[HN Gopher] Google Earth 3D Models Now Available as Open Standar...
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Google Earth 3D Models Now Available as Open Standard (GlTF)
Author : OmarShehata
Score : 414 points
Date : 2023-05-11 01:37 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cloud.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cloud.google.com)
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I live in Venice. The picture on the main page is St.Mark's
| Square, and "Focaccia e Figioli" does not exist there. There's
| Cafe Florian [0], the oldest cafe in the world - ops, I stand
| corrected, the oldest in Italy and one of the oldest in the
| world.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_Florian
| londons_explore wrote:
| Does this tiling data support overhangs and holes? For example,
| could it accurately model the Arc de Triomphe and let me fly
| 'under' the arch?
|
| Other approaches I've seen are effectively just a 2D map with a
| height per pixel, which is okayish for mountains, but quickly
| looks bad when you model human structures like bridges.
| pheelicks wrote:
| Yes, I've tried it with the Eiffel Tower. You can see overhangs
| on the tv tower at the start of this demo
| https://3dtiles.carto.com/
| pheelicks wrote:
| I was involved in building the interactive story map using
| deck.gl that you can view at https://3dtiles.carto.com
|
| It's really cool to have access to all this amazing data! Shout
| out to Google for working with us to bring support to multiple
| open source rendering engines.
|
| Happy to answer any questions
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I know nothing about GITF, but I wonder if Microsoft Flight Sim
| could automatically read these files in to overwrite the default
| Microsoft scenery.
|
| I have some scenery add-ons that are just a manual conversion of
| Google Earth's 3D models for some cities that were just generic
| buildings in Microsoft's version (ex. Dallas)
| andybak wrote:
| It's actually G(L)TF but in this case it's really 3D Tiles (a
| related format that uses GLTF)
| https://www.ogc.org/standard/3dtiles/
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I see, that is an unnecessarily confusing naming convention
| in the title.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I've never seen it stylized that way. Officially, it's
| "glTF", but people frequently use "gltf" or "GLTF" without
| confusion.
| dagmx wrote:
| Stands for GL Transmission Format if that helps.
| jss326 wrote:
| Im really happy with this, trying to implement this now for the
| startup Im working at. Unfortunately, the URIs in the request
| don't seem to follow the OGC (https://portal.ogc.org/files/102132
| - When the URI is relative, its base is always relative to the
| referring tileset JSON file.) I'm using a custom viewer that does
| not seem to handle these URIs well...
| gabereiser wrote:
| Where's Patrick Cozzi? This is huge! Cozzi and Cestium helped
| define the whole glTF and glb formats (which are good!). Kudos to
| the Google Earth team for doing this. This is going to help in
| the simulation space so much!!!
| luke-stanley wrote:
| Am I the only one unimpressed with the quality? The render
| quality and the buffering is poor, it's not quite photorealistic
| as they claim, it might be possible to render it nicely such that
| it is photoreal but that's not what they are showing in their own
| videos. Stablediffusion and Controlnet exist but what this needs
| is probably just some better sampling and attention to
| preloading.
| circuit10 wrote:
| It's much better than anything that was publicly available
| before
| andybak wrote:
| I refer the honorable gentleperson to my answer elsewhere on
| this page:
|
| > Not to pull the whole "Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is
| Happy" on you but pause to consider the sheer scale of the
| dataset. 2500 cities have geometry data to the level where you
| can see details on individual buildings for areas extending
| well out into the suburbs.
|
| > Yes - it's blurred up close but my god, isn't it still
| amazing?
| jakecopp wrote:
| Open Standard != open license, in case you the title also made
| you think that!
| bilekas wrote:
| The title certainly wouldn't make you think that..
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Didn't Meshwerks v. Toyota Motor Sales U.S. rule that 3d
| reproductions of real life objects don't pass the threshold of
| originality for copyright?
| a1371 wrote:
| I want to point everyone to the "No creating content" clause of
| the terms. I don't fully understand it but I think it'll
| substantially limit what can be done.
| qwertox wrote:
| So these are the usage limits [0]:
|
| ---
|
| 2D Tiles and Street View tiles
|
| Maximum 6,000 queries per day, calculated as the sum of all
| requests for all applications using the credentials of the same
| project.
|
| ---
|
| Photorealistic 3D Tiles
|
| Maximum 300 root tileset queries ["map-loads"] per day. This is
| calculated as the sum of all requests for all applications using
| the credentials of the same project.
