Slashdot Mirror
The Thin Line Between Reality and Video Games
Boomzilla writes "San Jose Mercury news is carrying an article about a 2-year-old Silicon Valley start-up called Keyhole and their product Earthviewer. The Mountain View company makes interactive 3-D maps that fuse high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, elevation data, GPS coordinates, and overlay information about cities and businesses to deliver a streaming, 3D map of the entire globe. Since the start of the war, many news networks have been using the maps to zoom in on, over and around the Iraqi landscape to help viewers see where the war is being fought. Keyhole is financed by Sony Broadband Entertainment, graphics-chip maker Nvidia and others. Keyhole uses satellite images, aerial photos and other data to create 3-D maps that perform much like high-quality video games. Way cool!"
The amazing Carnack says (holds envelope to forehead) that the first use will be to design a game where you have a gun and other weapons and the object is to shoot down as many people as possible.
They'll even have to the nerve to use the word "innovative" in the description.
The whole gaming scene is sooooooooooooooooo stale. I used to game a ton and now get ill over the thought.
Earthviewer.com is 2 years old and has nothing to do with gaming, its purpose is merely to serve as a showcase for Nvidia's cards
I was watching CNN today, and got a little worried when I realised I was pressing fire on my gamepad.
Whoa! You could use this to make a map for [insert popular network FPS such as Quake]. Whouldn't it be cool?!
Now that that's over, hopefully we won't worry about the six or so threads that would have resulted without this precautionary measure.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
...with comparing reality and video games? It has nothing to do with video games.
That makes the who story pointless.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Slightly offtopic, but i heard about some guys who obtained blueprints and made a UT map of their high school. Kinda scary, but i guess its better than the real thing.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
No, you're thinking along the wrong lines. We want live satellite info to feed into this thing. Send text messages in burning letters in your neighbors yard. Play pranks on friends painting embarrasing things on their roof. Maybe even communicate via laser pointer morse code. The possiblities are endless.
closed minded is as closed minded does
the site had to yank the trial version, since many news agency's were to cheap to actually purchase it.
You clowns must not have watched much CNN lately if you think the Keyhole stuff is about video games.
Poof.
so it makes fighting seem realistic...except for the dying part. no wonder people are signing up for the army like there's no tomorrow.
"Homer, if you wouldn't mind shooting some people as you leave."
"Ah, the Denver Broncos..."
The original concept of the game designer was to offer GIS-detailed maps for the 50 mile x 50 mile area around the main game sites. With the software he is using to create the maps, he can produce
Player : GM, can we see that [mountain | cave | valley | battlefield] from here?
GM : Let me fire up the map viewer, and then you can answer that question for yourself.
Imagine being able to see maps and "dragon's eye views" of different areas of a gaming map. The idea sounds neat, and I think that he is going into playtesting.
something like this gets some heavy mainstream use... like being slashdotted. Perhaps its time to make some wise investments in companies like these.
Has this company gone public?
--------
Free your mind.
I wonder where they got their terrain data from. AFAIK, Nasa's SRTM data is not yet publicly available. Anyway, it must be a huge effort to merge all these databases into accurate maps.
where's all that Karma?
The Mountain View company makes interactive 3-D maps that fuse high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, elevation data, GPS coordinates, and overlay information about cities and businesses to deliver a streaming, 3D map of the entire globe. [snip] Keyhole uses satellite images, aerial photos and other data to create 3-D maps that perform much like high-quality video games.
This new learning amazes me! Tell me again how high-resolution images and other data may be employed to create 3D mapsof the entire globe.
Some crackpots have theories that god plays videogames that we are characters in. If so, then now we get to see what his monitor looks like!
But what does the load screen look like then?
At least they haven't been classified as 'Illegal Combatants'. If they were, you could do whatever you wanted to them. Torture them, kill them, starve them, humiliate them. ANYTHING.
And oh yeah, putting their picture on TV is not against the Geneva convention. Putting them on public display, like in a zoo is.
They meant the interface. It's far more fluid then static images on a database.
But that having been said, how hard would it be to add orbital defense satellites. Anyone up for a game of missile command 2k3?
