[HN Gopher] Photogrammetry on Commercial Flights (2021)
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       Photogrammetry on Commercial Flights (2021)
        
       Author : tildef
       Score  : 110 points
       Date   : 2023-08-30 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (leifgehrmann.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (leifgehrmann.com)
        
       | sorenjan wrote:
       | Check the laws in your country before doing this, in Sweden you
       | need permission to distribute aerial photos.
        
         | JoeAltmaier wrote:
         | The internet makes that problematical. Does 'distribution'
         | include 'share on facebook'?
         | 
         | I've been wondering for some time, how far do national laws
         | about data sharing matter any more?
        
           | sorenjan wrote:
           | Yes, any distribution including online. Personally I think
           | it's a bit anachronistic to ban distribution of photos now
           | when it's so easy to take and distribute them, not to mention
           | all kinds of commercial services with free aerial and street
           | view photos. People do get prosecuted for it still, so it
           | very much matters.
           | 
           | https://www.lantmateriet.se/en/dissemination-permit/
        
             | JoeAltmaier wrote:
             | I share such photos, and never got arrested. But I'm not
             | Swedish.
             | 
             | If you're Swedish and share such photos in the US, is it a
             | crime?
             | 
             | Where is the 'internet' at? Certainly not in any particular
             | nation.
             | 
             | Thus my confusion.
        
       | Toutouxc wrote:
       | > But other than taking a few photos of holiday mementos and
       | lens-flaring sunsets, what's the point?
       | 
       | OT, but for me the point is not having my body absolutely panic
       | from experiencing all kinds of rotation and sudden lateral
       | displacement without anything happening visually. Honestly, I
       | have no idea how people fly anywhere else, I wouldn't be able to.
       | The speeds and forces experienced even on a calm commercial
       | flight are, as far as human evolution goes, total nonsense.
        
         | vhcr wrote:
         | Same way I have no idea how people get dizzy so easily, do you
         | get dizzy when on a boat, or when using a VR headset?
        
         | dale_glass wrote:
         | What you experience on a regular flight is a complete non-issue
         | compared to what you can experience in a car, in an amusement
         | park, or in VR.
         | 
         | And if you remove the direct comparisons, then people do things
         | like say, war, parachute jumping, or underwater welding that
         | are way more extreme.
         | 
         | Really like everything it's just the matter of getting used to
         | it. As a kid flying used to be amazingly exciting. Then I got a
         | job that involved flying twice a week and it very quickly got
         | routine.
         | 
         | The weird forces also don't last very long at all. For the vast
         | majority of the flight is just sitting in a chair, and feels
         | exactly like that.
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | This is not photogrammetry as the word is usually understood
       | these days.
       | 
       | Photogrammetry usually means constructing a 3D model out of a
       | number of 2D photos from lots of different angles, although there
       | are broader definitions as well [1].
       | 
       | This is just skewing a photo you took out the window to overlay
       | it on a map.
       | 
       | From the title, I was expecting this to be something about
       | constant super-hi-res photography attached to commercial flights
       | that would actually let you build 3D models of the landscape...
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
        
         | maxbond wrote:
         | I think that's probably a function of the context you're
         | encountering photogrammetry in, it's literal meaning (as
         | described in the Wikipedia article) is "measuring stuff from
         | photos." I believe what you're describing is generally referred
         | to as "3D reconstruction."
         | 
         | For what it's worth, this article was pretty much exactly what
         | I anticipated it to be. But language is funky, and obviously
         | other people shared your expectation (which makes it a good
         | comment in my view).
        
           | tshaddox wrote:
           | Even in 3D rendering for animation, video games, archviz,
           | etc. I often hear photogrammetry discussed in the context of
           | making reusable textures, not just making specific 3D models.
        
         | M3L0NM4N wrote:
         | That's what I was expecting as well. Still a cool project
         | nonetheless.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | 1-6 wrote:
         | Correct, the technique is called orthorectification.
        
       | groggo wrote:
       | You can also do this to create stereo photography!
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_photography_techniques#...
        
         | cscheid wrote:
         | Indeed you can! http://cscheid.net/static/clouds/
        
       | fsloth wrote:
       | To explain the underwhelmed response I guess most people were
       | expecting 'google maps quality' 3d models. Which is not an
       | unreasonable expectation, given an aerial platform such as a
       | drone converting photos to 3d models of large areas is
       | commoditized. Just dump photos to an application such as Agisoft
       | Metashape or Luma, wait a bit and you can get something like this
       | for example: https://skfb.ly/6DvVP
        
       | prashp wrote:
       | This is very cool! How feasible would it be to take a video
       | instead of a photo, then using landmark detection and a stitching
       | algorithm such as SIFT to cover a larger surveying area?
        
         | klysm wrote:
         | That would be more like photogrammetry
        
         | spookie wrote:
         | You can think of a video as a set of images taken from the same
         | camera from different perspectives. So, you can assume as if
         | they're different cameras (with the added bonus that the camera
         | intrisincs remain the same), and apply "multi camera"
         | techniques. I'm assuming you "move" the camera for parallax and
         | what not.
         | 
         | With this, you can retrieve depth information by correlating
         | the difference in position of easily identifiable points, and
         | recreate the scene as a mesh.
         | 
         | This is basically the basis of photogrammetry as I know it. AI
         | solutions may help at various stages to speed up the process
         | too.
        
         | sorenjan wrote:
         | A better solution would be to use a program that does what most
         | people think of when they hear the word photogrammetry these
         | days, 3D reconstruction from multiple images, and then make an
         | orthorectified image from that.
         | 
         | OpenDroneMap can do that for example.
         | 
         | https://www.opendronemap.org/webodm/
        
           | 1-6 wrote:
           | An areal photo that's orthrorectified with ground images as a
           | secondary source would provide better normals. Of course we'd
           | also use differential GNSS base-point targets to stitch the
           | images together. It's difficult to get consistent color
           | temps, exposure, etc with multiple ground images shot at
           | various times throughout the day.
        
         | cscheid wrote:
         | I didn't use sift, but instead a very dumb old trick of slit
         | screen photo: http://cscheid.net/static/windowseat/
         | 
         | This is 5h of a single video from EWR to SFO by a former
         | colleague. Turns out even a dumb trick like this still is
         | enough to pick out a bunch of geographical features!
        
       | atourgates wrote:
       | Despite the author's criticisms, it seems like there's lots of
       | opportunity for UAV-generated open source imagery, but I can't
       | really find an active community for sharing it.
       | 
       | Open Aerial Mapp[1] seems like a good start, but doesn't seem to
       | be particularly active.
       | 
       | Seems like we could use a "Mapillary[2] but from Above" type of
       | project - only one that doesn't end up getting acquired by
       | Facebook.
       | 
       | [1] https://openaerialmap.org/
       | 
       | [2] https://www.mapillary.com/
        
         | ajsnigrutin wrote:
         | https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/ODM
         | 
         | You take a drone, point the camera mostly down (a narrow angle,
         | not straight down), take photos of land, with some overlap,
         | preferably from different angles, load the software, and it
         | creates an ortophoto, 3d model, height map, all georeferenced
        
       | jrh3 wrote:
       | Seems much easier than when I had to do this manually onto Google
       | Earth.
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-30 23:00 UTC)