[HN Gopher] Openly Licensed Streetview with Panoramax
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Openly Licensed Streetview with Panoramax
Author : maelito
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-09-08 11:57 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tzovar.as)
(TXT) w3m dump (tzovar.as)
| Rygian wrote:
| At least in the instance I've used, my pictures end up published
| with a link to my personal OSM account, and with the full dump of
| Exif data coming from my camera (including bits that are
| irrelevant for this kind of picture). This has privacy
| implications. Caveat emptor.
| Kye wrote:
| The only coverage in the entire southeastern US is a gas station
| in Alabama. It's an interesting project but "openly licensed
| streetview" is overselling it by several football fields in any
| country.
| globular-toast wrote:
| OpenStreetMap started as a blank canvas before we made it. This
| isn't about some dataset you can freely pillage, it's about an
| open platform you can use to create our streetview.
| Kye wrote:
| That doesn't really address my comment, which was about the
| framing in the blog post. It's not an openly licensed Street
| View. It's not even an openly licensed Street Side (Bing). It
| isn't even close to an openly licensed Panoramio.
|
| It has the potential, but framing sets expectations and mine
| were not met. This is feedback for the author and anyone
| around the project trying to come up with a pitch. Focus on
| what it could be, don't try to say it is something it isn't
| (yet).
| maelito wrote:
| Huge difference though : one person with a car and some
| energy can panoramax-map most of a city in one day.
|
| The same cannot be said of one person in one day for mapping
| the _data_ on OSM.
|
| Expect Panoramax to grow way faster than OSM :)
| marisen wrote:
| There are currently only 2 panoramax instances. One from IGN
| (french "National Geographic Institute) and one from the french
| OSM charter.
|
| This is obvious by looking at the coverage the world. France it
| where the majority of the coverage is. The coverage of most
| cities is actually pretty impressive for a young project.
|
| While the UI and coverage is not necessarily on par with street
| view, it's still pretty usable in France.
|
| Secondly Panoramax is first built for OSM contributors/mappers,
| not for end users. The blog reflects this in the tldr: "If you
| are interested in _contributing_ "
| botanical wrote:
| They should import data from Mapillary as I see the whole of
| South Africa is missing. Although most libre licensed products
| have poor image quality; I hope that improves.
| maelito wrote:
| Some French cities have good quality 360deg pictures
| https://api.panoramax.xyz/#focus=pic&map=20/48.580583/7.7418...
|
| One user coded a script to download your mapillary images and
| reupload them on panoramax https://forum.geocommuns.fr/t/outil-
| mapillary-download-pour-...
| nickreese wrote:
| Kinda hijacking the thread but... My hypothesis is that we will
| look back and see that Streetview imagery is a goldmine for AI
| and will be a path to being able to answer HARD questions about
| the real world.
|
| The insane thing is there are only like 7 companies that actually
| have meaningful datasets.
|
| I spent 1.5 years studying the geospatial space and went so far
| as buying a Mosaic51 and scanning the entire country of Andorra
| as a test before looking at buying the camera manufacture.
|
| Ultimately I walked away from buying the company after issues
| with the family office I was working with... but long story short
| I believe streetview imagery will be a gold mine in the future.
|
| If anyone is working in the space. Feel free to ping me, happy to
| chat and even make intros to the space. If you are training an
| AI, ping me as well. Happy to open my images up to the right
| person to make something "country scale" (160k images... every 3
| meters with RTK labeled gnss data).
| globular-toast wrote:
| I have always wondered if/when Google will start using their
| streetview data to improve mapping. They could (in theory)
| generate directions like "turn left after the green building"
| and find speed limits, road surface, width, and potentially
| even bus routes and stuff like that. They don't seem to,
| though. The routes they generate are always incredibly naive
| when it comes to actual road type, like "let's go up this
| single track road with a 20% gradient to save 2 minutes".
|
| Curious whether you think this is more than just improving
| mapping/routing related stuff, though.
| Arelius wrote:
| To be clear, streetview was originally built _to_ improve
| mapping. You can thank the wealth of street names and address
| labels on streetview.