|
| Maximum 250,000 renderer's tile requests per day. This is
| calculated as the sum of all requests for all applications using
| the credentials of the same project.
|
| Rate limit is 12,000 queries per minute for the tile renderer.
|
| ---
|
| The Map Tiles API documentation does not contain a "Usage and
| Billing" section, which seems to imply that it is free to use,
| bound to the above mentioned limits.
|
| So the only thing to worry about is how Google showed us couple
| of years ago how relentless it starts to charge for a previously
| free service -- the Google Maps Javascript API -- after it sees
| that enough developers got technically invested into Google Maps.
|
| If you open the inspector on any of the examples [1] you'll see
| how many tile fetches it triggers per second.
|
| While my comment contains some criticism, I'm really excited for
| this new offering.
|
| [0]
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/usage_...
|
| [1] https://storage.googleapis.com/gmp-maps-
| demos/3d-tiles/index...
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Is anyone else getting "service unavailable" on that first
| link?
| londons_explore wrote:
| They aren't hiding the fact they'll charge for it one day.
|
| I wish they'd say upfront how much any 'forever free' allowance
| would be. Then I could design my application with that in mind.
|
| I can see however that they want to see how users end up using
| it before deciding what any free allowance should be.
| andybak wrote:
| In some cases making users supply their own API key is the
| best solution - although it does put a fairly high bar on
| both commitment and technical understanding. (the latter
| mainly because the Google API UI is so damn complex!)
| moffkalast wrote:
| > making users supply their own API key is the best
| solution
|
| Ah I like those applications, I like to wave at them as I
| close the tab.
| andybak wrote:
| I'd rather an application existed and asked me to use my
| own key than the developer thought "bugger that. I won't
| bother" and never built it.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I'd rather that dev not waste their time on something
| that won't be used much, and go do something more
| productive.
| andybak wrote:
| Rather depends. Are you paying those devs?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >Ah I like those applications, I like to wave at them as
| I close the tab.
|
| I feel the same way about applications that ask payment.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I kinda wish Google supported this better - they should
| make a new flow for opensource/free software where an oauth
| dialog is shown where the user is asked if the application
| can do billable things - and obviously the consent dialog
| would allow you to choose how much, if anything, you want
| to spend on API requests.
|
| This lets opensource and free/hobby projects use all google
| API's with the actual users footing the bill directly. And
| obviously most uses are only a cent or two, so will
| normally fall in free allowances.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That would be awesome, but it would also make it way
| harder for Google to offer a free tier in the first
| place. 300 free queries per user per day is a _lot_ more
| than 300 free queries per _developer_ per day, so it
| might be a mistake to make that usage pattern even
| _easier_.
|
| Though maybe they could just place way stricter limits on
| requests placed via API tokens obtained this way? That
| would probably work. But it would also sort of defeat the
| purpose of having users use their own API tokens. If
| everyone's going to need to pay to use your app anyway,
| you can just have them pay you to use your API token and
| gain an easy source of monetization in the process.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| For FLOSS use cases, the author may not want to deal with
| everything that comes from collecting money from people.
| So it's still useful to let users pay Google directly for
| their usage.
| prhrb wrote:
| Title is misleading
| bilekas wrote:
| Sorry but how exactly? There is another comment too that hints
| towards this sentiment but I really don't know how you can
| mistake "open standard".
| pasmafaute wrote:
| I understand many people are familiar with what "open
| standard" means. There are lots of other people that are
| somewhat new to the phrase.
|
| Consider these related terms:
|
| - Open Source
|
| - Open Data
|
| - Open Standard
|
| For people who encounter these terms in the listed order,
| "Open Standard" may or may not be understood by analogy. Some
| people will assume that it also includes the concepts of Open
| Source and Open Data. It does not.
| vore wrote:
| In what way?
