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More Info on Google's 3D Maps
Will Stewart writes "You have doubtless read that Silicon Valley Watcher reported on 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, but you may not have seen the picture of where the trucks are kept and Berkeley's unrelated research project and published technical research (PDF file)."
To avoid loads of db queries and ads, the actual (rather uninteresting) picture is:
o ogleGarage.jpg
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/G
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/cityblock/
I call BS. That looks like any one of a thousand quonset huts on Camp Pendleton and other Marine Corps bases. How do I know that it isn't a picture of one of them?
Also - wow, who cares.
Derek Greene
Some related info:
...
More on Google 3D maps
3D Buildings
Lets start with the big things first. On selected US cities, you can view a grey scale 3D rendering of the city skyline. Pictures are worth more then words so I'll let the screenshots do the talking.
This was in Keyhole but it's still amazing. Screenshots really can't capture how amazing it is to freely move around a 3D world.
Amazon's "Blockview"
The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is "Block View," which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.
All I see is a picture of a large garage. How do we know this is where the truck(s) is (are) kept? And even if the truck were being kept there, what's the big deal? What next: the picture of the garage where a Google programmer parks his car? A menu from a restaurant where Page/Brin ate last month?
I'm not so sure I'd want my house in 3-D available thru google maps...
;)
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
If you see the google truck coming make sure you moon them as they go by. It would make a nice "easter egg" for google maps
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Yup - have a look at this. Although the image doesn't show the facades of the buildings.
Oh - on that note, take a look at the images here, especially this one... if google are using trucks, how are they going to get the texture maps for the top of the buildings as shown in that image??
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Can someone please acquire photos of the following items:
- gas station used to fuel the trucks
- hose used to clean the trucks
- steel drums containing the trucks used oil
These would be most (snort) valuable for my collection. (snort)
and also for our Lynx-using folks . . .
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Wow, it's dangerous enough having people taking snapshots of famous bridges. Now we've got trucks with frickin' laser beams on their heads aiming at the Golden Gate! That's just *gotta* be terrorists. :-)
As described in the page you linked (http://www-video.eecs.berkeley.edu/~frueh/3d/), that is done by merging the street level data gathered from drive-thrus with aerial data gathered from fly-bys. You can see a picture on the same page where only street level data was used and what the result looks like.