[HN Gopher] Show HN: Street View Simple - Explore Street View Li...
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       Show HN: Street View Simple - Explore Street View Lidar Data in a
       Browser
        
       Author : callumprentice
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2020-06-02 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (callumprentice.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (callumprentice.github.io)
        
       | jefft255 wrote:
       | That's doesn't properly look like lidar data to me; at least it
       | wouldn't be lidar that is mounted right on the street view car.
       | Maybe they use aerial lidar somehow? Or maybe the resolution is
       | purposefully poor?
        
         | sdan wrote:
         | Yeah, this definitely doesn't look like lidar data... unless
         | its really low quality. The buildings show spatial depth, but
         | the cars and pedestrians are pretty much all in a circle (they
         | have no depth).
        
           | callumprentice wrote:
           | Interesting - I've seen it touted as LiDAR data but since
           | it's all a bit unofficial, I guess it could be anything. I'll
           | see if I can dig up any old articles about it - it's been
           | there for quite some time.
        
           | mthoms wrote:
           | I don't know much about lidar but.. is it possible Google
           | have done this intentionally with some sort of algorithm?
           | After all, pedestrians and vehicles are just "noise" in the
           | context of mapping/visualising streets.
        
         | pantelisk wrote:
         | It is not proper pointclouds, but it is the data used by Street
         | view to highlight if you are looking at a wall, or at a street.
         | It is also used for transitions between one scene to another.
         | 
         | You can see it is very basic 90deg angle geometry, instead of
         | actual pointclouds. Still pretty cool!
         | https://imgur.com/a/EgC0RbN
        
           | callumprentice wrote:
           | FWIW, that's just my own amateurish rendering of the points.
           | The data itself that the Street View API provides is just an
           | array of 3d points.
        
             | pantelisk wrote:
             | Oh yeah, I didn't mean to come off as judgemental or
             | nitpicky. This is fantastic work! And this data can
             | actually be pretty useful, let's say if somebody wanted to
             | build a racing game based on street view, using the
             | boundaries of the street for collisions etc. Too many fun
             | possibilities!
        
       | pj_mukh wrote:
       | This is very cool! I'm thinking the depth data that is captured
       | is of higher resolution. Is that true? Was this limited by the
       | API? Or a limitation of the browser?
       | 
       | Super cool to see this depth data IRL.
        
         | callumprentice wrote:
         | Thank you! As far as I know (it's undocumented) the only source
         | of depth data is very low resolution. The image data (where the
         | color of each point comes from) is much, much higher - shame
         | they're not on par with each other.
        
       | kevinali3 wrote:
       | Is there any software (preferably open source) that can be used
       | to build one's own street views for areas/countries that are not
       | covered by Google?
        
         | callumprentice wrote:
         | I believe you can publish your own images and have them
         | available via Google Maps but I've never done it. This might be
         | a decent starting point:
         | https://www.google.com/streetview/contributors/
        
         | jefft255 wrote:
         | Any photogrammetry software will do the trick. A free one has
         | been shared here recently: https://alicevision.org/ .
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | I've seen a project by OpenStreetMap to upload dashcam images,
         | and a quick search gave me this: https://openstreetcam.org
        
           | windthrown wrote:
           | It started as "OpenStreetView", changed names due to Google,
           | and has had a few different owners but is a continuation of
           | the original project you saw.
        
         | windthrown wrote:
         | The software is not open-source but both Mapillary and
         | OpenStreetCam have very permissive licenses. I contribute to
         | and use both services to improve OpenStreetMap.
         | 
         | Mapillary: https://www.mapillary.com/
         | 
         | OpenStreetCam: https://openstreetcam.org/
        
           | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
           | OpenStreetCam itself isn't quite closed-source: it is on
           | Github. But the app was built on top of Facebook tools, which
           | many people will not want on their phones. See the notorious
           | outstanding Github issue [0]. At least OSC's hard dependency
           | on Google Play Services appears to have been removed, though
           | - last time I looked into installing Mapillary, it still
           | would not run on a bare Android like LineageOS.
           | 
           | [0] https://github.com/openstreetcam/android/issues/8
        
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       (page generated 2020-06-02 23:00 UTC)