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/use-re...
| Photorealistic 3D Tiles are in the OGC standard glTF format,
| meaning you can use any renderer that supports the OGC 3D Tiles
| spec to build your 3D visualizations.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| Not the OP, but the editorialized title (please don't do
| that) seems to suggest that it's freely available, which it
| is not.
| hoseja wrote:
| Lately, when I browse google maps, even in 2D, it seems to load
| not in square tiles but weirdly shaped polygons. Has anyone
| noticed this?
| mthoms wrote:
| Does anyone know how the Aerial View API would work with billing?
|
| That is, can you cache the URL of the generated video and embed
| that for your users? Or, would you need to make a new request for
| the same video on every page-view?
| dimatura wrote:
| This is very cool. I remember during my PhD I briefly
| investigated using these 3D models for synthetic data generation,
| but there was no straightforward, non-shady way of going about
| it.
| sl0wik wrote:
| It looks like Aerial View API is working only in US. With any
| address outside US I'm getting "Address not supported".
| qwertox wrote:
| > It's currently available for US postal addresses, with more
| countries to come in the future.
|
| At the bottom of the page below "Get started with Aerial View"
|
| https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/create-...
| jonplackett wrote:
| Free... in the experimental phase.
|
| Then it'll probably be super expensive
| andybak wrote:
| If they are genuinely aiming for mass market applications like
| gaming and AR then it can't be too expensive. Their last
| attempt at this was a flop because they had no open sign up and
| "call us for pricing" bullshit.
|
| This looks like they might have come to their senses.
| folli wrote:
| I just made a proof of concept integration of the new model for
| my GPS visualization app (I call it the 'high res mode'):
|
| https://cubetrek.com/static/highresmode.html
| jatorre wrote:
| Having Google followed an OGC standard is an incredible good step
| forward for the google maps ecosystem. This can really speed up
| developments on the clients side. It was not that useful to have
| the best client if there was always a place where the data looked
| better. Kudos to google.
| searchfan wrote:
| This is super interesting. Does anyone have any clues as to what
| kinds of integrations We'll begin to see first? I'm envisioning
| tons in the long-term.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Seeing Porto demo was great, nice quality.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Maybe FlightGear could make use of that ?
| anthk wrote:
| Custom Flightgear builds could already use GMaps' scenery, but
| not models.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Looking forward to MSFS refusing to use this because it's not
| Bing.
| andybak wrote:
| Bing has been stuck with the same handful of 3d cities for
| about 4 years. Seemingly no effort to expand coverage. I think
| Google's lead was maybe too intimidating.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| In the Google IO talk they mention its compatible with deck.gl
| and three.js. Does anyone know of any projects or resources for
| using either deck or three as a custom renderer [1]?
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/use-
| re...
| roschdal wrote:
| How can I use this in Fciv.net the free 3D version of Freeciv?
| [deleted]
| pininja wrote:
| As a contributor to deck.gl, I'm super excited to use this!
| Contributors added a TerrainExtension [0] to drape or offset 2D
| data onto 3D surfaces in 8.9, which is huge for 3D visualization
| in general since common 2D layers would often be occluded by
| anything 3D. It's great to see Google using open standards and
| openly governed projects for rendering too. Carto developed a
| story map [1] to showcase the new features, and played a big role
| in the integrations and extensions. Documentation has been
| updated, so it's all ready to use. Happy mapping!
|
| [0] https://deck.gl/docs/api-reference/extensions/terrain-
| extens... [1] https://3dtiles.carto.com/
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I haven't looked at the specs yet so maybe you can help me
| understand if the TerrainExtension, which uses raster DEM data
| can work with a point cloud data like Googles tiles?
|
| My understanding is that with raster data, you cannot have
| arches, trees, or any object which has a thin component, like a
| tree trunk under a thick component like the tree canopy.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Thanks for the links and your work on deck.gl.
|
| Have to say for anyone looking into this space though cesium
| was there first Deck.gl is far and away the best choice for
| almost any 3d mapping library now. Much much faster than
| cesium. And its great with 2d too even though it hardly gets a
| mention amongst leaflet, maplibre, openlayers etc.
| prox wrote:
| Would it be possible to load into Blender?
| Maxious wrote:
| Yes, blender already has glTF support https://docs.blender.or
| g/manual/en/3.5/addons/import_export/...
| andybak wrote:
| It's slightly more complex than that. This is in 3D Tiles
| format which uses GLTF but I don't think you can simply
| grab a GLTF from an API endpoint. It's been sliced into
| cubes with hierarchical level of detail and other things I
| barely understand.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| You can simply just grab the glTF! Here's Google's doc
| page on making requests to the .glb (binary version of
| glTF) https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/ti
| le/create...
| andybak wrote:
| Oh that's interesting. You probably still need to jump
| through hoops to figure out the right url for the grid
| square and level of detail you need. And the session
| parameter - so you still need to make the initial tile
| request to get the JSON.
| pininja wrote:
| They've built a set of framework-agnostic loaders to help
| sort out which tiles to request for any given viewport
| https://loaders.gl/docs/modules/tiles
|
| All of the data loading and parsing can be done in
| loaders.gl, check out the repo 3D-tiles examples for a
| good place to get started.
| andybak wrote:
| You presume I'm doing this in a browser. :-)
|
| I'll have to parse the json myself but it looks doable.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Do a little googling and you can probably find code on
| github to take care of the "get me terrain for these
| coordinates" part for you. That's how I managed it a few
| years ago when I was programmatically downloading tiles
| from google earth without understanding how to convert
| from coordinates to their url scheme.
|
| Might have to wait a week though.
| [deleted]
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| Please let me know if this worked for you!
