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A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

maphappenings.com

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Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#71

Post by iainmerrick »

YouWhy wrote: post #20

Highly inspiring! Will share with my team (and I don't do that often!) It seems that Etak was to navigation systems what Jodorowsky's Dune was to 1980s sci-fi: a trail blazing endeavour that was wild and wildly innovative, did not fulfill its intended mission but rather set up an entire field for subsequent success. Also: the design must have included several masterpieces when considering the state of tech in the 198…

Do you mean David Lynch’s Dune? Jodorowsky’s attempt was in the 70s and was never released.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#72

Post by fragmede »

neilv wrote: post #26
delichon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a ubiquitous continental data network back then. You can see it in operation in the old historical film, "You've Got Mail". The floppy installation disks were so plentiful they probably form a sedimentary stratum future geologists will use to identify the era.

Yeah, I was thinking the people who were showing this advanced tech thing were also likely the ones who could extrapolate where online was going. But did they imagine that many techies a few decades in the future would be interested in the home video they were making?

only as much as you think Kubernetes will be a historical fascination 200 years from now.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#73

Post by fragmede »

10729287 wrote: post #70
madcoderme wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last line immediately made me think. probably in near future, techies of the future would say something similar about our achievements, maybe gpt, or 4 qbit quantum computer.

...and enjoy such a cute and naive retro technology. "Ah ! Good old times".

PCs and their games from the 90's are already retro gaming.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#74

Post by ugur2nd »

I'm interested in this kind of thing. How things work and so on, the mechanisms and algorithms behind it. The article is long and I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I upvoted it to read it later. That way it's easy to access.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#76

Post by bsenftner »

My first job after undergrad ('88) was creating a Mac-like GUI for Etak for a vehicle tracking company in Los Angeles.

GUIs were still new, DOS was still king, I had experience working on the Mac OS as a beta OS developer, and I'd been working in a 3D graphics research lab (yeah, 3D graphics was research back then), and this company named TeleTrak needed a real time updating map.

So I made the GUI for their mapping application, using my knowledge from writing early Mac GUIs, 2D video games and early 3D graphics. Etak was literally Alienware, in it's data structures and extremely efficient processing. Where I'd been expecting significantly slower performance, I'd made a foundation expecting to use various tricks used to the game industry to make it appear like things were happening while loads occurred and so on. None of that was necessary, as Etak was the fastest aspect of the entire software bundle.

A single 386 PC with a some type of memory expansion so each had an additional 1MB of RAM above the ordinary 640KB would run the software, and the software was capable of real time tracking above 30fps around 20 vehicles. If tracking a single vehicle, the mapping was fluid with at-the-time incredibly sexy real time 30fps rotations of the map as the vehicle turned corners.

While working there, PacTel bought the company. Renamed PacTel TeleTrak, the company suddenly had tours from US and Israeli military brass, so I quit.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#77

Post by flir »

Reminds me a little of Sir Clive Sinclair's early products - someone who could see what gadgets the future wanted, but didn't quite have the technology to create them (eg the portable "flat-screen" TV with the side-mounted electron gun).

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#78

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

incorrecthorse wrote: post #62
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #47

The article claims that the "match roads by turns" technique "was later adopted by all navigation apps". Does anyone know if this is true? My impression was that they rely on GPS position only for positioning, even though modern phone hardware should give really nice gyroscope/accelerometer data.

Most modern navigation apps continue working in tunnels and other places without GPS. It's more like GPS augmented with dead reckoning.

Is that sensor based dead reckoning or simple interpolation based on the previous (or expected) speed of travel along the route though?

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#79

Post by bsenftner »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #36

> The second key invention was a ‘heading up’, moving map display. This meant that the vehicle remained at the center of the screen and the map moved and turned under the vehicle. What you saw ahead of you in the windshield was what was displayed on the screen. This proved highly intuitive. Later on they talk about "heads up" map digitizing, did this mean the map rotated as the operator digitized the street? Seems qu…

Yes, the map rotated in real time with the vehicle centered. I was a software developer writing software using Etak in '88-'89 time frame. That only worked when focused on a single vehicle, as I remember writing the code to do the same for groups of vehicles and Etak wanted to purchase that code from my employer. they probably got it, as my lead developer I worked for ended up working at Etak after I left.

Interesting side-fact: we used time-of-flight with beepers placed in the cars and ordinary trigonometry to increase accuracy. Worked like a charm.

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