Everyscape: 3D City Navigation Based on 2D Photos
Posted by Sebastien on the 2007/06/13 at 01:54
in 3D Worlds, Mapping, Microsoft, Monetization -
(via O’Reilly Radar)
Everyscape aims to be able to show you the whole world — both inside and out — from its website. It plans to do this with normal 2D photos. Using proprietary technology Everyscape will stitch these photos together and 3D-ify them. The result is a pan-n-scan world accessible through a Flash viewer.
When looking at their viewer you are presented with small, green arrows that direct you around their representation of the realworld. When you click one of the arrows you zoom though the 3D’d photo (a neat affect). It’s not just outside some of the arrows will take you inside buildings. Throughout the app you’ll see web links and info boxes in the form of small blue circles. You can currently check out San Francisco’s Union Square with the Everyscape
viewer.
To make their representation of the world Everyscape needs to know the lat-long and the orientation of the camera when a picture was taken. This data is used to stitch the photos together and place them in the world. The comparisons to Microsoft’s Photosynth are very obvious. The models generated by Everyscape are less CPU-internsive to generate and require less data, but are not nearly as detailed — given Everyscape’s goal I am not sure that it needs to be. (…)
Everyscape is launching with San Francisco this fall. They told me that they would have ten cities by the end of the year. On the homepage they list San Francisco, Boston, New York , and Seattle as coming soon. They claim that takes three weeks for them to record a city (the same number that MS quoted at Where 2.0) so expect the roster to expand quickly after the initial batch. (…)
Everyscape is still determining their revenue model. They can easily embed advertising and local search into their application. There may be other methods of monetizing their “eye-level search”. Real estate agents would probably love to put their houses up in a viewer like this. (…)
Update: Techcrunch has more information about the various players in this space.
What it means: I had seen the Microsoft technology last year at Mix06 and it really excited me. More players in the field means more opportunities for technology licensing (and better prices!). I think I’ve said before I’m a big believer in 3D visual city navigation. I’m convinced that it will become a new way to do local searches in the future. In the demo above, you can even enter in the Salvatore Ferragamo store!
June 15th, 2007 at 03:48
[…] For now the 3-D mapping is a bit ahead of its time, as its full experience isn’t possible with the average broadband connection. This could change soon with high speed fiber to the home initiatives being led by telecos (and incented by IPTV and triple play offerings). Meanwhile, interesting 3D mapping tools continue to roll out that are decidedly less broadband hungry including Google Maps Street View and Everyscape. When broadband speeds, processing power, and graphic chips catch up to 3-D mapping technologies, it could see greater adoption for both the fantastical Second Life-type experiences, and more practical local search and 3-D mapping applications. It could well become the new standard in local search, and only be a matter of time. […]
November 25th, 2007 at 10:02
It’s good that Google has a lot of competitors when it comes to this technology. Aside from Everyscape, there is also MapJack.com which competes in the arena of online mapping technology.