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I've downloaded the trial twice in the last couple years (this has been around for quite a while now), and as far as I can tell the only 3D things in the software are the giant sphere that makes the earth and the video card required to run it. In the trial version, at least, there is no eleveation mapping or anything else. It is just flat photos pasted on a spherical Earth. It is pretty cool though, being able to pan and scan from one city to another smoothly. Really cool, but a little lacking in the 3D department.
the site seems not to be giving out earthviewer demo accounts but you can still download this if your a nvidia user.
r /E arthviewerNVWeb.exe
http://download.nvidia.com/downloads/EarthViewe
So who else thought "Someone has gone and made the 'Earth' program out of Snow Crash", when they first saw the article?
Then again, the software has been around for a while. I wonder if the people who wrote it got the idea out of Snow Crash?
All I wanna know is, where is Hiro, and who is playing the part of Raven?
Yes the line between reality and virtuality is always shrinking (See Serial Experiment Lain for proof). For now we are only able to see some geographic views of location in Iraq. Maybe someone'll develop a tiny java application to control a tank or something right in the middle of the war? It is so tempting when looking at the war on TV, it's so close to us ! ^_^ ..
Kidding aside, I hope this war will finish soon and there won't much deaths!)
PLUR !
These pictures are not censored from American view. They're posted on Drudge report and other news sites. Take your anti-American propaganda and shove it up your Goatse ass! I'd rather drink from Tubgirl's fountain than listen to this mindless shit.
Do they overlay images of wounded and dead soldiers, too?
(Score:-1, Flamebait). Yeah, let's play a clean game of video-war. It's so much less disturbing when the gore's turned off.
I had this software on my system, maybe 2 weeks (ok a month because thats how long the free trial lasts)
The images produced are amazing, but after you get through seeing your house, grandma's house, cousins house, freinds houses, your work, all from the air it kind of get's boring.
The user level version produces some good maps, but if you're really interested in earthviewer, you should sign up for the corporate trial. Even though all the images produced from the corporate trial have a watermark of keyholes logo on them, the detail is just too good to pass up.
there is no line, video games and reality are opposite things. an infinitely fat line, so to speak.
do NOT confuse the two.
I played with Earthviewer about a year ago, and it's definitely cool, but I think you'd have to change it too fundamentally to get it to work with gaming. Quake engines and such are really much more optimized for presenting textures in the fast real time need for games, and Flight Sim already does some this style of progressive resolution depending on your point of view and zoom level.
For me the real difference is how well it integrates with huge databases. It seems as though Keyhole's strength is in being what they call a "streaming geospatial browser." A potential front end for every database with topographical hooks. A big (waay big) market in situations where visual representation of that data is important.
I'd like to hear more input on the "eye candy" arguement though - that being able to visually browse this data has limited value when compared to the cost of enabling it with the viewer. TV and flyovers are cool, but are there concrete applications where this style of presentation will help people get insight into data? Remember that we can still look at large data sets in 2D and in static 3D - does it help to be able to fly over it and zoom down in real time?
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Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
try turning on terrain and going to some place like the grand canyon or mt st. helens.
> Way cool!"
Someone tell Timothy to lay off the caffeine. The subject has a remotely tangential relationship to video games and is, at best, mildly interesting.
So have all the global calamaties (i.e., the alleged Noah-flood incident, the death of the dinosaurs, etc.) just been system errors or crashes?
Was the great flood truly a "Blue Screen of Death?" (snicker)
'nuff said.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Oh, you mean the PC gaming scene. I enjoy Rez, Mario Party 4, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Xenosaga, Shenmue 2, etc, very much, thanks.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
FYI the US spy satellite range is the Keyhole Series. Has been taking pictures of our earth for more than 30 years.
Tho a lot isnt know about current generation (or even the past 2 generations), the US has released older footage.
They've been using Earthviewer on CNN several times a day in the last few days. The current version of the client supports elevation data, USA yellow page searches (show me all the Taco Bells), street address searching, and cool image overlays that are being used on http://bbs.earthviewer.com to show weather, archeology, and battle movements in Iraq.
