"The dataset for this model was acquired within mere 45 minutes by a Pteryx UAV with maximum TOW of 5kg, flying 150m above ground level. The drone carried a consumer grade compact camera (Canon PowerShot S90) and took a total of 541 nadir oriented images. The resultant true 3D model demonstrates Melown Maps ability to capture façades even in the absence of oblique aerial imagery."
The paragraph is about another dataset, not the Brno city dataset.
It's not a startup. It's older than Google, does basically the same (just local), and has been surpassed by Google (in search) only recently. After Google poured millions into web, radio, outdoor and TV advertisement.
Their big advantage is that they are local. The maps (mapy.cz) are superior to Google maps. In what data they provide and in general UX (my opinion). I don't know/use other products.
Even the artefacts are similar, which is not surprising since both maps were created the same way (by flying over the city from different directions). the only difference seems to be that this Czech company is using UAVs and Apple is using helicopters (they showed an helicopter in their promo video, I’m not sure whether they are always using helicopters).
Apple bought the company that made 3D maps like this but I honestly don’t see the need for Google to buy anyone. This seems easy enough to figure out.
Also, Google doesn’t seem to want to do this. Stuff like this has been out there in the wild (even before Apple bought the company) for a long time, so they could have easily picked up the idea a long time ago.
They're most definitely not a startup, they're older than Google and do tons of different things - search engine (with more marketshare than Google last time I checked), news, offline maps for Android and iOS, browser for Android, email, etc.
I think that given that Google already has 3D depth coverage from its street view machines [1], it should be possible to combine that data with some medium resolution overhead 3D scans to create something similar, and likely even higher quality at the street level.
I wonder why Google hasn't done it yet. I don't think there are any real technical limitations. It may be that getting it fast is hard and the usefulness from an end user perspective isn't there yet?
The difference is that Google is using low-res satellite imagery, rather than high-res drone imagery. Maybe that will change now that they've bought Titan Aerospace.
Google uses drone imagery for some cities, San Francisco being one of them, using different angles to create the 3D model of the city, and satellite imagery for the rest of the planet. It's exactly what this company is doing. From what I can see, Google Maps also uses different textures depending on the viewing angle.
I'm not sure why you think it's lower res. It looks about equivalent to me. The trees look a bit odd in Google maps, but the quality of the building windows and cars looks about the same.
Here's a more nuanced theory: The building fronts, cars, etc look great because they are from street view. The roofs, treetops, etc, look terrible, because they are from satellite.
The roofs, treetops, etc. look terrible because the depth data is significantly lower resolution than the photos. This causes the deformed polygons you're seeing... The actual resolution of the photos of the roofs/treetops are just as good as everything else, they're just stretched over bad 3d data.
I don't have any idea what they are using there, but they do pull in a lot of aerial photos from the U.S. government. Those photos are (largely?) taken from piloted planes though.
Does that mean this isn't cool? This is off the hook. Looks very similar to the iPad versions of Berlin.. high-res images quite a smart Level-of-detail differentiating between zoomlevels.
With .bin files (maybe to keep the format closed? are just raw speed?)
If this is done in an automated way they are on to something pretty great.
Also to do this, is really really hard/lots of work. So kudos for that.
I like the idea of bringing back more of the contours into maps once again. The move to flat satelite and Google Maps style stuff has meant the act of being able to navigate based on most efficient effort (e.g across contours not just A to B) is rapidly getting lost.
Based on Seznam's revenue I expect its market cap to be around $1bn., Google wouldn't get much from such deal. The technology is nice, but nothing new and as far as I know Seznam's reach is around 4—5M people (out of 7M internet users in Czech Republic), so fairly small market. — Also, I doubt Ivo (founder) would sell it.
Yet it's super awesome to see Seznam's quality of delivery to local market.
Based on the posts, people think that seznam.cz is a startup and Google will buy it like in 3,2,1. This is complete nonsense. Seznam is far from a startup and I am pretty sure their goal is not to get "only" acquired. Its mapping service is superior to google as far as Czech republic is considered. Well done guys!
Seznam has been around since the 90s! It used to be the default search engine in Czech Republic that whole time, providing not only search but the first email accounts, news, gossip, etc.
The email client UI is stellar, I much prefer it to say, Gmail. The search only applies to looking up companies in Czech Republic, not general searching. And the homepage is adjustable, so you can put whatever theme you want on it. Far from Yahoo (though let's not forget, Yahoo's trying hard to wake up).
Raises an interesting question about whether (and where) Google might be vulnerable to local rivals.
