Google to Map San Francisco in 3D

mtz206 writes "SiliconValleyWatcher reports that "Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D online version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities. The move would trump Amazon's A9 service, which offers two-dimensional photos of buildings on US city streets.""

Comments

Well

[xor.pt]

Well, maybe if they extended their service to the rest of the world, say Europe, i'de give a damn.

Re:Well

[scottme]

Give them a break. They have to start somewhere after all.

Re:Well

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Europe?!? They havn't even done one city in their own country yet and your bashing them already?

I love the rest of the world and international types... but you gotta remember that every company thinks of their country and locale first... Then they move on to the rest of the world.

Now if google ever comes out and says: "We arn't doing europe because we think they are poopoo" THEN you can complain and I will join in with you.

Re:Well

[xor.pt]

They did, they started the map in the US, ok. Then the satellite pictures, where(?), in the US, ok i mean they already had the map there, so why not(?). And now they start the 3d maps, of course in the US. My point is, when will they stop implementing new features and start expanding the ones they have to the rest of the world?

Re:Well

[TGK]

Google is a US corporation, held by (wait for it) mostly US stockholders with most of its buisness interests and target market in the US.

As a corporation it is legaly bound to do what is best for its shareholders. While rolling out Google 3d Europe might be warm fuzzies, it's not necessarily the most exploitable market. Moreover, if you're going to test out an infrastructure heavy technology, why not do it in your home city (San Fran for Google)

This comes down to money. Google thinks this will make them more money than rolling out more features to Europe.... that's why.

Re:Well

[space_dude_27]

To be fair to them, they have expanded the features that they have eg Google Maps (including low-res satelite images) was expanded to the UK and I dare say will be expanded to other countries in time.

If you're desperate to know when they plan to support your country then why not ask them http://www.google.com/support/maps/bin/request.py/ ? You never know, they might be good enough to tell you... ;-)

Imagine..

[myspys]

.. that data being used in games like GTA.

You could visit every city they have mapped.

Yummy!

Re:Imagine..

[Ligur]

I had a similar experience during my first-time visit to Paris, I later realized it must have been due to having played Midtown Madness 3 where one of the locales is the city of Paris, not very accurately modeled mind you, though the roads along the Seine were fairly accurately depicted in the game.
Also, I found myself recognizing my surroundings in Dublin, Ireland. as soon as I saw the "spike" I realized where from: Remember that slashdot article from about a year ago where you could control a set of skylights over Dublin using a 3D-model of the area where the lights were set up?
Well, my point being: I can't recall ever recognizing my surroundings from 2D-maps. It seems 3D representations are easier to learn and remember. And so, there *is* a point to what google is doing.

One Upmanship

[CastrTroy]

Seems like there's a lot of one upmanship going on in the mapping business. Everybody seems to be trying to outgimmick everyone else. My favourite is still Mapquest. Although they could learn a little about UI from Google, I find that MapQuest's maps provide much more information as far as street names, especially when zoomed out. I also don't really like the look of google's oversided roads.

That depends on the user

[Moth7]

People respond differently to different stimuli. While you might be able to pick out the street corner you agreed to meet on from looking at a couple of lines on some paper, others (myself included) would find it beneficial to see an actual 3D visualisation of what the place looked like so that they know what and where they're aiming at.

Why?

[edwilli]

Seems to me Google does some things simply for intellectual curiosity, then ends up figuring out a way to make money off it.

Not just the USA

[Mr_Silver]

I know that I'm in the minority here, but it would be nice that, instead of rolling out newer and cooler projects to America only, Google remembered that they have an equally large (if not larger?) user base in Europe who also made a significant contribution to their success.

Yes, we did (eventually) get Froogle here in the UK, but I don't believe any of the other countries have. Google maps also arrived, but again, I don't believe it covers anywhere else.

Now you have satellite imagery and 3D maps and again the UK hope for it and the rest of Europe seems to be out on a limb.

I have no doubt that the UK will eventually see this stuff (as with the others) and for that I am thankful - however our friends elsewhere in Euroland I fear will never see the light of day of some of this rather cool products.

Re:Not just the USA

[TwP]

Tell you what. Give me a call on your 3G cellphone and whine to me in person while sending me 2 Mpixel photos of your crappy Google interface. Or you can write me an e-mail while your zipping along at 180Kph in your bullet train with wireless capabilities. Or you can drive your fuel efficient smart car over the Atlantic ... never mind. Not all technologies make it across the pond. Sorry. That's the way it is. I'm sure if you want to give a few million dollars to Google to get these services in Europe they would be willing to listen. In fact, I'm sure they have even scoped out the business case and revenue model for brining these services to Europe. In the meantime enjoy your government health care, your month of holiday, and your labor party government ;) When the Google commandos hit the beaches to save the UK and Europe from the evils of "we-don't-have-nice-maps" we'll let you know.

... Profit

[Savage-Rabbit]

I love the rest of the world and international types... but you gotta remember that every company thinks of their country and locale first.

Don't credit corporations with having deep rooted feelings of patriotism, you will be disappointed if you do. Every company (that is not being mismanaged) thinks about the most profitable market first so that it can bring the only people it truly cares about, the shareholders, managers and key employees, a good profit/reward. Google is launching this service in the US because they did their math and concluded it's the biggest and most profitable market.