With the elevation data its very much 3D, but most man-made structures don't register (except Hoover dam).
CNN has been using this tool to show images of where Suddam Husein was though to have been.
Both skylinesoft.com, and before them mobilemaps.com have worked on something similar. The mobilemaps 3D viewer was available in 1996! It was at VGA resolution, fit in 640K, and ran a lightening speed fractal landscape engine, along with web hyperlinks.
3D maps is an interesting market, because users expect reality from these maps and do not understand the limitations of the data, and why it doesn't look like real-life. One interesting application mobilemaps tried was mapping ski resorts, which attracted reasonable interest.
Mobilemaps, has since moved away from 3D maps to focus on providing an open-source search & locate engine that can be combined with 2D or 3D maps.
Please let our captured comrades be treated as true P.O.W's, That they might have safety.
Please let our captured soldiers not be tortured, not be placed in inhumanely small cells outside of the view of the world, not given any rights, kept from the sun, their family, with no hope of ever being released.
In short, O Dear lord, please let them be treated as men, and not be shipped off to Guantanamo bay, as Donald Rumsfeld bitches that they were put on television, which is a minor, if that, breach of the Geneva convention, while we torture the fuck out of those fucking sand niggers that fought us in Afghanistan.
--An American patriot
Actually it's probably you that went a bit stale. If you find gaming is getting stale, uh-oh, just wait another 10 years... you're going to be shuffling around, shaking your fist at all those crazy kids with their gadgets, you're going down hill buddy!
You can download the trial on kazaa. I read that the trial was taken off the website. Poor p2p users. Gonna try the program out now.
This is just my two cents worth, but I would point out modern video games (specifically of the Quake genre) use rather robust vector mathematic models and are basically just "physics engines" that model the basic vector mathematics of reality (i.e. spacial orientation, time progression, velocity, momentum, particle physics, lighting, etc.).
In answer to your question, this has to do with comparing reality and video games in regards to the "fact" (?) that video games are developing better physics engines, and reality is being better modeled by computer simulations, multimedia databases, etc.
Fact of the matter is that, if one wanted to, someone could program the A.I. of a smart missle with the Quake codebase; alternativly, one could easily program a video game which uses satellite photos, networked video feeds, and whatnot...
Anyhow... just my two cents...
One of the articles talks about 6TB of data, but they need more (!). Europe and South America have limited coverage. There is great data for Tokyo and good data for NKorea, Iraq, and Israel but London, Paris, and The Hague are not enough.
Despite best efforts, slabs of raw data will be out of date. Details such as the exact form of foliage would have to be filled in by an 'educated guess'. Are sensitive military facilities accurately mapped?
What indication is there to the user that the information they are viewing may not be completely accurate? How can a user judge the accuracy of each part of the scene they are viewing?
I see a danger that ultra-realistic, inaccurate, renderings may widely replace real world observations, leading to a reduction in available information, even though the volume of misinformation has increased.
I'm glad to see that someone is finally putting high resolution map pan/zoom apps into the market, the technology has been available for awhile and continues to get cheaper. Silicon Graphics used to demonstrate a similar application years ago to promote their InfiniteReality graphics engine... they had ~500 GB of earth texure data on a massive disk array and were able to zoom down to 0.125m (aerial photo) resolution in a few cities. All realtime and at almost any speed. Butter-smooth. Crazy cool. The most impressive (or nauseating!) demo was the moon-to-DisneyWorld bungie jump, which made the audience gasp and the RAID grind like mad. These days I've heard their texure database is large and now even has elevation/terrain data. I'd love to see what the IR4 can do!
On the PC side of things I would imagine this is now possible on a much smaller budget. High-end PCs finally have the gfx and I/O thruput (8x AGP and PCI-X, for example) to pipe the texture data fast enough.
Keep blurring that line, it makes the games more impressive and gives even more possibilities for real world applications.
I tried this once I got my GF4, it was pretty cool, but some of images were outdated. Other than that, it was pretty cool
while we torture the fuck out of those fucking sand niggers that fought us in Afghanistan
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
You ask that they be humane to american soldiers, yet you want to do just the opposite to them...
