Live data from Hacker News

Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

orbify.eu

81–90 of 199 posts

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#81
post #23

First time I saw this idea was Berg's "Here and There" poster from 2009 (a year before Inception) though they acknowledge a bunch of earlier inspirations... https://berglondon.com/blog/2009/05/04/here-there-influences...

Exactly what I thought of, I bought these posters at the time and they are still in the cardboard tube.

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#82
post #23

First time I saw this idea was Berg's "Here and There" poster from 2009 (a year before Inception) though they acknowledge a bunch of earlier inspirations... https://berglondon.com/blog/2009/05/04/here-there-influences...

That seems like enough prior art to invalidate much of what could conceivably be considered novel in the pending patent...

The patent application is not yet publically available, so I can't tell what aspects of the system they are trying to protect. They probably have some narrowly tailored features that they can protect. Maybe related to the rendering, or some toggle button feature of the display. But, as to the broad concept of a curved hybrid combination of street view and overhead view, I agree that they will not be able to protect that aspect.

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#83
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment confuses me a bit because Google Maps (at least in the US, in my experience) is really great about telling you what lane to be in.

I need to know what lane I'll need to be in next so I can plan in advance.

Yeah, there’s a tendency not to know with sufficient time, especially with heavy traffic.

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#85
post #76

Great idea and demo. My main gripe when using Google Maps in the car is lack of information about the next turns — when do I change lanes, and to which one? This could be natively addressed here, especially if the blue navigation line was a little thinner and showed which lane(s) the driver needs to take.

This comment confuses me a bit because Google Maps (at least in the US, in my experience) is really great about telling you what lane to be in.

Not every road owner in the world has provided how many lanes a road has. To tell you which lane to stay in, it need to know how many there are!

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#87

Absolutely honest question: what is the advantage of this over a top view navigation with the orientation following the orientation of movement? Am I missing something?

If you've ever been confused about which turn is which with top down navigation, then this is for you. While driving a car, being able to at a glance know exactly what turn is what would have saved me countless wrong turns, my parents probably doubly so. One classic: there's a fork in the road on the way to my parents. One side is "straight", the other side is an exit. I took the wrong, exit side of that several time…

For me, confusion in top-down navigation happens either because there's no bitmapped imagery being displayed, forcing me to guess where the turn is by mentally wrapping vague 2D geometry over the scene viewed through my windshield, or because the trace isn't drawn precisely enough over the imagery that is available.

I don't see much added value with this particular nausea-inducing approach. It falls into the category of "You should've thought less about whether you could and more about whether you should."

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#89
post #23

First time I saw this idea was Berg's "Here and There" poster from 2009 (a year before Inception) though they acknowledge a bunch of earlier inspirations... https://berglondon.com/blog/2009/05/04/here-there-influences...

Yep. First time I saw this idea was Animal Crossing: Wild Word's "rolling log" effect in 2005, albeit in reverse. (So you get a top-down view and a horizon view at the same time). Second time I saw this specific idea was a Minecraft vertex shader in 2013 with the "Acid Shaders" vertex transform shaders.

Re: Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions

#90
post #76

Great idea and demo. My main gripe when using Google Maps in the car is lack of information about the next turns — when do I change lanes, and to which one? This could be natively addressed here, especially if the blue navigation line was a little thinner and showed which lane(s) the driver needs to take.

This comment confuses me a bit because Google Maps (at least in the US, in my experience) is really great about telling you what lane to be in.

It fails the task as often as not on large East Coast highways. Not nearly as bad on the West Coast.
Post reply on HN