105 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] thread
The loading speed is pretty impressive! I can pan and zoom around crazy fast and load the full resolution views nearly instantly.
It's like Google Maps, but you're inside the earth pinned at the center and the images are projected onto the sphere. They load in tiles, so it's trivial to get it to be this fast.
Not sure if "trivial" is a good word.

Sure you may publish a JS library on NPM to prove it is sooo simple?

Looking into the source, it looks like it uses krpano.
I meant trivial as in "is a solved issue" in the sense that you only have to include a library like Pannellum [0].

Features:

- Equirectangular, partial, cubic, and multi-resolution panoramas

- WebGL and CSS 3D based renderers

- Hot spots / tours

- Compass headings

- Plug-in free

- Framework free

- Video support

[0] https://github.com/mpetroff/pannellum

Incredible. I can't believe how detailed it is.
Truly stunning that I can read license plates on cars!
well, it didn't take very long to find a naked guy (not PARTICULARLY revealing thankfully, in the building that says THE EPIC)

there's a guy working out on a peloton or similar on his balcony. Can you find him?!

This would be really neat to do again in the summer, when presumably(?) the roof decks are full of people. The rooflines are pretty desolate looking right now.

> do again in the summer

I'm pretty sure EarthCam does this daily.

This could be the world's biggest Where's Waldo game. Someone should dress as him the next time this takes a photo.
And here I was, just wasting my time looking at the bolts in the building (180 degrees from the opening shot).
(comment deleted)
So funny, I saw that dude right away and came here to post about that.
I found a telescope in the building, and after your suggestion, I observed the guy.
Dang, you beat me to it, I was just about to post about the naked guy I found ;)
Apparently the camera can stream live video: https://www.earthcam.net/products/gigapixelcamx80.php

There would probably be some privacy issues with streaming a city live though

Would love to know how much it costs
> The GigapixelCam X80 is $24,995 as fitted, but if a client does not need a robotic version, those are less expensive. EarthCam’s line starts at $1,900 for a time-lapse camera with solar power and goes up from there.

https://petapixel.com/2021/04/27/this-120-gigapixel-photo-is...

Price seems cheap compared to what can be done with it especially in homeland security applications
I don't really understand the use case.

I feel like if I'd be a potential buyer of such a camera I'd also be in the position to install many cameras in many places and get a better perspective.

What's this give you? Passive iris scanning at a distance maybe? An ability to read people's phone screens? What's the problem this is solving?

It’s a snapshot of a moment of time. I think we all agree it’s useful to have photos of different places from different eras, right?

I mean at its most fundamental level, this is a future historical document. It’s easy to imagine why that is “useful” or “what problems it solves.”

Think way more boring. On that page linked above, towards the bottom they show various construction project management integrations and use cases.
This is the real enterprise use. I've worked on multiple Earth Cam integrations on NYC high rise construction projects. Honestly wasn't fun to integrate, and the integration (at least in 2008-2016 were all over Java. They might have updated since then, but the purpose was mostly for "toy" integrations so that condo purchasers could watch the construction on their new multi million dollar home years before they get to move in.

I'm fairly certain it was never really used by customers, but the executive team LOVED it, so any time the API failed (usually needed to upgrade the API client because of a breaking change), it was an all hands on deck and a middle of the night/weekend patch.

I'd love a sky cam that could find me an open parking space.
And the likelihood of you getting it before someone else who exhibits looking-for-parking behavior.
This photo is a composite. It wouldn't live stream at this resolution. So at this distance there wouldn't be any privacy implications
That really depends on what you would call a live stream and how fast the camera can cover the whole panosphere. Having the whole image updated every minute (probably not realistic for this resolution) could still be considered a live stream.

And the distance doesn't really help the privacy implications if the resolution is big enough that you can zoom in far enough to identify individual humans. Then again, expectations of privacy outside and at locations visible from outside are probably going to be violated at some point anyway.