China is the most obvious example where Google simply haven't been allowed to gather mapping data to compete, but it's interesting that there are other places where they can theoretically compete but there are significant local players.
Seznam.cz started very early (in Lycos/Alta/Yahoo era) and there's also difference in the strategy. For Google, Czech republic is just another market area, for Seznam, it's the main area.
There's also South Korea, where the local giant (Naver) has ~70% search market share. (The company is actually making a lot of money in the Asian market from games and the Line messenger, so I think their "local market first" strategy is paying off.)
Incidentally, South Korea also has probably the craziest map data regulations: no map data can leave South Korea. So, if you want to serve map data, your server must be physically in South Korea.
I think they don't have majority in Russia as well. To Yandex I think? With Seznam, it was just two years ago or so that they beat them to first place in search. In neighbouring Slovakia, Google was first long before that. Simply because there was no real competition.
Why does the error message remind me of "This site is only accessible in IE5. Get it [here]"?
In other words, we seem to be rapidly drifting back into the Bad Old Days, when sites were made for a single browser? Not using Firefox? You're SOL. Not using Chrome? You're SOL elsewhere.
Is this different than, Nokia's 3d Maps?
This is Stockholm:
http://here.com/59.3314885,18.0667682,18.9,344,59,3d.day
edit: I see this covers different regions in Czech Republic, whereas Nokia covers some well known cities all over the world.
I find this very impressive. The fact that you can rotate arbitrarily and see correct textures applied to all surfaces of buildings/foliage is amazing.
Can anyone provide any insight into how this is done? Is there a dataset which specifies the detailed 3D layout of the earth? If so, how is it generated? Is there satellite imagery of all possible angles? Is this all automated, or is there a lot of manual work in doing all of this?
Far better than google, bing and apple maps. Nice work, seznam.
Why seznam does non exist in others European languages?
Czech republic is a little market, and if they focus just on Czech republic their economy of scale will be broke very soon. They need investment to update technology, but if their market is so little it became prohibitively expensive very quickly.
Honestly, I'm surprised to see Seznam on HN. I grew up on Czech internet in 90s and Seznam.cz (or "Directory" in English) has been huge for long time until Google has eventually beaten them. The vibe I get here from comments is like as if Seznam.cz is some new hot company while it is really a dying dinosaur like Yahoo.
Maps are not core competency of this company. They are early Internet pioneers maintaining huge portfolio of various services for almost two decades. Maps is just another service they are working on to keep users from leaving them for Google/Youtube, Facebook etc.
Btw, I spoke to Seznam.cz founder briefly once at some business event in Slovakia back in 2000 when I was 17
I do disagree, that Seznam.cz would be a dying company (and not only because i am its spokes person). Maps are a very important part of our product scale. we do a lot to have the best maps in the region - most accurate, most up-to-date and best for users. we are working on our own Panorama, 3D maps like these 8 already revealed for the whole Czech Republic. and we have an awsome app for maps with on-line data for the whole Czech Republic. Is constant innovation a sign of a dying firm?
A company whose frontpage looks like Yahoo cca 2000? "Constant innovation", right. More like "very much constant, always playing catch-up, and moping over long-gone glory of the 90s."
To sum it up with Wikipedia-like markup: "Most accurate [citation-needed], most up-to-date [citation-needed], best for users [says-who]."
Sad, mostly. "Okay, the game is over and we have won, we are the king of the internet, no need to do anything anymore. (Internet ends at the border, btw)" This was 15 years ago.
Hi, exactly, I would say that among Czech internet companies, Seznam makes the best (and most innovative) products. And I think it's quite cool that you're able to compete with Google.
Comparing Seznam to a dying dinousaur is extremely misguided. In terms of innovation and poduct quality, they're doing very well. They're slowly losing their search market share because it's hard to compete with Google but that doesn't mean they're dying. Also, it's the most attractive Czech IT company for employees.
I interpret innovation as breaking some new ground, doing something that has not been done before. Does any of the things you enumerated really do that?
The Norwegian site Finn.no got 3D maps that looked exactly like this back in 2008. [0]
As the link explains, the technology originates from the Swedish air force, and was meant to guide missiles through urban landscapes. It was since commercialized for civilian uses by the company C3 Technologies.
C3 Technologies has been acquired by Apple, and they are using the technology in their maps apps (iOS and OS X). I think it's unlikely that Apple would license this technology to Seznam.
