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.

Re:I guess....

[Colz Grigor]

No one from VA needs to confirm that 100% of /.'s audience is international. It's a known fact!

Now, were you trying to suggest that a majority of /.'s audience resides outside of the U.S.? That's a bit different...

::Colz Grigor

At least google earth works

[Prikolist]

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.

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 /.-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.

Google Earth Beaten?

[MrMista_B]

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.

mnb Re:Illegal in the States?

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Game mods

[Quarters]

Probably never. Even if the resolution was adequate (which it isn't) and you could somehow extrapolate street level views from aerial photography (you can't) there are still the issues of photo retouching and missing information for stacked spaces. Unless the plane could somehow magically photography the entire city at predetermined times of day and days of the year so that all of the images were lit identically and cast shadows in the same direction/length there would be an astronomical amount of work needed to retouch the source data for continuity. On top of lighting and shadows you'd have to remove all representations of people and cars, etc.. from the source data. Assuming you could get all of that done there's still the problem of missing data from stacked surfaces; tunnels, elevated trains, subways, overpasses, building interiors, etc... None of those spaces can be represented via extrapolated aerial photographs.

With the amount of dataset rework / additional work that would be necessary to create an artistically pleasing & competitive game with such data it will be a long long time before you see it even coming close to being more cost effective than hand creating a world to fit a game's specific needs.

Re:google hate

[Koiu Lpoi]

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.

Re:Game mods

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, one person in every school has done something similar for at least one game in his/her time, regardless of the specific tech involved... and more have thought of the idea. It's about as harmless at it comes. Those ideas are mostly completely innocent in the minds of those kids.

Re:Game mods

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right if you assume that one wants a perfect representation directly derived just from the aerial photos, but that's not necessarily the case. From the aerial photos you can reconstruct an approximate 3D model of the facade of the buildings (by making assumptions about where shadows are or by combining multiple photos from different perspective) and derive a unifromly lit texture for the building. It's not all that difficult with buildings since those tend to be symmetrical and have lots of repeating structures, i.e. the windows tend to be of equal size and shape. The street-level details may be mostly visible if you have multiple photos and wide streets with buildings of limited height. For a game it would probably be enough to construct all the missing details algorithmically, and only add the "real" details from ground level photos or hand-built 3d models where famous sights are found or where the game plot requires it. I'd say such "close enough" game levels will be available within 3-5 years.

Re:Game mods

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if it's not perfect for street level? It would be awesome for a flight simulator.