You call yourself an American patriot... Its people with attitudes like you that destroy the meaning of patriotism...
Amen to that. The only good Moose Limb is a dead Moose Limb.
Yesterday, I put it on the car CD player and accidentally ran down a moped and three pedestrians before I realised I wasn't playing the game.
would you like to play a game?_
When I was at college, ohhhhh way back in '94 or '95, some of the kids created a Doom WAD of Trinity College. You can probably find it, if you Google for it.
The best bit was the way the porters' office was full of those hairy monsters who threw fireballs. Beautiful.
--- My dad's political betting
You know, that's just stupid. It's not censored because they dont want you to see it. It's sensored because who wants to see their sons head ripped open on cnn. think moron.
Having to post AC because I modded you up. I'm just wondering who the Librarian is in this case.
Picturing Hiro holding a program in one hand, blueprints in the other, and asking the Librarian 'Can you put these together for me?'
A few years ago, NBC used Jane's F-15 and Fleet Command to demonstrate attacks on Iraq. And the U.S. Army uses Steel Beasts to train its tank crews (in addition to higher-end solutions).
btw, now the U.S. Army is contributing to the development of Steel Beasts 2.
We've been developing a couple of similar products for several years now. GenesisII attempts to create photorealistic images based on GIS data, and Landscape Explorer is a more traditional 'Image Overlay' product (there's also an online embedded ActiveX version). Site is at www.geomantics.com
Both these programs are intended to take a 'feed the data in and get the image' type of approach rather than the 'build your world from blocks' approach you'd get with a 3D modeller application.
With the 'Image Overlay' program this is relatively straightforward because the data is not that complex, but when you go for something more detailed and 'photorealistic' like GenesisII then complexity of the solution seems to increase exponentially with the degree of detail needed. For example modelling a mid to far distance mid-western US landscape is actually quite easy, doing it in Europe is vastly more complex because of something as apparently simple as the hedgerow and field pattern. Similarly really high mountains (Rockies, Himalaya) are easy, Mid range stuff with confirers is not too bad, but the real challenge is the English Cotswalds because of the shear complexity of a 3,000 year old mixed deciduous forest/farmed/grazed landscape.
Even with Satellite data the problems on landscape are complex. Sure I can tell it's a forest, but is it Oak or Birch? It may not matter if I'm viewing from a long shot, but closer up it does. How do I tell? get better data? (available, expense), guess (ok for games maybe, but it's not reality), or use an algorithm (you have an tree/soil/landscape distribution algorithm to hand?)
And that's before we've even considered villages and towns
Hmmm. I hope CNN has a backup plan for maps, because it looks like it is the latest victim of Shock and Awe.
Ken Silverman has a program that will render a globe, albiet a little more primitive than Keyhole's. In fact, its use is more for stargazing than earthgazing, but there you go.
Ok, so I play games perhaps too much, but after playing DC and then watching the news of the war, I get game flash-backs! Also, watching the news makes me inclined to want to "go play"!? I am quite pleased with the reality level being achieved in this game ;)
What's 'cool' about war?
This has been around for quite a while. There are two versions to download, an nvidia specific one, and one that works with any video card. But the only difference I can see is that the nvidia specific version has the nvidia logo on the corner.
The level of detail varies with the region. The last time I checked out the program like a year ago it had extremely detailed maps for most regions of the US, Japan, and Afghanistan. The maps weren't updated in real time though.
Read Sci-fi book, build thing from book, ???, Profit... (World Map ala SnowCrash) I want the "librarian".
meh
I played with it when it was first released - it is pretty darn cool, but the price is also pretty darn steep if you're lacking in the Nvidia graphics card department ($599 for one year).
;P
If you have a Nvidia card, you're still looking at around $60 a year for a dumbed-down version without elevation data.
It's a neat product, but of limited use at the present time.
A more interesting (and worth-paying-for) modification along the same lines would be to have an interactive news/screensaver type program.
