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Google Earth Beaten By Autorendering From Photos
Flu writes "Sweden's major engineer newspaper NyTeknik writes about a new technology which is used to automatically convert 60.000 aerial photographs of Stockholm, Sweden, into a 3d-world, similar to Google Earth's rendering of major buildings in some US cities. But unlike Google's laser-measured rendering, this technique took less than 8 days (including the photography) to automatically generate the 3D-model of Stockholm — which includes every building and details as high as individual trees!
The program was developed by C3, a subsidiary of the Swedish defense industry company SAAB, together with a PC gaming company called Agency 9. The complete article is available (sorry, Swedish only), but the 3D-rendering of Stockholm is available as a Java applet from the Swedish phone-dictionary service Hitta.se (tick the checkbox — it's an ordinary disclaimer, and click 'Till 3D-kartan')." The technique used gives a cool water-color look to the scenes, too.
does playing with the maps count as RTFA ?
http://revj.sourceforge.net
How long until someone uses technology like this to do a GTA-like in actual New York City, with real buildings as opposed to Liberty City? Admittedly, that would start getting creepy when you realize those are real residences and the like.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
There is no stranger marriage.
all the buildings in Stockholm are partially melted, this must prove global warming!!!
This kind of model is what you get when you take the point cloud from Photosynth, mesh it and use the photos as textures.
The techniques for recovering 3D shape from photographs have been well known for a while. But if all the pictures you use for the 3D reconstruction are from overhead, the street level view will be missing all the stuff you can't see from overhead. It may be called a "3D model", but it's not a complete or accurate 3D model.
If you want decent street level views, you really do need street level photographs. And laser scanners are still a lot more reliable than image based 3D reconstruction.
The 3D map looks more like post-apocalyptic Stockholm.
Now, were you trying to suggest that a majority of
I'm posting the article in English here with some changes due to Translate.Google not being able to translate everything 100%.
---
Hitta.se beats Google Earth
with new 3D-technology from Saab.
Search company Hitta.se has a new Web service that is better than Google Earth to show Sweden in a 3D view. In Stockholm there, for example, every single building as a realistic 3D model.
With the help of robotics from Saab and the Swedish software for computer games Hitta.se search company has developed a Web service that shows Sweden in 3D and which is clearly better than the corresponding service from Google Earth.
Directly in the browser, users can zoom in, tilt and turn the flygfotograferade views across the country. With the help of altitude measurements images of the land are created where the mountains and valleys appear with genuine feeling of depth.
The new service, which launched May 29, is also all buildings from Stockholm, in the form of realistic 3D models.
Although they can be turned and turned and seen from any height and angle.
Later this year, including the second appearance of Sweden's largest cities as a complete 3-D models.
The major competitor in the show Sweden in 3D is Google Earth. But there are only a few dozen 3-D buildings from Stockholm and a few other cities.
Google's 3D view of Sweden was also much lower quality than that Hitta.se offer. Both in terms of image resolution and altitude.
-- We have created 3-D feature to give users a more fun and more realistic ways to use our maps, "says Rui de Sousa Brit who is president and CEO of Hitta.se
But the new service does not yet cover all planned features. Therefore, it's "sneak launched" and goes by the name of "the lab" on the company's website.
Moreover, such as some 3D buildings refined when the houses angles can be a little crooked and some facades have bad sharpness.
The technology used was developed by the Swedish companies C3 Technologies in LinkÃping and Agency9 in Lulea.
C3 is a subsidiary of Saab and develop technology that has its origin in seeker for robots.
The technology is based on high resolution aerial photography with carefully calibrated cameras. In order to build 3-D model of Stockholm, which covers an area of 200 square kilometres was 60 000 images from 600 metres above sea level, which took three days.
Then, it took only a few more days to automatically create 3-D model, where even individual trees are included.
Tommy Johansson who is president and CEO of C3 know that some defence in the world have developed similar technology. But he is not aware of anyone else who introduced the technology for civilian purposes.
-- We aim to launch our technology globally and believe that, for example, urban planners and businesses similar Hitta.se can become our customers, "says Tommy Johansson.
Other companies based 3-D models of entire cities primarily use lasermÃtningar to collect 3D data. For example, Google and Microsoft for their service Virtual Earth.
It is a technology that is much more costly and time consuming than the C3's way.
Photo and mapping services from Google and Microsoft require users to install special software on your own computer. In Google Earth in the form of a stand-alone program and the Virtual Earth as a plug which is available only for Windows.
But Hitta.se 3D runs directly into the browser by using javateknik and works for most operating systems and browsers.
-- I think that both Google and Microsoft may have some problems with sleep when they see the new service from hitta.se, "says Tommy Johansson.
In order to be able to present all 3D data in the new map in the form of realistic buildings used technology developed for computer games.
It comes from the Agency 9 of Lulea.
