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DIY Google Street View Project?
Ismenio writes "Does anyone have any ideas for a do-it-yourself Google-Street-View-like project on the cheap? I am planning to visit a few places outside the US that are important to me, and would like to be able to set up a site for friends and family to visit and give them the Street View-like experience so that they could navigate, pan and zoom in the areas I have. Though being able to use GPS coordinates would be great, that's certainly something I can do without. I know I can take pictures and stitch them together to create panoramic views, but I would like to be able to also navigate though some streets. Would it make sense to record it with an HD camera, then batch export frames as pictures? Is there any software in the open source community that I can use?" Ismenio includes links to some related pages: Popular Mechanics' look at the camera tech used for Street View, and a company that claims better panoramic image technology than Google's.
Basically, webcams suck for this. They get washed out and are basically worthless. Also the CPU required is prohibitive.
IPcams, while better, have limited resolution.
So you're really looking at using cameras run through libgphoto and some custom scripts. You need a lot of storage, and you need the right camera.
It's doable with gphoto and a handful of Canon cameras, but be prepared to spend lots of $YOUR_LOCAL_CURRENCY.
OTOH, if you get a travelcam going, I'd love to contribute; I haven't given up hope yet.
If you look at rtrees, you can even look up the nearest landmark and tag your images with '2.3 miles southeast of $BIG_BEAUTIFUL_LANDMARK.
A fisheye lens. if not you can get by with a little patience.
stitching software
virtual tour software
i dont use fisheye, opting for more images for higher resolution pictures. But for the later two, i use and highly recomend autopano pro (http://www.autopano.net/en/) and its virtual tour software that is integrated with the giga version. The stitch imports images and combines them together into one image. The tour provides a simple way to combine the images into a set of 360x180 views, with hot-points between them to navigate, all automaitcally put together into a swf for easy embedding. if you dont mind a few watermarks, you can use the trial version with very few restrictions.
for an example of a high reosution virtual tour created by the stitching software, tyhough without the tour software, i have created a tour of cambridge at http://cambridge.lifeinmegapixels.com/ . for other examples and examples of the touring software, check the gallery subforum in the autopano pro forums.
Take a look at Microsoft Photosynth. I don't know if it would be able to handle long, multiple streets, but if you take enough overlapping photos, it might work well for you.
I doubt it would be worth the effort to create a google street-view clone for your own personal use, you'd either have to carry around a set of cameras the whole time or stay in your car (with the camera(s) mounted on the car).
Personally I've built a small website that shows images I've uploaded from my iPhone using Google Maps, a pretty simple solution that doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment nor a very advanced software setup (on the server it's just apache+mod_python+mysql and a couple of small python scripts for creating thumbnails of the uploaded images.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I know I'll be modded down for this, but it seems that the best, most efficient, and cheapest answer to this problem is as follows:
If you feel so strongly abotu sharing your vacation with people you know, then take some of them with you.
And then, gasp, instead of spending huge piles of money so that you can occupy your vacation fucking with technology that nobody wants to use anyway (Hey, Martha! Look! George sent more pictures of the LOVELY GREAT FUCKING TIME HE'S HAVING over there! Start the fire!), you'll be able to take a few folks who might actually be interested in this stuff along with you.
Just a thought.
(And: To answer the original question of, "Can I do this?" No. No, you can't. Don't bother. Give up.)
Kid-proof tablet..
WAIT! Don't mod me down yet.
There's this free software called Photosynth that gives a very similar experience. It stitches together large numbers of photographs to create a scene through which a user can move.
They can all be interconnected, or it could be just, "my hotel room" and "famous landmark A" and "famous landmark B." If you take enough pictures on the way to each location, it should be able to figure that out.
Other than that, software projects like photosynth and google street view are massive undertakings and require a great deal of understanding of mathematics, geometry, pattern matching and some terrific coding skills. You likely will not find many alternatives, and something "homebrew" probably won't compete unless you're going to start coding now.
Purchase a GPS logger, carry it with you everywhere while you take pictures. Or even better, buy/rent a camera with GPS built in.
Next, upload your photos into Microsoft Photosynth. http://photosynth.net/
I've seen demos where it can synthesize multiple photos based on GPS data, and present them in a mapping mode where you can 'walk down the street' using your photos, and other people's photos from the area. Not sure what capabilities have been released in this regard, yet, to the general public.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Why bother reinventing the wheel? Google has already done the hard work for you.
Just record your GPS co-ordinates as you travel and then you can do a Google Maps mashup afterwards and people can track your movements through Streetview.
You may want to take a look at Microsoft's Photosynth (usual Microsoft bashing, what about Linux and Mac, I don't want to install silverlight, etc. aside).
What you'll generally find though is that either:
a) You don't shoot enough coverage.
b) You shoot too damn much and it takes forever to upload.
Say you're used to DSLRs. You probably shoot about a 20-30 degree field of coverage at 10mp whenever something interesting comes up.
Your choice is either to shoot as wide as you can... In which case you won't have the detail you're used to when you zoom in on something interesting, leaving it an unidentifiable blur... Or you can take 36 overlapping shots at 10 degree intervals followed by a bunch of vertical passes - but then you're talking 50-100 x 10MP images to upload for every point you shoot from and it takes you half an hour to capture each of them.
Google goes with so low res it'd suck for trying to show people the details of a cool cathedral or whatever else. It's great for figuring out where you are but little more than that. You could shoot 8-10 very wide angle images (14mm lenses on a full frame sensor, etc.) which would get your numbers of files down in exchange for less detail. Still...
Street view takes a picture every 50 feet or so. Simple coverage of say a cathedral will still have you taking about 20 points inside and the same outside.
Even at 8-10 images per location, that's still a couple of hundred... and a few thousand if you want detailed ones. All at say 10MP... That's gigs upon gigs of data to upload, while away (or store on many memory cards) and hours spent doing it... For a single building you want people to be able to truly explore with you.
Or, of course, you just take a few wide shots from a few locations... Photosynth is great for that. But, afterwards, you realize you missed dozens of angles and people can't see that really cool X you remember.
Have a look at this project:
openstreetview.org.uk
The map data is from the Openstreetmap Project.
There's also a discussion going on about openstreetview in the talk mailing list of OSM.
There is this new fangled thing called a "video camera". It takes moving pictures. You can also record a "voice over" describing what you are seeing. I understand that there are even "video cameras" that shoot in "High Definition" and record to something called a "hard disk". Apparently you can even upload your moving pictures, or "videos", to some web site called "YouTube". Try it, you might like it.
You didn't say what countries you'll be visiting, but you should check with the locals before you do much photography. Even where not strictly illegal, you might find yourself answering some pointed questions if the cops see you taking panoramic views of anything even remotely "sensitive".
You'll definitely need a panoramic head, using your tripod head will cause parallax problems: cheap - the Panosaurus, expensive: 360Precision.
The most common lenses for panoramic photography are the Sigma 8mm and the Nikkor 10.5mm, but there's also a Sigma 10mm fisheye.
You can also use your rectilinear kit lens. Check out the VRwave Panoramic Lens Database to find out how many pictures you need for a full 360x180 pano.
Use PTGui or (the free) Hugin to stitch the pics, with manual controls, or Autopano, for (mostly) automatic stitching.
So all he has to do is choose his routes to go places where StreetView has gone, and post his GPS track. Problem solved.
OpenViewProject basically gives you the DIY stuff. At OpenStreetMap we started the OpenStreetPhoto project but that deviated a bit to the creation of area photography and the analysis of existing photos and tagging them with metadata.
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