Apple acquired mind-blowing 3D mapping company C3 Technologies | Hacker News Reader

Apple acquired mind-blowing 3D mapping company C3 Technologies

9to5mac.com

198 pointstechnoslut52 comments

I currently work for Yell Labs in the UK (though quit last week to fully commit to the startup I'm working on with 2 other great guys), and we use C3 on the maps part of the main website.

If you want to see what it looks like, try this: http://www.yell.com/map/

Only a few locations in the UK were commissioned... the cost is high so we aimed at the large cities to start with. It's really good stuff so long as you stay away from trees that are near buildings ;)

The dataset is enormous though. Going to be interesting to see that go mobile.

C3 basically took a FPS game map approach (poly data and textures) and overlaid that with a tiled map approach. So each tile downloads the poly and then lays the texture for that tile over the poly.

This is truly mindblowing. But apart from the obviously neat 3D effect, this is the first time I see aerial photos that look beautiful. Those you find on Bing and Google often suffer from ugly colors.

I thought those were satellite, not aerial pics?

Try the "Bird's Eye" option when using Bing Maps.

They use both, for different resolutions.

The trees definitely do distort certain features though - one good example is the tree lined sidewalk next to Buckingham Palace - when viewing in a top down view and then tilting the camera, you can see how the technology assumes the content under the trees (the sidewalk) would be the same outline as the top down view of the trees that are hanging over the sidewalk. This causes an interesting warp on the rendered view. It's interesting how realistic everything looks until it reaches that issue. Still a very nice example of the technology in use.

My question to you, sir, is how did you manage to get such a domain name for a seemingly bootstrapped company? Kudos!

It's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yell_Group

I think you got confused...

I currently work for Yell (multi-national, been around for ever).

But, I have been working on a startup in my spare time for which I've now (as of last week) quit my day job to fully commit to.

The startup has no money and will be the definition of frugal until we turn profit, Yell has less (they may make tons from sales and be profitable quarter to quarter, but they're saddled with amazing levels of debt).

Amusing indictment of the UK's longest-established [1] directory service that they look "seemingly bootstrapped" at a glance.

[1] Yellow Pages started 1954 in the UK

It's even older, it belonged to the GPO (General Post Office) before that, which is why it is yellow... the post office was yellow before it obtained the royal charter, renamed and rebranded.

The company is headquartered where I live, Linköping in Sweden with 150 000 people. They were spun off from fighter plane manufacturer Saab Aerospace which is also situated in Linköping. Saab owned 53% of the company and Apple paid around $250 millon.

EDIT: Here is a video from Saab showing the process of acquiring map data and it's military applications: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNemPTHOKWg

That must be why the second video is of "Oslo, Sweden". :)

Tjena, Martin, förresten. :)

I also figured that :) Kul att se fler Svenskar på HN!

At least it says below it: "A fly-through over Oslo, Norway created by C3 Technologies".

My first thought after seeing the videos is how this will apply to video games.

It seems like a relatively easy way to replicate the real world into a game map.

Interesting. Previously, the same company has been behind the 3D view of Nokia's map service http://maps.nokia.com/3D/ — more info e.g. here http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/04/c3-technologies-behind-noki...

How is it different from this? WebGL 3D maps. http://maps3d.svc.nokia.com/webgl/

Edit: Of course they will do it Apple way, which means excellent execution and integration.

It's not different at all since Nokia is using C3's techology.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110419007396/en/C3-T...

Patents?

I remember these guys being at Where 2.0 a few years ago. They were not hiding their desire to be acquired very well at that point: they were almost begging to get every Google employee present into their exhibit booth. Interesting to see they finally got a bite from Apple.

Reminds me of http://hitta.se/3d - zoom to Stockholm.

[edit: its their work as well]

Yeah, I was wondering if this was the same technology that hitta.se has been using for years.

wow, that looks cool. But the whole world has to be 3D, wanna see the Himalaya and rain forests and my home town in 3D :-D

And still no turn by turn directions :p

This is actually a fairly serious issue for all non-Android handsets, IMO.

The built-in integrated-into-almost-everything Google Nav functionality is the killer feature that trumps all other killer features in phones for me. Obviously YMMV and for some people this feature isn't as big a deal, but it is a huge deal for me and it is what stops me from seriously considering anything that isn't an Android phone these days.

For the record, I do realize there are quite a few GPS turn by turn solutions for the iPhone, but suggesting they are a true replacement for Google's Nav stuff is like suggesting Google Voice Search is a replacement for Siri.

>This is actually a fairly serious issue for all non-Android handsets, IMO.

Well not all non-Android handsets - Nokia maps has free turn-by-turn directions as well as downloadable maps (not just pre-caching a route, you can download maps of the entire USA if you want). As I tend to travel a lot to areas with spotty or non-existant cellphone coverage, this is the primary reason I'm sticking with Symbian for the time being.

>"Nokia maps has free turn-by-turn directions"

So does WP7.

I use Tom-Tom in the iPhone and it is good. The most incredible thing is that if I make a wrong turn it recalculates new directions. I knew this existed in classic GPS devices but never realized how useful it was until I actually used it. Plus it does not require a signal which is actually really useful when you travel to Canada (from the USA) where you cannot use the local telephone service unless you are ready to pay a lot of money.