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I was wondering the same, would be interesting to be able to
| 3d print models of cities.
| stjo wrote:
| I work at a startup that uses similar technology to make large-
| scale 3D models, but using your own dataset https://www.one3d.ai.
| You can check a demo here
| https://app.one3d.ai/twins/9763/?invcode=7asheX17, but the
| surprising thing is that they have pretty good quality without
| close-up aerial photography. We need drones to take photos, but a
| doubt they used anything closer than a plane.
|
| I wonder if Google's photogrammetry Kaggle competitions are
| related to this https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/image-
| matching-challenge...
| andybak wrote:
| I remember reading Google uses a combination of aerial and
| streetview with some clever algos to combine the two.
| jss326 wrote:
| The demo looks very good, great quality at street level. Is
| this just based off of pictures, or does it use LiDAR as well?
| Arathorn wrote:
| oh, wow. we have 3D Tile support in https://thirdroom.io but had
| only ever found NASA's Mars dataset as a good set of tiles to
| point it at. This could effectively turn Third Room into a FOSS,
| decentralised, E2EE multiplayer Google Earth running over Matrix!
| andybak wrote:
| Would it be worth having a conversation about thirdroom and
| Open Brush integration? Our community is always looking to find
| ways to get their creations onto a social platform and we have
| a three.js add-on that should make it pretty easy to add our
| custom shaders to thirdroom.
| Arathorn wrote:
| sure! https://matrix.to/#/#thirdroom-dev:matrix.org is the
| right place to discuss - custom shaders would be awesome :)
| MayeulC wrote:
| As much as I like the _third room_ concept (I like it, but didn
| 't actually try it), I am wondering how much of a distraction
| it is for Matrix developers?
|
| As a datapoint, a good chunk of my social circles use Matrix,
| but they seem to incessantly complain about Element. Though
| very nice improvements have been made lately, I can say from
| what I've seen and experienced that a lot of improvements can
| still be made:
|
| - experience was night and day when I switched from my
| resource-constrained Galaxy S4 with LineageOS 18.1 to a FP4.
| The phone and most apps were fine, but Element was oh so
| sluggish compared to the others. I thought it was just the app,
| but it works much better on this new phone. It now takes
| seconds to sync after opening instead of multiple minutes.
|
| - my SO experiences constant glitching with Element on Chrome
| on Macos. The web app fights with the browser to draw over the
| URL and tab bar. It might be a chrome bug, I'll report this.
| Additionally, the UI appears to be rendered at single-digit
| framerates.
|
| - I've seen multiple serious bugs that end up clearing the
| local DB, triggering an initial sync that lasts for more than
| 10 minutes.
|
| - I only recently discovered that Android could handle
| conversation-level notification granularity, and don't have
| anything similar on my other devices. I don't wish to have the
| same level of intrusiveness from all chats: for some, I want to
| see the notifications, for others I want to hear them, etc.
| Some space-based device-specific controls would be nice to
| have.
|
| A lot of the issues can be improved by the upcoming sliding
| sync, and I know vector.im isn't in a brilliant financial
| situation. I can't really direct you to spend energy on some
| topics vs others, but it seems to me that there are more
| (potential or current) Matrix users with old hardware than VR
| gear. And since messaging is so reliant on networking effects,
| I would concentrate on being able to reach the largest possible
| audience.
|
| Now, I really don't want you to get the wrong idea, I love most
| projects at Matrix/vector, but I can't help but feeling
| uncomfortable when _third room_ is talked up, while basic chat
| features leave a lot to be desired.
|
| On this specific point, you are right, and seeing such
| integration would be awesome. Just don't get addicted to
| Google-provided data :)
| andybak wrote:
| Funnily enough, they address this question on the linked
| website:
|
| > Whenever we work on metaverse or VR for Matrix (e.g. 3D
| video calling, or our original Matrix + WebVR demo) we always
| get a some grumpy feedback along the lines of "why are you
| wasting time doing VR when Element still doesn't have multi-
| account?!" or whatever your favourite pet Matrix or Element
| deficiency is.