The company began by building a so-called rendering engine for web games. Eg. software that draws up 3D environments on the computer screen.
-- But the web
I can't remember where now, but I remember some military contractor type company working to clear up image meshing like this on a robotic vehicle program somewhere (at least I think I do, but now can find no links for it). If they clean up the details with revised software, this would be an awesome terr^H^H^H^H^Hflight training sim setup.
The story I read was about creating 3D maps from sat pictures, inserting geodata where it was known, and using this as guidance data for unmanned passenger vehicles like the latest DARPA challenge.
Theoretically, if you can update photos every other day, you could use this to map alternate routes for drivers, and correct inconsistencies in map data for Google maps and Yahoo maps et al.
It's all about the speed of updates. I'd think a single helicopter flying with a rather fancy camera setup (something like they use for capturing a murder scene etc.) could cover a metropolitan area in a day, crunch the photo data, update... presto, accurate maps. Even 8 days is pretty damn fast.
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Dunno what's the big deal about, I can't even get the thing to work, it just takes up both CPU's and doesn't show anything... On the other hand I can start up Google Earth and it will work in seconds. But that may be some software bug on my side, whatever.
/.-reading tourist. And, mind you, catching up to Google's amount of maps and images and databases would not be an easy thing to do.
Anyway, I'm sure this may be cool for people in Stockholm, but unless they plan to expand this to worldwide scale, this will just remain another web's curiosity for the bored and an occasional
I think Linux isn't better than Windows hence in the slashdot realm I'm a troll
it's kind of scary when you zoom out the whole map and see a "flat world with only Sweeden in the middle.." ... =)
There may be dragons...
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Yeah, I doubt that Google would want to acquire a major defense contractor (the automotive part was sold to GM and the rest remained in Sweden for most parts). The SAAB AT4 has even been adopteb by the US Army where it's know as the M136 antitank grenade launcher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M136)
It seems as if the geometries are calculated from scratch in real time.
;)
This article is gonna have quite an effect on their servers
At first I though: *yuch* this is awful with the geometries being at very low resolution and with strong artifacts. But as the script kept processing it's looking really good by now, except that it's still hour-glassing and I can't zoom in after minutes.
Beaten how, exactly? This is just one city. Google Earth covers a heck of a lot more than once city. Sure, the rendering is fine, but again, compared to Google Earth as a whole... eh, not what I'd call "beating Google Earth" by any stretch.
Considering most of the high-res aerial mapping is done on a county-by-county basis (rarely even state-wide) the large number of governmental agencies Google would need to contract with to provide sub-foot imaging is immense. The most common user of high-res aerial mapping is county GIS departments, and very few of them ask for the overlapping stereo images needed to model heights. (Or you could do it with lidar, but again most county auditors have little use for the height data.)
The COE is still so far back in the stone-ages they want traditional sections run, and are not large users of aerial mapping. (Not as large as they should be.)
That said, the volume of high-res photos out there is huge. We just finished up a state-wide lidar job of XXXXX, with elevations provided (post vegetation and building removal) tight enough to provide 6" contours. The accompanying images are 3" resolution. Where can you get the images? I have no idea.
We do similar work for the FAA. (Only practical way to do obstruction surveys is with photogramitry.) Do they release those 1/4' images? I do not know.
There is no reason to believe Google shows poor-quality images for any reason outside an unwillingness to pay for the acquisition.
Have you seen the high-res obliques Microsoft provides now? Those clearly aren't banned in the name of security.
Ask your local Auditor for a copy of their aerial mapping data - often it is free or for a nominal fee. (varies county by county and state by state in my experience, everything from 10 DVDs for free to $100 per CD)
OMG - Stockholm has been hit by an earthqua... oh wait... there it goes...
this is great! Let me zoom in...
OMG - Stockholm has been hit by an earthquake!
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Not quite. They're commenting on the fact that Google (a company that is known for excellence) has had one of their offerings beaten by using a simpler technique. This isn't a "google hatefest", it's just cool.
Not to mention the Gripen. Damn fine fighter plane. It's maybe a generation or half behind the bleeding edge, but it's cheap.
> It seems as if the geometries are calculated from scratch in real time.
That wasy my initial thought, but (having watched it load, but not read the (F) article) now I'm thinking perhaps it's just an incremental load of a height field.
The height-field v. polygon guess is also supported by seeing how bridges are handled - for example, with flat sides that include images of boats striped up them.
Cheap? It is 4 times more expensive than the F16, which is only a half generation behind Grippen, and twice as expense as the F16 2nd edition which is similar in technology to Grippen but bigger, faster and more powerfull.
Sorry, butSweden is cheating themselves by insisting on using inferior local technology.
Those images were created using a stereo camera and photogrammetry.
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/267813.html
Why do jerks like you insist on presenting things they imagine to be true as fact?