think a lot of people would give that startup its due.
- dylangs1030 13y agoI'm not sure you appreciate the engineering infrastructure at work here. This isn't special because Google is doing it, it's special because it's really hard to do. How would you go about attempting this project as effectively as Google with the resources of a typical startup company?
- toomuchtodo 13y agoCrawl the web for images, use the GPS EXIF data to find clusters, and use image processing to stitch together 3D environments from the photos. It would not be as good as streetview though.
- dylangs1030 13y agoCreative...but I don't think it would have the same fluidity to Google's Trek. The images wouldn't be as up to date or "real time" as they could be because you'd be caching images that are potentially several days or weeks old. And if you scripted a time limit for images, e.g. only within a few hours, you'd heavily limit the amount of usable images you had. With "agents in the field" Google could potentially update its feeds whenever and as often as it needed. The difference would be having an in-house image-generating infrastructure or...well...tag-searching Instagram.
- mh- 13y ago
- mynegation 13y agoWhere do I apply and what is the hourly rate? I assume all travel expenses are also paid. On a serious note, in the footsteps of OpenStreetMap that could be a great next community project: write the software for the infrastructure and the camera gear, open the designs of data collecting hardware (for the 3D printers) and let people upload their treks.
- aray 13y agoElphel has been working on open source (hardware, software, board designs, etc) photogrammetric cameras for a while: http://www3.elphel.com/eyesis-4pi http://www3.elphel.com/eyesis-4pi
- bibinou 13y ago> Where do I apply http://www.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/trekker/ http://www.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/trekker...
- Thlom 13y agoOne of the richest companies in the world are asking the public to help them for free?
- kamaal 13y agoIts like they are saying "You are going there anyway, why not take a few pictures for us". I think they will post your copyright text somewhere in some corner, giving you some pixels of fame.
- alohahacker 13y agoThey should hook up with a buddy of mine eric! He's currently going to all 194 countries and having some amazing experiences. Seems like the perfect partnership! http://gowitheric.com/ http://gowitheric.com/
- dylangs1030 13y agoI would do this in a heartbeat, even for a substantially reduced salary. Assuming travel expenses and meals/shelter are paid for (within reason) I'd travel all over the world for an opportunity like this. Awesome. Google's been coming under a lot of fire lately but between this and Google Loon[1] I think Google's cooking up some really innovative, practically useful and genuinely creative toys for the world to play with. [1]: http://www.google.com/loon/#utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Global_semBK http://www.google.com/loon/#utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- leviathan 13y agoIt's mind boggling how bad the arabic translation is at: http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/treks/burj-khalifa/ http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetvie... It's like they ran the text in google translate and never bothered to check the results.
- ixacto 13y agoNever mind the actual window-washers and builders who made these buildings are de-facto slaves to the Monarch of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Then in the next demo over they try to get all multicultural with the first nations language "ᓱᑯᑦᑎᐊᓃᒃᑲᓗᐊᕐᖓᑦ ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ? " http://www.vice.com/vice-news/the-slaves-of-dubai http://www.vice.com/vice-news/the-slaves-of-dubai
- kamaal 13y agoArabic is a bit like English. Just like how England is not the country with majority of English speakers, In the same way 'Arabs' don't make up all the Arabic speakers. Arabic speakers exists in nearly every country where there are Muslims. Which is what nearly 30% of the world population?
- infinitone 13y agoThe same is said for practically every civilization ever.