I think iPhone with Tom-Tom is fine. It costs $60 dollars but you can share it with 4 other devices which means you can spread the cost.

You just did that thing which I tried to prevent anyone from doing with my last paragraph.

Sorry but the GPS solutions on the iPhone just aren't the same (btw, direction recalculation is a no brainer and of course Google Nav does that, and a whole lot more like local data polling from other Google Nav users to determine realtime road speeds for path redirection)

Anyway, it is the full OS integration that is key. Basically anything on the phone that displays an address (web browser, Google Maps, apps like Yelp, etc) displays it as a clickable link letting me instantly pull up directions and switch into nav mode. This sort of integration is huge but sadly the sort of thing people tend to gloss over unless they've actually experienced it, which is why I tried to preempt that with the (also flawed) comparison between Google Voice Search and Siri.

> Basically anything on the phone that displays an address (web browser, Google Maps, apps like Yelp, etc) displays it as a clickable link letting me instantly pull up directions and switch into nav mode.

This is in iOS too. Of course you don't get turn-by-turn, just directions, but if Apple is eventually going to add turn by turn you'll find it there.

> The most incredible thing is that if I make a wrong turn it recalculates new directions

I have never used turn-by-turn navigation that couldn't do this.

I've tried google navigation, and it didn't work that well compared to a typical paid turn-by-turn navigation app with offline maps.

Nokia Drive is considered as good and in many ways better than Maps Navigation.

Nokia bought up Navteq a few years back so they have a good data source for it - I'd expect that they should be able to provide turn-by-turn navigation that's comparable to Google's.

I don't get the comparison. I use Navigon on my iPhone. I travel extensively. It's been 99.9 percent perfect. As good if not better than stand alone GPS devices. I understand how it's nice to have it built into Android, not having to pay for a separate app, but turn by turn directions either work or don't work. And I use them every day.

I'll be more than happy when Apple builds it in, but until then, I've more than happy, and it's certainly not enough to make me look at switching to Android, even if it never happened.

How often does its index of all of the businesses get updated?

Probably as often as the data provider(s) that Google is feeding into their system as well. You didn't think that Google was actually collecting that info directly, did you?

Google does collect data directly, too. If you're a business owner, you can upload your business location and data here:

http://www.google.com/local/add/g?hl=en-US&gl=US#phonelo...

That doesn't answer my question . . . It wasn't rhetorical.

I believe he answered your question as well as could be done without some inside knowledge. We don't know how often anyone's db is updated, so with no benchmark how can a fair comparison be made?

I have no idea. When I start having problems with finding businesses, or if it takes me to closed businesses, I'll worry about it. So far, in over 2 years using the app, I've not had problems.

> For the record, I do realize there are quite a few GPS turn by turn solutions for the iPhone, but suggesting they are a true replacement for Google's Nav stuff is like suggesting Google Voice Search is a replacement for Siri.

How do you think it is better than conventional navigation devices/apps? Do you have a link to a demo video or a review that shows the coolest features? The only distinguishing feature I can see is Street View integration.

If you actually used a well known GPS app on the iPhone, you'd realize how ridiculous your Siri comparison is.

Every time I think about switching to an iPhone for my daily use, I remember this. This is a huge deal and replaces yet another device I don't have to lug around while on travel. I've even stopped using my Garmin since the maps tend to be much more up-to-date and the screen is easier to type addresses on.

This is another issue that's been mythicized by Android users. There are plenty of great turn-by-turn apps—free and low-cost—that work online and offline. I've used MapQuest (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mapquest-4-mobile/id316126557) on my iPhone; worked great.

Come on in, the water's fine: http://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-navigation/id6010

Not any more mythicized than any particular iOS feature. Mapquest is available for free on Android as well. It is a nice app, but it can't match the integration of native Google Navigation.

It really is funny though. I don't know a single person (and most of my friends are quite happy iPhone users) with an iPhone that has a turn-by-turn app.

The ones that do use a GPS drag around a Garmin, the rest just try and work with Google maps as best they can.

A couple did switch to Android recently, but assumed it too didn't have turn-by-turn and kept muddling through with Google Maps until I showed them how to do it.

I don't know why that is exactly, but it's weird and gives me a strange impression that this is a seriously omission from the platform. This acquisition is no doubt part of a larger strategy to bring this capability (probably in a wonderfully Apple-y way) to their mobile platforms.

Just as a data point, the TomTom turn by turn apps have been consistently in the top 5 paid apps over the last several years here in the UK. You could argue that's even more reason for Apple to provide their own solution of course.

It's a serious omission, yet everyone you know seems happy on the iPhone, and the couple that switched didn't even know about turn by turn directions on Android. Doesn't seem serious at all. (by the way, I know plenty of people that have iPhones, and the vast majority do have 3rd party GPS apps. The rest have no use for them.)

I agree with a previous commentator, this omission has been overblown. Yes, it will be nice when iOS comes with a turn by turn app that integrates with the whole iPhone. But if you want one now, you can buy one that works great.

had to add "mind blowing " or it wouldnt be worth it uh

cliche headlines make me want to run too ... I despise them.

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