Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#11

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The Apple street view cars also have LIDAR, so I'm curious to see what their plan is for that.

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#12

Post by gugagore » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #11

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The Apple street view cars also have LIDAR, so I'm curious to see what their plan is for that.

That's probably for making maps used by localization on autonomous cars.

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#13

Post by ynniv » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The 3d content in Apple Maps comes from their acquisition of C3:

https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/29/apple-acquired-mind-blowing-3...

The technique is detailed in the conference paper:

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of...

Essentially they use a rig of DSLR cameras mounted to the bottom of a Cessna to take photographs in a 45 meter grid, and then do stereo reconstruction from that. Crucially they describe using fast phase based disparity maps, which at the time were a recently declassified technique for guiding cruise missiles. C3 was a part of the defense contractor Saab AB.

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#14

Post by threeseed » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #11

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The Apple street view cars also have LIDAR, so I'm curious to see what their plan is for that.

The most immediate use will likely be for the Apple Glasses which are expected to come out in 2020.

LIDAR could definitely assist with identifying what the user is looking at.

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#15

Post by sorenjan » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #13

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The 3d content in Apple Maps comes from their acquisition of C3: https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/29/apple-acquired-mind-blowing-3... The technique is detailed in the conference paper: https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of... Essentially they use a rig of DSLR cameras mounted to the bottom of a Cessna to take photographs in a 45 meter grid, and then do stereo reconstruction from that. Crucially they…

Saab also owns Vricon, basically the same thing as C3 but not aimed at consumers. They sold part of it to DigitalGlobe, and they use both aerial and satellite imagery for 3D models.

https://www.vricon.com/

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#16

Post by bluthru » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 5:47 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #11

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The Apple street view cars also have LIDAR, so I'm curious to see what their plan is for that.

Hopefully 3d street view. You'd want that data for good AR overlays, too.

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#17

Post by aaronbrethorst » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

this is the same person who RE'd Google Earth a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18900080

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#18

Post by ben_w » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 8:45 AM UTC

bluthru wrote: post #16

rootusrootus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple street view cars also have LIDAR, so I'm curious to see what their plan is for that.

Hopefully 3d street view. You'd want that data for good AR overlays, too.

Colossal bandwidth use for very high latency updates? Surely it’s better to get depth information from the device rather that from Apple’s self driving cars/StreetView clones, either with stereo, lidar, or AI estimates?

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#19

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #11

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

The Apple street view cars also have LIDAR, so I'm curious to see what their plan is for that.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...

tl;dr they're using it to make better maps

Re: Apple Maps Flyover Reverse Engineering

#20

Post by cmiller1 » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

w-ll wrote: post #7

I don't think this is satellite data, most likely photos captured from planes. And I'd kinda be curious to what Microsoft has been working on, I remember their birds eye was pretty good a few years ago. Apple I'd believe the are selectively trying to improve their data in areas that are heavily visited by their users. Also, I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and…

>I did for the first time see an Apple branded car with a photo sphere on the roof recently and kinda got excited that they are gonna try and bring competition into maps / street view that Google has dominated for the last decade.

Are you in Cali?