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Comment by MichailP | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible to use images from say Google Street View to reconstruct 3D city model with this tool? Maybe it could fall into fair use for small part of city...

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It would likely violate their TOS.

No creation or augmentation of data sets based on Google’s Content or Services. You will not use Google’s Content or Services to create or augment your own mapping-related dataset (or that of a third party), including a mapping or navigation dataset, business listings database, mailing list, or telemarketing list.

There's probably some other issues.

https://developers.google.com/maps/terms

You would need a significant number of images for a particular scene (more than Google Street View would provide -- maybe in the tens or hundreds depending on the complexity -- but perhaps mining Google Maps photo uploads for a particular location would suffice). A Google Image search for a particular landmark is likely to yield better results ([1], [2], [3]). Also, stitching together multiple scenes after reconstructing each individual scene may prove difficult. Apple Maps does a sort of satellite view projection on to 3D building models ([4]), but this is far from a dense reconstruction.

[1]http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/timelapse/

[2]http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/timelapse3d/

[3]https://grail.cs.washington.edu/rome/

[4]http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/29/9413583/apple-maps-3d-flyo...

You'll want to use the OpenStreetView dataset for that, which has a much more liberal license for collected images than Mapillary. (OSV is a direct competitor to Mapillary, with OSV being sponsored by Navteq)

http://openstreetview.com/terms/

You might also consider mining Flickr by geotag, constraining to CC licenses that allow for use.

Or even just directly capture geotagged photos. That's going to be the best way to ensure good coverage of the target area.

What would the capture source be if not an existing online repository?

A camera.

That's where Mapillary and OSV get their imagery from, people that decide to go out and take pictures.

An additional advantage is that you then have full rights to the imagery (so for example, you can upload them to both services).

That'd work of course! Bit more of a schlep to build out your processing pipeline to ingest those images, store them, and then render them with OpenSfM, but could definitely be done.

Oh yeah, it'd be quite some work, especially if small isn't small. But I think at the moment, neither OpenStreetView nor Mapillary can be relied on for coverage, so the shortcut of using images gathered by others isn't widely available.

> OSV is a direct competitor to Mapillary, with OSV being sponsored by Navteq

s/Navteq/Telenav/

I goofed. My apologies.

Thanks for the very informative and detailed answers. The Google TOS seems very restrictive, and I can't quite stomach the idea that our data, including photo of my house, is free to use by big companies in any way conceivable, but on the other hand, a small, maybe scientific purpose, is in violation of TOS :(

Photos of a house from the public street isn't your data though. This is why you are empowered to go and collect all sorts of data and information that is exposed to the public in all sorts of ways, and do with it as you please.

You have just as much right to take pictures of Google's complexes from public locations and bill them should they want to use what you have collected, and this whole situation is really a good thing. Things in the public domain are in the public domain.

You are right. But on some level I don't like that huge disbalance of power, where on one hand you can take a photo with your smartphone, but someone can take a fleet of vehicles and run them 24/7 around globe, photographing everything, making hi res lidar images, georeferencing, coupling that with smartphone data, etc. I would be more OK with it, if it was open dataset though. End of rant :)

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