Re:... Profit

[Gaewyn L Knight]

I agree with you in the long term... however... every company at least looks at their locale first since they know that management and setup fees are usually cheaper for projects closer to home.

They may not stay there... but they always look there first.

In this case google saw a large city not too far away and most likely said 'Hey... this will be a cheap guinea pig that won't require much hassle... let's start here'

I have yet to see a business from say Michigan say... "Hey! We are starting out a new idea... let's try it in London first instead of Detroit!"

Re:What is the practical application for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will someone suck all the air out of the USA please? I mean, in case it might be used by someone carrying out a terrorist attack.

Re:Why?

[AtlanticGiraffe]

Which makes business sense because it makes us interested in Google.

When they score geek points, geeks want to work for them. That way, they get the best people for the lowest price.

Geeks are also the have a major influence on other people's online behaviour. Did your mother try out all the other search engines before deciding that google was the best?

Extra dimensions equals faster invalidity

[subStance]

I thought 2D maps had troubles with things changing and the map being incorrect. Can you imagine this ? If someone even digs up the sidewalk, the thing will become invalid.

I know there are acceptable degrees of invalidity for mapping, but wouldn't adding an extra dimension to the map make it invalid even more quickly ? The applications for which one uses 3D maps are likely to require a lower error tolerance, aren't they ?

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong - I'm no 3D modelling guru or map expert)

Re:What is the practical application for this?

[Shaper_pmp]

Yeah, a sense of proportion.

And a belt to strap down that jerking knee of yours.

Jesus Christ on a crutch - why is it everything in the US now has to be defined in terms of its potential utility to terrorism? Other countries have been putting up with terrorism for years (often with the US's implicit or explicit approval) without reigning in basic human rights like privacy and freedom, but the second you have a large-scale foreign terrorist action on the US mainland suddenly the FBI can unilaterally read your mail and harsh language is banned in case it's used by Teh Terr0ri5ts!!!!

Even after 9/11, you're still hundreds of thousands of times more likely to die in a car crash than from terrorist action. Why aren't you worrying about the implications of allowing anyone to buy a car without a background check, fingerprinting, surgically-embedded RFID tag and rectal swab on file?

Re:copyright...

[WormholeFiend]

yea but you can take photographs of stuff that's outside without having to ask permission...

I would think that this new google thing would be allowed, but then again, google is a for-profit endeavor, so...

Re:Terms of use

[jbrocklin]

This is completely different from Google Wallpaper - this is overlaying visual map data over 3D scans of the same physical map locations. Google Wallpaper is...er...was "stitching" together images provided by Google Maps. Interesting in application, not all that difficult in implementation. Google's 3D service will be much more involved that simply stitching images together. Granted I'm thinking that there are several quick ways of doing it (OGL textures and whatnot) - but that's a lot of data to load over the web.

And Google Wallpaper wasn't a competitor - they were using Google's servers, and their data (which they payed for) to provide a service which violated the terms of service of Google Maps - and had the possibility of becoming a business for the guy. Obviously Google would have had to take legal action against the guy if he started making money off of the google maps data & service.

Re:Patent your house brick arrangement

[Shaper_pmp]

"I don't know about the rest of you, but how about a little privacy?"

What, you consider un-personally-attributable images merely of your building to be a privacy violation?

Dude, I hate to break it to you, but your privacy is being violated hundreds of times a day - they're called passers-by. You might want to spend some time on the corner of your lot with paper head-bags and a persuasive smile.

"There will be a great deal of abuse here. Imagine some girl gives out her phone number, or some guy finds it in a phone book."

Ignoring the sheer difficulty of doing reverse-lookups from phone number to address (which is made intentionally hard, for this very reason)...

"They find the address, they map it out. They even know what bushes to hide behind. Neat, tech helping pervs."

Right, and they can't do this with... oh, I dunno... a paper map? Or by, you know, walking past the house once or twice?

"I can see the mafia use this technology too. What to kill someone? How about a little research first. Lets see what roads lead to his house and away."

Right, 'cause the Mafia are always bumping off people left, right and centre round where I live. How about you?

And face it, any hitman or criminal who plans his crimes without first thoroughly casing the joint in real life first is a fucking retard.

And someone that fucking stupid is going to be caught pretty soon anyway when they realise sniper rifles don't flush.

You know, it's just occurred that you might be trolling - congrats if so, I utterly fell for it.

You were trolling, right?

Re:Why?

[blekkazzen]

For an example, most department stores have those little schematic of their stores that show where each area is in the store. Using that you can tell someone "Meet me in the sporting good section" and they can look at the map and figure out where the sporting good section is and meet you there. Problem is that you can't be anymore specific and instantly expect the person to know where you're talking about unless they've been there. Now on the other hand if you had a detailed 3D map of the store you could say meet me where the basketballs are and someone could look and see exactly where the basketballs are in relation to everything else and meet you there. Now depending on how detailed Google's 3D maps will be you could do the same exact thing. You could point out a specific landmark and the person could go to Google's map page and see exactly what you're talking about and where it's in relation to everything else and know exactly where to go. I don't know about you but I hate going somewhere and knowing that I'm in the right general area but having to guess if I'm in the right specific spot.