How about something where when your computer is idle it shows a 3D world and zooms into different areas of the globe and shows realtime news headlines based on the topics you pick? Have an option to hold down the shift key and click on a news headline on the globe and have it take you to the related news site.
Could be a nice bundle-in for CNN.
Would be nice to have realtime weather data (optionally) overlayed on it too.
Just a few thoughts. If they use them, send me a free account
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
*snorkle* *snorkle* *snorkle*
Sure are looking at that news footage at work. No doubt we will be influenced. Now if only Hollywoord would take some hints. Those explosions look a lot like the Pyromania CD though.
and as far as I can tell the only 3D things in the software are the giant sphere that makes the earth and the video card required to run it
I've installed it too. It's not immediately apparent, but there are quite a few 3D elements to this app. 1st, you can turn on elevation mapping where you see the terrain elevation. 2nd there is a control that lets you control your angle of view, combined with the eleveation mapping it's a pretty damn cool effect.
Ever since I installed it on my dad's computer he's been showing it to every guest.
I wonder what is going to put a greater load on the keyhole/earthviewer servers...the Slashdotting or the AmericanPublicThirstForWarKnowledge-ing.
Don't worry, we'll get even (we've got lots more bombs).
Fuck them straight to hell. I think we should introduce them to our new friend MOAB...
does this have to do with video games you clueless git?
from reality, I don't think video games pose any threat at all.
word.
My chief complaint with the software as it was six months ago, was that the level of detail varies so much from place to place. Sure, LA was really detailed, but my whole town in New Hampshire was just a green blob. (On the other hand, I looked up my parents' house and there was enough detail to make out the house, the garage, and the driveway. A little spooky, I must say)
I wrote in my journal here on slashdot recently that I wanted this technology.
had I know I'd be getting that wish granted, I'd have instead wished for Naomi Watts.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I am with a student research group that makes visualizations the exact same as the earthviewer. It is incredibly easy to do. I have laughing my butt of thinking how much the news media is probably paying for these visualizations. All terrain data is from freely available DEMs and almost all the satellite images are free as well. Load these things up in a few programs, get them into Bryce, and you have CNN ready visualizations - for free! Someone tell CNN to call me!
Anyone with Lord in their name has to be an asshole. This means you shitbag.
Somebody please mod this guy down to -15.
I think those 2 whackos from the Trench Coat Mafia had Doom levels of the school.
Never could find them though.
Huh?
Can anyone say IPO?
The amazing Carnack says (holds envelope to forehead) that the first use will be to design a game where you have a gun and other weapons and the object is to shoot down as many people as possible.
I wonder what Johnny Carson would've thought about that fact that that game will probably be designed by the amazing Carmack?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
I remember this line from playing Ultima IV (the first one to hook me in) on an old Apple iic. The line shows up with a good book. It may be easier to achieve but it is an old theme.
OK. You've downloaded the NVidia demo version and have found your house. Neat.
Now, enter Bagdad in the place box and watch as you fly out over the Altlantic, past Europe and down into the Middle East.
Without a doubt Earthviewer is the greatest teacher of Where The Fuck These Places Are!!!
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Eh? CNN shows worse stuff everday, and anyone shown on CNN is someone's son and daughter, mother and father, sisther and brother, wife and husband right?
Or are you trying to imply that some people have MORE RIGHTS than others?
I'm left handed, you moron.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Anyone who takes internet nicknames and/or sigs seriously enough to comment on them is an idiot.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Most people would say "no". How is this different?
Jan
I watch CNN probably a whole hell of a lot than you do, and I'm not one that just turns it on because there's a war going on. Name one worse thing CNN has shown that is worse. I'm not even talking everyday--and I hardly see how you could even say that if you are a regular viewer. I've seen a LOT of stuff on CNN, and I've seen stuff comparable, but not worse as you stupidly claim. I've rarely seen raw footage of someone with bullets through their foreheads (which, mind you, CNN DID show albeit a still image).