|
| > The fact is that Third Room has been put together by a tiny
| team of just Robert (project lead, formerly of Mozilla Hubs &
| AltspaceVR), Nate (of bitECS fame) and Ajay (of Cinny fame) -
| with a bit of input from Rian and Jordan (Design), Bruno
| (Hydrogen) and Hugh (OIDC). On the Matrix side it's been
| absolutely invaluable in driving Hydrogen SDK (which also
| powers things like Chatterbox and of course Hydrogen itself)
| - as well as helping drive native Matrix VoIP and MSC3401
| implementation work, and critically being our poster-child
| guinea pig experiment for the first ever native OpenID
| Connect Matrix client! In terms of "why do this rather than
| improve Element" - the domain-specific expertise at play here
| simply isn't that applicable to mainstream Element - instead
| there are tonnes of other people focused on improving Matrix
| (and Element). For instance we shipped a massive update to
| Element's UI the other week.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Thanks for replying with this. I know it's not my place to
| comment on what people spend their time on, but somehow
| couldn't resist commenting this time. I thought sharing my
| instinctive reaction may be invaluable, but it's true they
| probably get it a lot.
|
| Oh well, I have a bit more time these days, I should finish
| up and submit the Matrix Spec Change I started drafting
| almost a year ago... Everything takes time.
| deserialized wrote:
| Photo realistic from the air, blurry up close sadly
| andybak wrote:
| Not to pull the whole "Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is
| Happy" on you but pause to consider the sheer scale of the
| dataset. 2500 cities have geometry data to the level where you
| can see details on individual buildings for areas extending
| well out into the suburbs.
|
| Yes - it's blurred up close but my god, isn't it still amazing?
| bmicraft wrote:
| The thing is, it does seem like it's gotten any better in
| therms of resolution over the past couple of years
| andybak wrote:
| Not so sure. I've been using Google Earth VR semi-regularly
| for 4 years or so and not noticed a big change.
| andybak wrote:
| dag - Can you edit the title? It should be GLTF (even that is
| misleading as this in 3D Tiles format:
| https://www.ogc.org/standard/3dtiles/ )
| Torkel wrote:
| glTF
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlTF
|
| (note Wikipedia capitalizes it weirdly in the URL but in the
| page title it is correct)
| andybak wrote:
| Jesus H. Christ. I've been saying it wrong for years.
|
| I just assumed - you know, WebGL, OpenGL. I've even bloody
| implemented support for it in an app whilst calling it the
| wrong thing!
|
| I need a sit down and a strong cup of tea...
|
| EDIT - Phew. It is _GLTF_ - in my blind panic I thought it
| was actualy an "I"
|
| (I don't care how they tell me to capitalize it - that's not
| something I particularly care about conforming to)
| NietTim wrote:
| This is neat. I've just so happen to have been playing around
| with GIS and blender recently and you have to jump quite a few
| hoops to get data, hopefully this will simplify things
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Meanwhile Apple does not support glTF or WebXR or ...
| secretsatan wrote:
| It's a bit of a strange thing to say. At what level? Apple
| doesn't support lots of formats, neither does Microsoft, people
| can build tools in their apps to support them, and publish
| them, and hence new formats are born, that, although may have
| been created on a platform, the owner of that platform does not
| 'support' them.
|
| As this is an open format, you can, or very likely, someone
| else, will write something to parse it on an apple platform,
| will Apple support it then?
| archerx wrote:
| Yes Apple does support GLTF, I have a site that renders 3D
| models that are GLTF format with no issues on an iPad with iOS
| 13.7. iOS does not support GLTF with draco compression though
| which is unfortunate but easy to work around by having a
| separate non compressed model to serve to those devices.
|
| On iOS I would much prefer a second non safari browser than a
| second app store.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Apple does not support Draco Compression on USD [1] which
| still sucks & any glTF you are seeing was converted using one
| method or another. An interesting way to hackdoor open 3D
| immersive standards is this project using [2] App Kit.
|
| And anyway this all might be moot if Apple announces support
| at WWDC June 4th with the xrOS
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/vali
| dat...
|
| [2] https://launch.variant3d.com/
| knolan wrote:
| You can convert glTF to USDZ in their Reality Converter app.
