How Google Built Immersive View for Maps
Google has revolutionized the way we navigate and explore the world around us with the introduction of immersive view on Google Maps. This new feature allows users to experience a 3D view of their surroundings, providing a hyperrealistic preview of their journey. By combining street view footage with images taken from a 3D aerial camera, Google creates realistic digital models that offer a whole new level of immersion.
The process of creating immersive view involves advanced 3D graphics techniques such as volumetric rendering and ray tracing, all done on the cloud. The result is a lifelike representation of landmarks, streets, and even the weather and traffic conditions. Cameras used by Google for mapping have evolved over the years, from bulky rigs mounted on vans to compact and portable devices that capture footage for Google Earth and other Maps features.
Immersive view is not only about utility but also about delighting users with a more engaging and realistic experience. As this new chapter of Google Maps unfolds, users can explore places and preview routes in cities like San Francisco, New York, and London. So next time you launch Google Maps, be sure to give immersive view a try and discover a new perspective of the world around you.
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If I wanted to go to the San Francisco Ferry Building I could just use a 2d Google Maps or I could tap here and go into immersive View and get a 3D view of not just the ferry building but everything around it including the water palm trees and even these seagulls
Flying by I can also see what the weather and traffic is like Google creates these realistic digital models by combining street view footage with images taken from a 3D aerial camera and we’re about to go check out those cameras and learn more about how Google created immersive view so let’s go check it
Out immersive view is Google maps’s latest Flex instead of seeing just a ground level image of a building or a landmark like you do in street view immersive view features these three-dimensional hyperrealistic previews of your journey so you’ll go into Google Maps let’s say you want to walk from the ferry building
To the Palace of Fine Arts you put in the Palace of Fine Arts as your destination and then they’ll you’ll see a thumbnail up here an animated thumbnail and you tap on that just like you do for imersive view for places you can you zoom in and and if you want to
Examine it any part of the route that you’re interested in instead of seeing a red line to symbolize traffic you’ll see a rendering of cars backed up to really visualize what you’ll encounter and even though it looks lifelike these aren’t real-time images it’s purely simulated a re-rendering of of the capture it’s not
There’s no live camera happening the idea is to make it look real it’s all a digital rendering of of previously captured information I saw the cameras that power Google Maps as features at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View California immersive view is created by combining is captured for
Street view with cameras like this and overlaying them with 3D footage taken by this camera that’s attached to a plane the result is these threedimensional Bird’s eyee views of a city or Landmark these cameras have a different geometry they’re all facing towards one another where these cameras all have the goal of
Being in a nice ring with a common focal Center so that we can create a nice spherical image where these actually have a different goal by creating Parallax between the cameras we can use that parallax to help reconstruct the 3D geometry of of the of the terrain and
The buildings Ai and computer vision help to align all the imagery and identify objects like street signs sidewalks and Road names when you piece it all together you get something like this you can actually it’ll show you where the turns are you’ll be able to
Zoom in um and you get good good other views from here you’ll also be able to go into street view tilt see what it looks like at the distance you can see the traffic oh it’s raining probably not a good time to go for a bike ride we
Have what’s known here as the time slider what’s the sunset going to look like you know at 6:20 p.m. on that that evening Google’s cameras have clearly come a long way since street view launched in 2007 you if you can see we have a long history of developing
Cameras here and they keep getting better and more compact over time and more portable so this is the very first one developed for street view this was mounted on top of a van and we used this van to drive mostly around or around Mountain View and San Francisco and our
First review launch actually used the imagery from this rig there are also snowmobiles bikes and what Google calls a trucker which you wear like a backpack to capture corners of the world you can’t drive a car through the trucker is definitely lighter than that 500 lb rake
Street you started with but I personally wouldn’t want to wear it for too long this is like my backpack to work Google’s latest Street View Camera is much smaller and easier to transport than its predecessors so compact by comparison and it looks like a little robot which I think is just the cutest
Thing with little eyes and the arm yeah I think that’s also not by uh that’s not by accident the 3D aerial camera used for immersive view also captures footage for Google Earth and other Maps features we have very good cameras and we are able to fuse all this imagery together
But then in the current immersive view rendering we apply Advanced 3D Graphics techniques such as volumetric rendering and Ray tracing and do this on the cloud there are two versions of immersive view one to explore places like landmarks and Parks which is already available and another for previewing routs which is
Rolling out starting in cities like San Francisco New York and London so soon wherever you are you’ll see an option to preview your journey like this when you launch Google Maps and with details like those seagull I saw flying around the ferry building it’ll all feel a lot more
Realistic it’s about the delight and the utility right not just the utility but we want people to go to imersive view and go wow that’s really interesting that’s really delightful this is a kind of a tool I want to keep using in the [Applause] future immersive view is the next
Chapter of Google Maps but street view had to walk sometimes with a truer for immersive view to run so give it a shot and see if you can get a new perspective of your world and be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe I have
Some mapping to do I’ll see you later
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Video “How Google Built Immersive View for Maps” was uploaded on 02/12/2024 to Youtube Channel CNET