Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

decider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#61

Post by ur-whale »

the-rc wrote: post #38
ur-whale wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mind blowing if you remember how powerful computers in 1994 In 1994, SGI workstations could pull off this kind of stuff rather effortlessly, the only "tricky" part was to get the LOD algorithm right. So not that mind-blowing in practice. It would only amazing if Terravision ran on a stock PC (did it?).

Jones and Tanner created clip mapping, first in SGI hardware, then in software. That's what made Keyhole and thus Google Earth possible on consumer machines. Is the allegation that it was all stolen? They could have invalidated SGI's patents. And no, Terravision didn't run on a stock PC, it ran on Onyx hardware. Plus it relied on an ATM connection! Even then, the demo has a bunch of glitches and gaps, plus the zoomin…

> Onyx hardware

Yeah, IIRC, those were the high-end of the SGI line, very beefy machines for that time, especially for I/O and graphics, so I stand by my comment.

[EDIT]: And thanks for clip mapping reference. For anyone interested in dynamic LOD algorithms, here's the paper:

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1145/280814.280855

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#63

Post by piceas »

the-rc wrote: post #36
remh wrote: post #17

Started watching the show, it is way too dramatized but still interesting. The actual demo of Terravision is indeed mind blowing if you remember how powerful computers in 1994 were: http://www.joachimsauter.com/img/big693.mp4

That didn't run on a PC, it ran on Onyx servers, which had over 10 graphic processors.

Flight sim 5.0 ran on the PCs of the day and wasn't that far behind.

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#64

Post by jeffrallen »

remh wrote: post #17

Started watching the show, it is way too dramatized but still interesting. The actual demo of Terravision is indeed mind blowing if you remember how powerful computers in 1994 were: http://www.joachimsauter.com/img/big693.mp4

Also, check out the bow tie on the guy doing the demo. Snappy.

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#65

Post by avibarzeev »

JamesUtah07 wrote: post #3

After reading the article it wasn’t clear to me. Is this Based on a real story or is it entirely fictitious.

It's a highly one-sided version from people who rightly IMO lost their case and had their patent invalidated.

The show left out Keyhole, which actually wrote Google Earth before Google bought them. It was written 100% from scratch and based on different and better technology.

https://avibarzeev.medium.com/was-google-earth-stolen-7d1b82...

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#66

Post by avibarzeev »

atoav wrote: post #47
w0mbat wrote: post #28

There were a lot of 3D globe products being created in the 90s. I was one of the creators of Electronic Arts 3D Atlas which shipped in spring 1994. It sold two million copies on Mac and won many awards. EA was the publisher but we developed it in London working at a BBC spinoff called MMC and getting the planetary data from UCL. This UCL unit eventually spawned Planetary Visions, a startup we worked with to supply da…

Yes, but they they did all use different indexing schemes than the patented one for Terravision.

ART+COM's patent was invalidated in 2017 due to prior art from another app called TerraVision from SRI shown in 1994.

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#67

Post by unixhero »

cik wrote: post #53
the-rc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn't run on a PC, it ran on Onyx servers, which had over 10 graphic processors.

We ended up taking our Onyxes, years later and turning them into fish tanks. I miss those days.

If true, well that was fucking stupid.

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#68

Post by unixhero »

amayne wrote: post #24

Here is SRI’s project from 1994 that showed similar capabilities (and the same name) and was one of the reasons the court decided against the claimants in their lawsuit against Google: https://www.sri.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/778.pdf

Who were SRI?

Why did it have the same name as the original Terra Vision?

Re: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

#70

Post by unixhero »

native_samples wrote: post #49

I worked on Google Earth for a while, some years ago. It doesn't really make sense to talk about it in the way the article (and presumably movie) does. There are lots of "algorithms" in Google Earth which are critical to its operation. Probably the biggest unsung algorithmic hero of GE is the image processing and serving pipeline. The actual client tech itself was largely worked out by the time Keyhole was bought (he…

You ought to watch the actual mini series. Thanks for your otherwise insightful comment.
Post reply on HN