- nakedrobot2 13y agoThere are some great images here. I like how Google has been striving to document more beautiful places. The sheer amount of brainpower and processing that Google is putting into Streetview is truly staggering and unprecedented. Nobody else out there is doing it in this way. On a more hand-made note, my company, http://360cities.net http://360cities.net, has been publishing user-generated 360º imagery since 2006. I have built a tour of my own city, Prague, starting in 2004, which was before Google Maps or Streetview. We now have hundreds of thousands of images, (all high-resolution, completely spherical 360º photos) from every country of the world, including some very remarkable places in Antarctica, skydiving from an airplane, underwater, "remote" places such as Havana, Iran, Tibet, Burma, Easter Island, and so on. Our "editors' picks" are something I'm really proud of. https://www.360cities.net/search/@tags-editorspicks https://www.360cities.net/search/@tags-editorspicks here is our world map. zoomed out, you should see only "great" stuff: http://www.360cities.net/map http://www.360cities.net/map Other services that are similar to 360cities include http://viewat.org http://viewat.org, http://roundus.com http://roundus.com, http://arounder.com http://arounder.com, http://photosynth.net http://photosynth.net. Then there are the services for iphone/android 360º app, but these images are far lower in quality overall: http://occipital.com/360/verse http://occipital.com/360/verse and http://dermandar.com/worldmap http://dermandar.com/worldmap edit: made all links clickable
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- monsterix 13y agoUpvoted, bookmarked and thanks! Always in the look for alternatives to Google.
- rattray 13y agoWhy was this downvoted?
- themstheones 13y agoBecause talking about voting is somewhat annoying as it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
- davidw 13y agoGreat, now when the f* am I going to get terrain back on Maps for Android?! Last summer, my phone provided some information about terrain difficulty for light hikes (serious ones should involve a paper map so that you're not screwed if you lose battery/signal/whatever), bike rides and whatnot. This summer, with a newer, fancier, Nexus 4, that information is gone. The world is flat, indeed.
- infinite_snoop 13y agoI've noticed two features silently vanishing from my galaxy s2. Installed apps no longer appear in the search results from the Google Now widget and I no longer have the option to download a complete email in th ebuilt in email client. Have these been removed due to patents?
- nakedrobot2 13y agoIf you use the distance measurement button, it tells you the elevation of the segment you are measuring, I believe. I know this is not the same thing, but maybe it's helpful.
- phireal 13y agoThe distance measurement tool has been removed from more recent versions of Maps. It's why I haven't upgraded to the latest version, as the elevation profiles from the distance tool are really handy.
- Stupendous 13y agoStuff like this makes it really hard to stay angry at Google.. just beautiful.
- pistoriusp 13y agoIt's a shame that the page performs so `jaggy` on my computer.
- runn1ng 13y agoOne less reason to go outside my basement, great!
- lenage 13y agoGreat images here and thanks google did this for the world
- jkl32 13y agoWhat a blatant PR attempt to put lipstick on a pig. Do not forget who we're dealing with, Google gave the NSA unrestricted access to every system without any legal challenge. No amount of pretty photos will make up for that.
- mason240 13y agoGoogle didn't "give" the NSA anything. The NSA forced their way in.
- wtvanhest 13y agoI can't believe I'm typing this, but after the new Google map changes, it runs so slow on my home and office computer that I was forced to switch to bing. It still works on my mobile, but its just unbearable on the other systems. I hope they create a more streamlined version soon.
- marcioaguiar 13y agoDefinetly slower. Also, there's some features I miss from the old maps, like navigation on the map while on StreetView and the measurement ruler (from labs). But you don't need to switch to Bing as you can still change to the classic google maps.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wtvanhest 13y agoI'm glad to hear I am not the only one with performance issues. That is a lot more upvotes than I expected, especially considering how google heavy the user base is here. I love google's products and the fact that they all work together but everything seems to be running slower than it ever has before. Looking at the comments below, it is pretty clear that other people are also having this issue. It takes a lot for me to stop what I am doing, and move over to Bing so if I am doing it, other people are doing it as well. They should put making all of their applications less CPU intensive at the top of their list, right away. ===Also, while I am complaining about Google products, the google news doesn't let me easily search by time anymore which has also forced me over to bing. Articles from 30 days ago are rarely useful.
- runn1ng 13y agoI can't upvote you enough.
- graeme 13y agoI have the same issue. I have a fully upgraded 2011 Macbook air, and a very fast internet connection. New maps are completely unusable. It's shocking. My computer is faster than most computers. Maps shouldn't fail on it. I switched back to classic maps. The option is on the right hand side. You may have to clear your cache to make it permanent.
- tocomment 13y agoIt would be amazing if we could put these in the Oculus rift someday. Are there any plans for that?