And no, they don't have more rights, moron. They have the same. If someone is raped in the US, victim names are withheld. If someone is robbed, their names may be withheld. It is not a matter of rights, it's a matter of policy and a claim to the victim status of the slain carried over to their family, and the US *policy*, not right, is to inform the family before the media. You don't get those rights because you are not victim of direct soldier to soldier combat.
The media agrees with this policy otherwise the government won't allow them to tag along with the troops (or, are you going to argue that the media must have access to troops as well?). They aren't made to. It's an agreement.
And yes, some people have "more rights than others" but given circumstance, not person. US soldiers have the right to kill in combat. Unless you are a soldier and are engaging other soldiers, you don't either usually (self-defense, manslaughter maybe if held up in the court of law or non-prosecution). Or are you arguing you have the right to pick up a weapon and pull a Columbine in your backyard? Note that by your ill-presented definition, the soldier's have more rights, but they don't have more rights necessarily legally, since there is nothing stopping you from joining up.
Blech. Why am I explaining this to a moron--they still remain a moron.
I wonder if any of the founders were ex-NRO?
nvidia version has same 3d and same data as pro (i tried both for free!)
It's funny how they had to pull some services, as their site was "CNN'ed"... I wonder how many more people would that be compared to your typical slashdotting...
The Mountain View company makes interactive 3-D maps that fuse high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, elevation data, GPS coordinates, and overlay information about cities and businesses to deliver a streaming, 3D map of the entire globe... Keyhole uses satellite images, aerial photos and other data to create 3-D maps that perform much like high-quality video games.
Can we just moderate this whole story as redundant?
"Updates
USA cities are updated every two to three years on average. Data is constantly being added to the system and is delivered automatically to your viewer so check back often."
So maybe I will check every 8 months or so... is that often enough?
vterrain
Naturally, this includes links to the NASA Blue Marble site and the SRTM project and many others. :-)
My own viewer isn't due for some time yet
Excellent, only one step closer having a wild virtual threesome, before it goes on the fritz and the holograms attack.
There are many such products out there that can build 3d GIS views based on elevation data and textured with satelite or ariel photography. Applications like Community Viz and PCI and even the Arc View 3.2 3d extention can be very useful and equally good at producing 'realistic' views based on elevation data, building foot prints, and any other data.
Implement a flight simulator on top of that and go help the air force bomb Iraq. Ender lives!
The SGI demo (named "Space-to-Face") utilised a major hardware feature named Clip-Mapping to provide 2^31 x 2^31 hardware MIP-Maps in the high-end InfiniteReality workstation of 1996. This method is well described in the proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1998 by the inventing engineers. There was also a demo by the low-end O2 desktop group built using an entirely different scheme. The Keyhole program was demonstrated in the Intel booth at the recent GDC in San Jose, California. A presenter at that stand said the people who developed the giant texture technique used in Keyhole were inventors of the SGI high-end Clip-Map ideas and that they now do game software. Could this be the game link mentioned in the newspaper story?
Don't attack me. I'm not the AC.
BTW, you shouldn't be calling me a moron anyway. I don't mind if someone disagrees with me, it's a good thing actually. But name calling is wrong in a forum like this.
Don't you agree?
Huh?
Maxis put out an expansion to Sim City 2k a while back that let you drive around the cities you built and check them out from the ground level, kinda like sim copter but lower. I think there were missions you could perform too, kinda like a tame version of GTA.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
But yes, of course I thought of Snow Crash.
What we can see, our enemy can see.
Why give our enemy free Intel using our technology?
The planet-earth project is building a realtime, immersive, user-created map of the whole world and everything in it. It's inspired by Earth from Snow Crash, among other things. We're building an open platform called 3map, Free Software under the GPL.
We now have running code and actual funding from the Telstra Broadband Fund. We're on a one-year timeline. Contributors are more than welcome ;)
Hypermedia, virtual worlds, human interface, truth, beauty.
Speech text, 1998
www.digitalearth.gov website
CNN article on the satellite version
NASA Triana Funding in Doubt
Triana built, mothballed waiting potential future launch
I suspect this was probably discussed in Slashdot back in the day, but couldn't get the search engines to give me a good reference.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Talk
- DARPA project, some good stuff.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks