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Google Earth Redesigned

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Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#81

Post by ungzd »

sgift wrote: post #72
andy_ppp wrote: post #62

Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Google are basically old Microsoft at this point.

> Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Depends on the reason for "Chrome only" - if they use (upcoming) standards not supported so far by other browsers I see no harm in it. Other browsers will catch up in time.

It uses Native Client, but seems that at some time development of NaCl had been stopped[1] so it's strange that new Google product still uses this technology. Maybe they'll port it to Webassembly later. Or maybe plans had changed and they're betting on NaCl, Talk plugin and other activexey stuff.

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=239656...

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#82

Post by selbekk »

kmfrk wrote: post #77

I think it's a little funny and symptomatic of HN that we can't take a minute to fucking marvel at the fact that we've got something like this in the first place without going over the font or the whatever. Technology is amazing and moving rapidly, and if we can't take out five minutes to revel in an achievement like this, I don't know what the point is.

+1. This was just amazing to look at and play with.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#83

Post by pyromine »

defenestration wrote: post #23

The new Apple HQ building site looks impressive in 3D: https://earth.google.com/web/@37.33478572,-122.00939683,47.8... They didn't close the circle yet, to let trucks enter the midsection.

What's more interesting to me is the cranes are 3d modeled, that was not expected

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#84

Post by douche »

kmfrk wrote: post #77

I think it's a little funny and symptomatic of HN that we can't take a minute to fucking marvel at the fact that we've got something like this in the first place without going over the font or the whatever. Technology is amazing and moving rapidly, and if we can't take out five minutes to revel in an achievement like this, I don't know what the point is.

Is it really something new, or is it something old, redone in Javascript, with fewer features, though?

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#85

Post by r3bl »

sgift wrote: post #72
andy_ppp wrote: post #62

Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Google are basically old Microsoft at this point.

> Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Depends on the reason for "Chrome only" - if they use (upcoming) standards not supported so far by other browsers I see no harm in it. Other browsers will catch up in time.

It indeed doesn't work on Firefox (when switching user agents).

Doesn't seem like it's doing much in Chromium neither, just showing a static page: http://imgur.com/a/Q00OI

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#86

Post by duiker101 »

sgift wrote: post #72
andy_ppp wrote: post #62

Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Google are basically old Microsoft at this point.

> Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Depends on the reason for "Chrome only" - if they use (upcoming) standards not supported so far by other browsers I see no harm in it. Other browsers will catch up in time.

Doesn't seem to work in Vivaldi either :(

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#87

Post by stuntkite »

jobigoud wrote: post #70
RubyPinch wrote: post #42

each time I look at google's 3d representations for things, I really wonder why they don't do manual touchups for certain places I mean, if you are including the Eiffel Tower in the intro pages, could both make it look cleaner, and make it use less net resources

We need something like OpenStreetMap but with 3D content like this. And allow people to touch up the models.

OSM Buildings[1] and Mapbox's Unity3d SDK[2] is providing some really cool stuff in this area. Google definitely doesn't have the whole market locked up. I think we'll see some really cool mapping stuff this year.

[1] https://osmbuildings.org/

[2] https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-unity/

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#88

Post by stuntkite »

Untit1ed wrote: post #76

A bit disappointed to be honest - this doesn't do much better than Cesium and has a hard requirement on Chrome :(.

Cesium is a clusterfuck of JS though. I also once thought it was cool then I tried to use it professionally and extend it. It's a nightmare. Mapbox and Vizicities are offering some good stuff with real DEM now. Fingers crossed.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#89

Post by VMG »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #53
espes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that? There's been way more bugs in V8 over the years than the NaCl core sandbox.

I'm not sure why you're trying to say ? Two wrongs make a right ? For the record: I think that JS is a horrible idea too. What happened to the old rule of thumb that once you let someone else run their own code on your machine you should consider it compromised ?

> What happened to the old rule of thumb

People realized it's a stupid and impractical rule and ignored it.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#90

Post by maxerickson »

Jaruzel wrote: post #73
silversmith wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they building the 3D views? Mapping cars driving around with sensors? I was under the impression that the shapes were inferred from satellite images, but the moment I step outside the major cities, it's back to flat maps. Even the couple hand-modelled buildings previously present in maps seem to be missing here.

This is exactly what I want to know. There's several towns in the UK that have all the houses in really good 3D (mostly the coastal towns) - I struggle to believe that there's a team of humans making these...

There's a (yuuuge) public Lidar dataset for the UK:

https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surve...

One of the motivations for the collection was flood analysis, which overlaps with your observation about coastal towns.

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