The model is calculated from aerial photographs. The software for this was made by Melown Maps, a Czech computer vision company. See their website http://www.melown.com/maps for more models.
Complex meshes and photographic tiles are often used in flight sims, but the difference here is super accurate placement of buildings I guess (being a map). Here's a nice example of aerofly FS:
88 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadThe software for that is made by Citationtech, which has the same founder/owner as Seznam (Ivo Lukačovič).
https://www.google.cz/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Pter...
The paragraph is about another dataset, not the Brno city dataset.
Also I wouldn't characterize it as a "start-up", it's one of the biggest Czech companies.
Their big advantage is that they are local. The maps (mapy.cz) are superior to Google maps. In what data they provide and in general UX (my opinion). I don't know/use other products.
Check it out,: http://i.imgur.com/o80D3gr.jpg
Even the artefacts are similar, which is not surprising since both maps were created the same way (by flying over the city from different directions). the only difference seems to be that this Czech company is using UAVs and Apple is using helicopters (they showed an helicopter in their promo video, I’m not sure whether they are always using helicopters).
Apple bought the company that made 3D maps like this but I honestly don’t see the need for Google to buy anyone. This seems easy enough to figure out.
Also, Google doesn’t seem to want to do this. Stuff like this has been out there in the wild (even before Apple bought the company) for a long time, so they could have easily picked up the idea a long time ago.
have they actually scanned this? or are they generating this from google maps imagery?
I wonder why Google hasn't done it yet. I don't think there are any real technical limitations. It may be that getting it fast is hard and the usefulness from an end user perspective isn't there yet?
[1] http://gizmodo.com/depth-maps-hidden-in-google-street-view-c...
Check out https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.7623... and rotate the image. Check out the trees to see the seams of the different pictures used to create the textures/models.
http://i.imgur.com/qCEE7cB.jpg
(updated screenshot to be from the same angle you have)
I don't have any idea what they are using there, but they do pull in a lot of aerial photos from the U.S. government. Those photos are (largely?) taken from piloted planes though.
If this is done in an automated way they are on to something pretty great.
Also to do this, is really really hard/lots of work. So kudos for that.
I like the idea of bringing back more of the contours into maps once again. The move to flat satelite and Google Maps style stuff has meant the act of being able to navigate based on most efficient effort (e.g across contours not just A to B) is rapidly getting lost.
https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-outdoors/
https://www.komoot.de/plan
I'm not sure how much it takes the elevations into account during the planning.
Yet it's super awesome to see Seznam's quality of delivery to local market.
China is the most obvious example where Google simply haven't been allowed to gather mapping data to compete, but it's interesting that there are other places where they can theoretically compete but there are significant local players.
Incidentally, South Korea also has probably the craziest map data regulations: no map data can leave South Korea. So, if you want to serve map data, your server must be physically in South Korea.
http://beta.mapy.cz/3d?x=16.5301666&y=49.1886081&z=13&source...
I don't want the back button to navigate the map!
In other words, we seem to be rapidly drifting back into the Bad Old Days, when sites were made for a single browser? Not using Firefox? You're SOL. Not using Chrome? You're SOL elsewhere.
They experiment a TON, all the time.
Nice to see it can be done with a single UAV and camera. Is there any open source software doing this?
Can anyone provide any insight into how this is done? Is there a dataset which specifies the detailed 3D layout of the earth? If so, how is it generated? Is there satellite imagery of all possible angles? Is this all automated, or is there a lot of manual work in doing all of this?
Why seznam does non exist in others European languages?
Czech republic is a little market, and if they focus just on Czech republic their economy of scale will be broke very soon. They need investment to update technology, but if their market is so little it became prohibitively expensive very quickly.
Maps are not core competency of this company. They are early Internet pioneers maintaining huge portfolio of various services for almost two decades. Maps is just another service they are working on to keep users from leaving them for Google/Youtube, Facebook etc.
Btw, I spoke to Seznam.cz founder briefly once at some business event in Slovakia back in 2000 when I was 17
edit: their maps are created by Melown.com, see example https://www.melown.com/maps/
To sum it up with Wikipedia-like markup: "Most accurate [citation-needed], most up-to-date [citation-needed], best for users [says-who]."
Are you looking for an Android dev btw ;) ?
As the link explains, the technology originates from the Swedish air force, and was meant to guide missiles through urban landscapes. It was since commercialized for civilian uses by the company C3 Technologies.
This looks like it's exactly the same technology.
[0]: http://labs.finn.no/sesam-3d-map-3d-revolution-the-people/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13tQZczBbHw