| maelito wrote:
| Indeed. Google is a crawler, not only of the digital world.
|
| "Crawling the physical web".
|
| http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/cityblock/
| anamexis wrote:
| They _do_ use streetview data to improve mapping,
| particularly for things like speed limits (like you
| mentioned) and other signage (street names, identifying which
| intersections have stop signs, etc.)
| maelito wrote:
| > "let's go up this single track road with a 20% gradient to
| save 2 minutes"
|
| Not sure this is a good example : elevation data should be
| good enough to avoid this kind of roads. See e.g.
| https://sonny.4lima.de for Europe.
|
| For your general thought, see here :
| https://blog.google/products/maps/google-maps-101-how-we-
| map...
|
| > It all starts with imagery
|
| > Street View and satellite imagery have long been an
| important part of how we're able to identify where places are
| in the world--it shows us where roadways, buildings,
| addresses and businesses are located in a region, in addition
| to other important details--such as the town's speed limits
| or business names.
|
| So I guess what you're proposing is already done for several
| years but in more subtle ways.
|
| Remember that Google Maps doesn't have the power of OSM.
| Hence the need for automation.
| apayan wrote:
| > generate directions like "turn left after the green
| building"
|
| I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the Los
| Angeles metro area, Google Maps already gives directions like
| this. "Turn left after the Carl's Jr.", "Turn right after the
| Starbucks". I notice it's usually done in areas where street
| signs are hard to see, but there is a clear landmark for the
| driver e.g. the golden arches of a McDonald's.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Anyone who uses a bike to get around will know the routine of
| streetviewing their route ahead of time to see how dangerous it
| is, if the bike lanes are, in fact, real, etc.
|
| I also have a real estate project and want to work on AI
| analysis of local streetview to learn about the neighbourhood.
|
| I've wanted to build something to automate this with AI but
| haven't had time.
|
| I would love to chat!
| maelito wrote:
| The team behind Panoramax is already applying AI analysis. See
| e.g. https://forum.openstreetmap.fr/t/detection-des-
| stationnement...
|
| Most Panoramax discussions are in French, but you'll find links
| to English code.
| nullc wrote:
| Perhaps relevant to this subject, there are now <$400 three-band
| GNSS compass receivers (e.g. two three band receivers in a single
| unit so you can run two antennas with a meter or two baseline and
| get accurate headings in addition to position), based on the
| Unicorecomm UM982 chipset. E.g.
| https://www.ardusimple.com/product/simplertk3b-compass/ (There
| are other vendors, but I've done business with this one before)
|
| I mention it because for imaging, small heading errors have way
| more impact on where you're looking than small position errors
| but single antenna gps doesn't really give you headings except
| with assumptions from motion.
|
| I've got one sitting in a box here, haven't tried it out yet but
| plan to soon...
| maelito wrote:
| In case you wonder, Panoramax instances are 100 % French for now.
| Even if the OSM-FR instance can be used for photos outside of
| France, don't expect yet to see lots of international photos on
| it. It takes time to communicate and convince people it's a good
| idea.
|
| In France though, a few months ago, there was not really more
| than one big french city (Strasbourg) captured in 360deg.
|
| Now, more than ten big cities have interesting coverage. Check
| out this link to see a map of all the 360deg photos
| https://api.panoramax.xyz/#focus=map&map=7.33/47.583/0.742&p...
|
| In fact, lots of municipalities already have 360deg photos of
| their streets... sleeping on their servers.
|
| Interesting fact : in France, public funded administrations must
| open their data, by law, exceptions aside.
|
| Disclaimer : I'm not working on the Panoramax project, but
| plugged it on
| https://cartes.app/?choix+du+style=oui&rue=oui#6.67/47.493/2...
| (https://github.com/laem/cartes), the French open source
| alternative to Google Maps, which is in dire need of good quality
| 360deg photos !
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| So if i wanted to buy a good setup to contribute to this what
| should i buy? The faq andd doxumentation appear to be in french.
| maelito wrote:
| The recommanded setup is a GoPro Max.
|
| Indeed the guide is only in French for now...
| https://panoramax.fr/comment-participer-a-panoramax/guide-co...
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