| sideband wrote:
| Would love to see this added to https://kmzview.com. I could
| (almost) stop using Google Earth for my clients.
| andybak wrote:
| This is huge news. Nobody comes close to having the 3d coverage
| that Google has there have been no viable competitors on the
| horizon. Until now there was just no way to use that gorgeous
| data.
|
| From a more personal point of view - Google Earth in VR is one of
| the most stunning experiences I'm aware of and it's been on life
| support since Google lost interest in VR. Now it looks fairly
| simple to build something similar on top of the same data source.
| boppo1 wrote:
| What about MS flight sim X?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Assuming you mean 2020, it's impressive for a game but not
| Google earth. Flying through a desert (even a desert city
| with photogrammetry!) and the interpolated trees that get
| added in would make you think you're flying over a lush
| forest in the pacific northwest. It also struggles a lot with
| non-solid 3d objects like bridges, freeway overpasses, etc.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Google earth VR fidelity is terrible anywhere that isn't a
| big 3D hand mapped city, just like Flight Sim VR. Most
| places you are just looking at streetview images, without
| any depth.
| andybak wrote:
| Haven't tried it.
| kroltan wrote:
| Very pretty, but not accurate. Most of the world is not
| authored, but a best-guess by an AI with procedural models.
|
| (They do have legitimate 3D-scanned areas, and even hand-
| authored content for specific landmarks and well-known
| cities, though)
| bparsons wrote:
| It is not far off from Google Earth. Most of the cities
| have handscaped 3D models, while the rest of the planet is
| procedurally generated.
| kroltan wrote:
| They are continually improving coverage, a 3D artist
| friend of mine worked with an agency that was providing
| 3D models for them (wasn't the best workplace though,
| very factory-floor-panopticon-y).
|
| Though last time I tried it, about a year ago, my
| hometown (a capital of one of Brazil's states) and all
| the surrounding areas was still very much procedurally
| generated. (FLN airport district is next to a mangrove
| swamp but was represented in-game as grasslands, as well
| as some very out-of-place building styles)
| zymhan wrote:
| Do you mean MS Flight sim 2020?
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| Agreed, google earth VR is the most incredible experience I've
| had with my VR headset.
| actuator wrote:
| Which VR headsets are you guys using?
| kroltan wrote:
| Still on my trusty Vive due to third-world-itis, but would
| upgrade to another PC-tethered device like the Index or
| some other SteamVR-compatible (since I'm on Linux), as to
| be less at the mercy of the manufacturer.
|
| _Stern look at requiring a FB account to enable developer
| mode on the Quest_
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Stern look at requiring a FB account to enable developer
| mode on the Quest"
|
| That is annoying out of principle to me as well, but on
| the other hand, why care as you don't have to use it?
| kroltan wrote:
| Semi related, but you also need to agree to Facebook
| using your camera feed if you enable the hand tracking
| feature. They probably use it to train the tracking
| models further, and to be fair it _is_ a cool feature,
| but it costs a video feed of your home to use, which to
| me is not worth it.
| [deleted]
| kroltan wrote:
| _I am_ a game developer :)
|
| But principle would be enough for me, I don't like that
| the Quest is a brick without phoning home (you have to
| install and log into the Oculus software at least once to
| be able to use the desktop computer link), plus the whole
| UX nightmare of being forced software updates when you
| want to use the darned thing.
|
| My friends with a Quest are often delayed from joining VR
| play sessions due to some silly business requirement like
| an expired login or system update. Also, the Oculus
| desktop software is some 10 gigabytes due to a non-
| optional very detailed home menu environment, even if you
| use a third party launcher like SteamVR Home. And it must
| be up-to-date before running any actual applications.
| andybak wrote:
| Currently Quest via Link cable.
|
| Previously at various times Vive, Rift and Windows MR.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I accidentally discovered that not zooming in quite as much,
| but getting down on your hands and knees is a really fun and
| unique experience in Earth VR. You get a closer view of the
| dollhouse effect that goes away when you zoom in to ground
| level. Probably looks particularly strange to the outside
| observer though.
| andybak wrote:
| And I just made a crude clone of it in Unity in about 30
| minutes! (and most of that was spent trying to add billing to
| my Google API account)
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| One day you'll be able to add your billing...IN VR
| s3p wrote:
| It looks like they're offering this as an API with a free monthly
| $200 credit. Huge kudos to the Google cloud team for this!
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