[flagged]
Welp, that's a first for me on this website.
Genuinely curious what was said. They had +5 it appears…which is even more concerning..
You can enable showdead in your user settings if you want to see [dead] comments.
I didn’t see him but someone who looks like Rick Astley was performing on stage there
(comment deleted)
Yeah not cool here. Leave that for Reddit.
You're not wrong. But these kind of reposts should be held to the same standard.
Nothing wrong with reposts when they generate new discussion. At least submissions for this domain didn't seem to take off before so many people would not have seen it yet.
Didn’t think this was going to be too impressive. Then I started zooming, and realized how many people I could spy on in their windows and in the streets.
Still looks kinda blurry when you zoom in all the way
Depending on the distance, you’re likely seeing atmospheric distortion from stuff like heat shimmer.
I was implying it would be good to have a zoom limit so the image is sharp at max zoom
All the technicalities aside, this is beautiful.
Very impressive but it’s just south of 34th Street, so I can’t look in my own window.
Crazy thing is that this is like only half of New York City, south of 34th street. Basically all of midtown is north of this with some of the most impressive buildings and density. Nevermind uptown, the Bronx, and Queens. Unless I'm missing someway to look north.
"This is like only half of Manhattan, one of 5 city boroughs" would be more accurate

Though to be fair, most people _do_ associate Manhattan with NYC

When you’re in Brooklyn, you still say “going in to the city” to mean Manhattan.
I live in Brooklyn and I just say I'm going to Manhattan if I am going to Manhattan.
having lived in queens for long time, I agree, I usually would say Manhattan though, tbh, I'd sometimes make fun of someone and just say "the big city" when they are reluctant to go into manhattan for whatever reason
Live in Brooklyn, can confirm. I don't like it, but this is how people talk about Manhattan.
Born and raised in Manhattan. Live in Brooklyn. When I’m returning home I say I’m “going back to the city”. When I’m in Brooklyn going to Manhattan I say “going into the city”.
The near stuff is incredibly detailed as well! Look backwards at the building the photo is taken from and you can read labels on the bolts and see flakes of rust on the grate below.
Needs a (2021) label.

Taken in early March 2021, judging by the movies playing at the IFC.

It's actually a 120 gigapixel image. It was taken with a 61 megapixel Sony a7R IV and Sony 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G lens with a robotic housing.

https://petapixel.com/2021/04/27/this-120-gigapixel-photo-is...

Anywhere to download the original image? Be a cool wallpaper :)
How many pixels a stitched panorama has is not as clear cut I guess. Just because you stitch a panorama at a certain size does not mean that you actually have information for that much resolution - and it's hard to say what size you should stitch at since, for any notrivial panorama, how many source pixels contribute to an area in the output will vary greatly depending on where on the panorama you are looking at due to the nonlinear transforms involved. E.g. stiching an equirectangular projection from ~rectilinear source images will give you much more resolution at the center line compared to the top/bottom, which are just one point stretched across the whole width (for a panorama covering the whole 180 vertical angles).

Then there is also the question of what the source resoltion actually is - most commonly the quoted resolution of a camera (i.e. the "Megapixels" on the maketing material) is usually the number of sensor "pixels" but each of those is only a single color so the resulting image won't really have that many RGB pixels of information even if it is developed at that resolution - the will be quite a bit filled in by interpolation.

Then there is resolution loss from suboptimal focus due to needing to cover a large distance range, lens imperfections or just the air when things are far enough away.

So while the resulting image might have 120 000 000 000 pixels, it might not actually have more than 80 000 000 000 pixels worth of information. That's not to say it isn't impressive, just trying to point out that a simple gigapixel number might not actually say what you might think.

(comment deleted)
Crazy you're able to see Metlife Stadium and make out planes at EWR
Some kind of barrels on almost every roof. What are those?
Water tanks to supply the buildings
hmm why do they need water tanks? I thought city supplies the water etc.. Or they are only required for large buildings because of pressure?
NYC underground water pipes are very old and run at low pressure. Buildings above a certain height need to pump water to roof and then gravity feed it.

If you search NYC water tanks on YouTube there are some good documentaries of the companies that build them.

The latter. These tanks are still supplied by the municipal water system but storing it in the tanks allow for consistent water pressure in tall buildings.
(comment deleted)
I wonder how long it took? If it's fast, it would be scary, imagine taking picture of crowds...
I'd guess 10 minutes up to an hour on modern hardware, say a new mac studio. That would be in lightroom - I'm guessing they're using optimized software for this though.

Taking the actual pictures takes at least couple minutes. The Sony A1 can take 50mp shots at 20 fps - pretty amazing. That's (conveniently) 1 gigapixel per second. So minimum 2 minutes to capture this entire image. Add at least a second between shots for the robotic housing and we're talking 4+ minutes.

Could certainly be used to capture most of the faces in a huge crowd.

You should add a cache rule for those image tiles
(comment deleted)
Am I the only one who found the two naked people?
Yes. The rest us are pure of heart ;)
do tell. i've been searching for flesh! ;-)