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The Globe in 3D

vricon.com

63 pointsuptown40 comments

It's a shame all three suggested use-cases are military. Surely there must me some more noble use for such technology, in theory at least.

Otherwise, I've noticed Google Maps has had a really nice 3D-view of some cities for a while now, better looking than the sample video here. Although the terrain modeling in this product looks pretty cool.

Games could be one. Disaster planning, Robotics training perhaps.

This appears to be the military market Saab spin-off from the same/similar tech as in the consumer-oriented spinoff "C3 Technologies" that was sold to Apple a few years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3172372

Both companies are/were located in Linköping, Sweden. (C3 Technologies was dissolved, some key people moved to Cupertino.)

Some more details of the tech in this presentation from last year:

http://www.fmv.se/Global/Dokument/Engelska%20webben/Thomas%2...

There are plenty of other uses for this technology, however I believe it is cost prohibitive at the moment. Satellite imagery is not cheap, and you need multiple images for the entire area you are interested in. Then it takes massive computing power to extract geographically accurate 3d from 2d images.

Google has 3d of some cities, but I believe they are hand modeled, and would take a very long time to do in new areas. It is possible they use LIDAR to do the 3d as well, but that would require flying low over an area to collect the data which can also be cost prohibitive, and dangerous. I have yet to see anything on Google Maps that looks anywhere near the quality of the sample video. Totally possible I have missed it though, do you have a link to somewhere?

For example:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5032338,-0.1282209,513a,20y,...

Using Chrome and Earth view (and WebGL I think). This doesn't seem to have been done "by hand", looks to be algorithmic.

Thanks. That definitely looks better than the previous 3d I have seen, though I am not sure it looks better than the Vricon stuff. They are definitely comparable at least.

The textures are definitely algorithmic on Google Maps, but this page leads me to believe the models are not necessarily: https://maps.google.com/help/maps/mapcontent/citiesin3d/ They are asking for places to submit their models to be included. While I suppose this could be done arithmetically, it does not seem like Google is doing it themselves.

"Surely there must me some more noble use for such technology, in theory at least."

Having real time 3D accurate data would be really useful in nearly any civil engineering scenario. Cost is probably why they don't market it that way. Probably cheaper to hire a few guys with a theodolite than order a bunch of hi rez satellite pictures still, then.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tripoli,+Libya/@32.8949517...

There are no 3D buildings on Google Maps in the areas that this company is targeting.

"WHAT IS THE PRICE FOR YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES? Vricon offers competitive pricing"

oh... competitive pricing. Well I feel better. Thanks for letting me know.

It's targeted towards the military, so the price is "as much as we can get."

More like "commensurate with the agony of your procurement process".

Best way to get me to not watch your video is to take away the controls and my ability to skip around at my leisure. Urgh.

Also it did an extremely poor job of explaining what the product is and what features are offered.

I believe this is somehow connected with the data Apple uses in their Maps application. Apple bought C3, at the time a division of SAAB, back in 2011. Seems strange that SAAB now is back in (almost) the same kind of business as what they sold of to Apple. http://jalopnik.com/5879255/how-apple-bought-saabs-futuristi...

Apple probably only bought the rights to use the tech in civilian applications.

That's exactly it.

While it does appear to be similar at first look, they are actually different technologies.

C3 requires a plane / helicopter / UAV to fly (very low, 500m) over an area to capture the data, then it can be processed into a 3d map. Seems similar to street view, but from the air. Takes continuous images of an area.

Vricon however is using satellite imagery taken from just a few angles to then generate the 3d data. This means it can be done anywhere in the world, without needing to fly there. Which means the process could be started almost immediately, and without endangering anyone if the area is dangerous or remote.

Firstly, this is amazing.

Secondly, the music playing in the main splash video is a bit chiptune, and it's pretty awesome. Does anybody know who/what that is?

seconding the song request!

If I go to the root of the site[1] I get an error message about a bad database connection.

[1] http://www.vricon.com/

"Vricon Inc. is a U.S. company providing high-quality services and products to meet our customers’ needs"

Maybe they should work on that description.

Does anyone have any detailed data on the cost structure of their offering. Or, ordering detailed satellite images for that matter?

On a somewhat unrelated note, this

http://alturl.com/qr2n3

and this http://alturl.com/coph3

are "decision ready" maps of the towns (Reston, Virginia and Linkoping, Sweden) where the company is located. Both might be useful to "special forces" for "decision support" and, who knows, "air operations".

Those link to

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9556685,-77.3727741,5091m/da...

https://www.google.com/maps/@58.4080516,15.6156912,1715m/dat...

(For anyone who despises the use of URL shorteners here as much as I do.)

"Decision ready"

Wait, does that mean something?

It means you can trust it to be good enough to make decisions based on the data, instead of needing to double-check with another source of information.

It means that it's good enough to serve as a base to make decisions about what to drone-strike. Then again pretty much anything is.

This has meaning in combat arms. Most information is suspect. It can have a short shelf life, be biased, be incomplete or wholly inaccurate. Fog of war man. Most paper military maps were made off of surveys in the 70's and 80's. Things are more built up now, etc.. etc.. So let's turn to this fancy new laptop 3D map we've got. Imagine you're a special forces team and your calling up a fires mission (CAS, artillery, whatever). Let's say this fancy new satellite/3d whiz-bang map you're using to get a grid coordinate for the ridge full of bad guys happens to be off by just 100m, the bombs drop, miss the ridge line and sail onto the peaceful village in the valley floor below. Things like that don't go over well with the locals.

Didn't Google Maps have something like this before? I can't seem to find it.

I saw similar things in the Israeli Army 10 years ago, but still looks nice.

The video says this made by Swedish car producer Saab. The went bankcrupt two years ago. So is this abandonware?

Saab did a lot more than just car manufacturing so the brand lives on in a bunch of different places, it was "just" the Saab Automobile bit that went under.

SAAB designs and manufactures different defence products and fighter jets. For example, the JAS Gripen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

They also made the awesome Carl G: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_recoilless_rifle

Saab Group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_Group) is the kind of parent company of Saab Automobiles, which was the car manufacturer. The parent company is (much) more focused on defence technology, such as fighter jets and subs.

The auto-playing video on their site was scary; I didn't have audio or headphones so I have no idea how the strange-looking name is supposed to be pronounced. "VR icon" seems awfully generic for a profiled product like this.

No, Saab Group sold Saab Automobile to GM in 2000

Saab is originally an acronymn for "Svenska Aeroplan Aktie Bolag", which means Swedish airplane incorporated. It's a defense company. They sold the car manufacturer to GM in 2000.

Whatever Vimeo video was there before is "private" now.

Playing fine for me.

Ah, must be my privacy blocker.

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