It's the Real World -- With Google Maps Layered on Top (wsj.com)

Google has started to roll out augmented reality navigation feature in its Maps app for some users. The company told the Wall Street Journal that the walking-focused feature will be available shortly, but only to Local Guides (community reviewers) at first. The feature will need "more testing" before it's available to everyone else, Google said. Still, this suggests AR route-finding is much closer to becoming a practical reality. Google Maps uses GPS to get a basic idea of where you are, and then relies on the camera to get a much more exact location with 3D arrows hovering over the places you need to turn. Notably, though, Google doesn't want you to rely too heavily on AR to get around.

Comments

I want a speed run instead

[SuperKendall]

Although the AR thing sounds like a nice gimmick, I think what would be really useful is something Google could deliver pretty easily - a speed run as it were, a fast video showing me traveling the whole route (street map style view) in about 30 seconds or so, that I could play at any time. I think that would give me just enough visual heads up about what it looks like around where I should turn, without taking up any of my mental processing time while I am actually walking/driving.

Re:I want a speed run instead

[froggyjojodaddy]

This is a cool idea! When I'm walking around a new city, especially downtown, I hate having to keep referring to my phone at each turn. I'm terrible with directions, I don't know why but I often can only deal with one or two streets worth of direction at any time. I can recite annual performance metrics going back years at a whim, or recall the prices of menu items from 2 hours ago but when it comes to directions, my memory span is literally seconds.

Your suggestion would make walking around so much easier

Re: I want a speed run instead

[Anonymous Coward]

I am totally the same way . If you ask me to give you a password code; no problem. However if you ask me my right or left I have to think about that. Yes that feature would be nice

Re:I want a speed run instead

[BringsApples]

I don't get it, does the google maps app, that reads aloud the directions in real-time, not do the same thing when walking around?

Re:I want a speed run instead

[fahrbot-bot]

I think what would be really useful is something Google could deliver pretty easily - a speed run as it were, a fast video showing me traveling the whole route (street map style view) in about 30 seconds or so, ...

And... now we know SuperKendall is Quicksilver IRL.

Non-Paywall link

[technix4beos]

http://archive.is/9kBNn

The AR Told me too ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that a great many proles drive off cliffs and so forth because "the GPS told them so" and that they did not believe the posted signs.

Now I suppose we will have proles walking into traffic and falling down manholes because the "AR GPS told them so".

This explains why the "limited roll-out" is only in areas surrounding Level 1 Trauma centers ...

Re:The AR Told me too ...

[DickBreath]

It is a simple way for the machines to get rid of the humans.

Some say the robots will create enough wealth to feed all the unemployed.
I say the robots will create enough unemployed to feed the robots.

Re:The AR Told me too ...

[jellomizer]

How many people actually have driven themselves into danger because they followed the GPS over their common sense.

Now I can see accidents because someone was staring at the GPS Screen for too long and not on the road, but ignoring do not enter signs, or going off road confident in the GPS map, that you are willing to drive off a cliff, doesn't seem likely. And besides some bad Sci-Fi stories, I havn't heard much about that. I have heard stories of people getting lost on a long driveway thinking it was a road (They use to do that with paper maps too) or getting lost, because the GPS map didn't give them the last mile road to get to that location. But not driving off the cliff because the GPS told them so.

Re:The AR Told me too ...

[mentil]

I've driven in some hilly areas of the Rockies with frequent sudden elevation changes. There are parts where the road looks like a cliff, and other parts where the cliff looks like road. Think of a non-grid winding area with lots of intersections and hills, with an intersection frequently being at the top of a hill. The 'cliff' might be more like an embankment that goes down 20 feet, though.

Re:The AR Told me too ...

[mentil]

And of course there was no signage or guardrails.

Haven't seen it yet

[Zontar The Mindless]

And I'm a Local Guide in 3 different regions, one of them in the US.

Unreal

[ISoldat53]

I'd rather have an unreal world with Google Maps layered on top of it.

How is this useful?

[drinkypoo]

If I had an Android-powered eyetap device, it might make sense. But who wants to look through their phone as they walk around? We already refer to people who walk around while looking at their phones as zombies, now they're going to have to adopt the classic arms-forward stance in the bargain?

Where this would actually be useful would be in vehicles with a HUD. But AFAIK, there are no cars with a full-window HUD, they can only project into a small area. Some of them are configurable, but none are configurable to the full windscreen, that I know of anyway.

Are there any aftermarket full-windscreen HUDs? There are obvious reasons why that would be hazardous, of course. Perhaps the display itself should refuse to cover more than 10% of the windscreen with graphics at once, or similar.

Re:How is this useful?

[mark-t]

They tried that with Google Glass, but many users found that they were getting assaulted by people that were paranoid about being recorded.

It's obvious that eyewear, where as some kind of augmented reality headgear that you wear which covers your eyes, or embedded directly into glasses or even contact lenses is going to be the most useful hardware implementation of this tech, but what can you do when society doesn't want to adopt it because of preconceptions they have about how the technology might be getting used by early adopters?

Re:How is this useful?

[drinkypoo]

what can you do when society doesn't want to adopt it because of preconceptions they have about how the technology might be getting used by early adopters?

