
Facebook acquires Mapillary - hampelm
https://blog.mapillary.com/news/2020/06/18/Mapillary-joins-Facebook.html
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basch
I hope this and Scape are tools for a successor to PhotoSynth. It's really a
shame that that dream from 2007-2010 era never materialized. For facebook to
be able to turn all its photos of public places into geometry and texture
sets, and procedurally create 3D representations of the world at ground level,
without street view cars, would be a next big moment in consumer mapping, and
a win for Occulus. Textures in particular would look much better being
extrapolated and generated vs being overlayed from the photos themselves, and
lighting could be something reverse calculated from photos at different times
of day. Imagine being able to turn a photo from day to night, based on what
you know about said locations actual lighting, and not a generic filter. Those
3D maps would also be handy for AR, being able to sync the geometry of the
world up to what facebook expects it to be.

These original two ted talks were spectacular.

[https://www.ted.com/speakers/blaise_aguera_y_arcas](https://www.ted.com/speakers/blaise_aguera_y_arcas)

[https://www.wired.com/2010/11/mining-flickr-to-
build-3d-mode...](https://www.wired.com/2010/11/mining-flickr-to-
build-3d-models-of-the-world/)

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pedalpete
This is the future we were/are looking to build with
[https://ayvri.com](https://ayvri.com), but you have to start with a
compelling use case first. It's great to be able to create a this incredibly
cool tech, but what will people do with it? If you look at Google Earth, it's
amazing, it's cool, but so many years in, there still is barely a use-case for
the amount of $$ pumped into it.

We're fortunate to be profitable, and have users that love what we do today,
but it's a long long road to get to where we want to be.

The vision as I was explaining it in my last funding round was to imagine a
world where every photo or video you took had infinite zoom and rotation of
every photo or video you took.

Mostly that vision resulted in a ton of push-back on how it will never be
possible, which is BS based on the progress of computer vision and AI in
computer graphics, or "so what".

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pmontra
I'm currently using Street View quite a lot to check the surroundings of
houses I'm interested in. I think this is something a potential buyer could
pay a little for but real estate agents usually do their best to hide the
actual location of the house (maybe they fear to be bypassed?)

Other use cases:

I check roads, intersections and landmarks when I'm planning new bicycle
rides. Satellite view is also very useful. I do most of the planning on the
OSMAnd app and I check some parts on Google.

I check the locations I must go to of they are new to me. This is to know
where to go and not lose my way on the last few meters (street numbers
sometimes are unhelpful.)

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folmar
I use satellite/aerial for cycling, as it's updated quite frequently and it's
reasonably easy to tell apart the bad path (sand/big traffic). The Street View
in the less crowded places seems to get one update in 8-10 years.

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yNeolh
Offtopic: For a second I read "Facebook acquires Military" and seemed
reasonable from them...

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pella
"Our commitment to OpenStreetMap stays. "

~~~
tuesday20
For how long?

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KaiserPro
considering how much money facebook pump into OSM each year, I suspect its for
the long run

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pella
"starting today, it will also be free to use for commercial users as well."

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zubairq
Well done Peter and Jan. I always thought it would be google or Microsoft, but
good job!

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Mediterraneo10
Mapillary is deeply connected to OpenStreetMap. Google steers clear of OSM-
related things in order to protect its own maps offering. There is no way
Google would have bought Mapillary out except maybe as an acquihire, and even
then, did Mapillary employees have any unique skills that Google hadn’t
already had in abundance after a decade of Street View development?

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legerdemain
Do they offer ucipital imagery?