First and foremost, don't make it look stupid. There's plenty of almost-normal looking sunglasses with cameras built in. Nobody wants to look like a goddamn gargoyle.

10 years of active AR development...

[fortythirteen]

... and it's still gimmicky bullshit. The company LayAR built almost the exact same thing in 2010! They pivoted to the same old "put a 3D model on a picture" gimmick that was done for the Lego store in 2011.

Key is visual, not logical

[SuperKendall]

I don't get it, does the google maps app, that reads aloud the directions in real-time, not do the same thing when walking around?

Yeah it says "turn left here" or "go forward 400 feet".

While logically useful I find it distracting, and don't have a good feel for if I'm walking two or four blocks (especially in a city I do not know how large blocks are).

A quick visual run-through paired with instructions like "turn left here" would be fantastic, because I'd know to be ready for a turn a while before I reached it, and also be aware of any potentially confusing intersections that were in store for me to be is the right position earlier (when driving).

A lot of people just process information better visually anyway, so it would have that benefit as well..

Re:Key is visual, not logical

[BringsApples]

If you're already dissatisfied with the technology that tells you to "turn here" or "turn in 400 feet", you'll surely be dissatisfied with a fast-walk-through of an out-of-date part of google's maps. What ever happened to the good ole days of asking for directions? Like, if google maps tells you "turn left in 400 feet" you could simply ask someone near you, "How far is 400 feet?" :p

Re:Key is visual, not logical

[RespekMyAthorati]

What ever happened to the good ole days of asking for directions?

Most /.ers are male, and a man would rather be lost for days than ask for directions.

Re:Key is visual, not logical

[BringsApples]

I guess you're a woman. Most women aren't good at sensing humor. The men around here say, "WOOOSH!" a lot.

Privacy nuts will balk at this

[Anonymous Coward]

I guarantee privacy folks will balk at this, even within a business district. Its still a bit of a gimmicky thing as it couldn't possibly be updated enough for accuracy. Whatever happened to people wondering around and exploring? Do we have to plan out every step we take?

Will there be something like this for Mass Transit

[pgmrdlm]

I use google maps now for catching mass transit. The schedule, times, and stops are pretty much on target. But it would be nice if google maps was a little quicker in announcing your stop coming up. Actually, I would like to see Google Maps announcing each stop. Not all Mass transit vehicles have the feature turned on to announce next stop.

Try augmenting the 2D viewport, first

[Baby Duck]

Google Maps have yet to fully augment the 2D image of the map that's currently viewable on your screen. Google developers minds are still stuck too closely to the paper maps they're modelling.

A paper map weakness: you can only print the name of the street so many times. One visually finds the line representing the road they want. Then they have to trace their finger up or down that line to find the printed name. Then they can return back to the point on the map they're interested in.

The mobile app still relies on this "hunting" model. It's worse, in that you sometimes have to scroll several screen lengths to find the street name. Each screen repaint can potentially take a long time on a slow connection, as the device struggles to pull up EVERYTHING about the new viewport, which is way, waaaay more than just that one street name you're trying to find. When you do find it, you will have to do more scrolling/zooming to get back to where you came from, which depending on caching, can cause more repaints and network hops.

The app needs to MOVE the names of every street to match the viewport. NOT make you fiddle with the viewport to match the street name. If the line density is high, there needs to be a gesture to reveal/hide street names around your finger without causing a change to the viewport.

Thank FSM

[mentil]

Last year I tried to use Apple Maps while walking around. It only updates direction via GPS movement so you have to walk a ways in one direction for the arrow to change direction. Took me a while before I was sure I was even walking the right direction. Had to keep looking up to avoid walking into stuff, and down to make sure I was going the right way as it slowly updated. Doesn't help I'm terrible with maps. If self-driving tech wasn't coming so soon, I'd ask for a HUD version of this (perhaps via Google Glass).

Put back the compass rose instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Google, rather than adding features which aren't legal to use while driving, how about adding back the recently deleted compass rose (which is a feature that's actually necessary to make the Navigator function usable in unfamiliar neighborhoods). Is deleting the compass function a bug or a did someone(who was probably never a Boy Scout) think they could navigate using a app which doesn't have a compass but which gives compass relative directions?

In the last update of Google Maps for Android, I noticed that the little red pointer that points north is no longer present when Maps switches to Navigator mode. This sometimes makes the first navigation step a bit difficult. Until you start moving, up is always north. This makes it difficult to know which way to turn if you're not sure which way is north because the first instruction is always something like "head north on Main St to First St", and the map doesn't orient itself until you've moved about 25 feet. You have to exit out of Navigation mode to get the compass rose back, and then restart navigation mode (which isn't always a single click depending how how you get the destination into the app originally).

Re:Will there be something like this for Mass Tran

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the stop moved from where it was when you got off there yesterday?

My word!

Clever marketing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google gets more street view coverage... and can peer into places it hasn't before. oh, and handy AR for the sheeple!

Re:Will there be something like this for Mass Tran

[pgmrdlm]

Actually, with an all day pass for the same price of a ride to work. I might use mass transit to go places where I do not know the stops.

chuckle, but what if I fall asleep. Trust me, I see plenty of people zzzzzzzzzzzn out on the Bus every morning.