Google Maps is Expanding Immersive View to Routes

Nice direction.

The upgrade will be available in 15 cities by the end of the year.    in Engadget

Kris Holt|@krisholt| May 10, 2023 in Engadget

Google Maps is expanding the Immersive View format it revealed last year to an important part of the app: routes. When you look for directions in Google Maps on iOS and Android in select cities, you'll see a more detailed view of the route.

The feature isn't just about making your journey look nicer than a bold line tracing the steps from point A to B (and maybe C). The idea is to bring all of the key information that you may need about the trip into a single place. You'll see details on traffic, weather, air quality, bike lanes and where to find nearby parking.

If you're planning a journey ahead of time and the weather is expected to be foggy or rainy, you'll see that in the visualization. Google is also using a blend of AI, real-time data and long-term trends to give you a sense of how busy traffic might be by displaying a certain number of vehicles on the virtual roads.

— Google (@Google) May 10, 2023

Ahead of Google I/O, Miriam Daniel, Vice President of Google Maps Experiences, told Engadget that the team was focusing on the above-ground parts of the journey for now. So, don't expect the visualizations to include your subway trips quite yet. Still, given that Google Maps users look up around 20 billion kilometers' worth of directions per day, Immersive View for Routes could come in handy for many folks.... ' 

Cesium partners with Google Maps Platform to Render its New Photorealistic 3D Tiles

 Cesium partners with Google Maps Platform to Render its New Photorealistic 3D Tiles

Philadelphia, PA – May 11, 2023 – Philadelphia-based 3D geospatial company, Cesium, has partnered with Google Maps Platform on the experimental release of Photorealistic 3D Tiles, available through their Map Tiles API. Photorealistic 3D Tiles, announced at Google I/O, use the Open Geospatial Consortium’s 3D Tiles community standard pioneered by Cesium. 

“We believe today is a new inflection point, where Photorealistic 3D Tiles will spark innovation across the community and enable developers to build never-before-seen applications and experiences,” said Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi. 

The Map Tiles API serves Photorealistic 3D Tiles to an open ecosystem of 3D Tiles-enabled runtimes including CesiumJS, Unreal Engine, Unity, and NVIDIA Omniverse. The experimental release is the result of two years of collaboration between Google and Cesium. 

Additional tools announced at Google I/O that leverage Photorealistic 3D Tiles include:

Google’s Geospatial Creator in Unity – A new workflow within ARCore Extensions for AR Foundation SDK that allows users to visualize the real world with Photorealistic 3D Tiles and Cesium for Unity.

Google’s Geospatial Creator in Adobe Aero, which enables the loading of Photorealistic 3D Tiles in a location of choice to anchor AR objects to the real world.

Cesium has released sample code and tutorials to help the community get started with Photorealistic 3D Tiles. Developers can also use Cesium ion to combine their own 3D geospatial data with Photorealistic 3D Tiles to build immersive metaverse experiences and applications. 

Google Maps Getting More Immersive and Stable

As mentioned in todays event ... 

New ways Maps is getting more immersive and sustainable

Feb 08, 2020 Chris Phillips, VP & General Manager, Geo

Last year, we shared our vision for the future of Google Maps — an immersive, intuitive map that reimagines how you explore and navigate, while helping you make more sustainable choices. Today we’re demonstrating how AI is bringing this vision to life, with updates for immersive view and Live View, along with new features for electric vehicle (EV) drivers and people who walk, bike or ride public transit.

Immersive view: rolling out now 🎉

Immersive view is an entirely new way to explore a place — letting you feel like you’re right there, even before you visit. Using advances in AI and computer vision, immersive view fuses billions of Street View and aerial images to create a rich, digital model of the world. And it layers helpful information on top like the weather, traffic, and how busy a place is.

Say you’re planning a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. You can virtually soar over the building and see where things like the entrances are. With the time slider, you can see what the area looks like at different times of day and what the weather will be like. You can also spot where it tends to be most crowded so you can have all the information you need to decide where and when to go. If you’re hungry, glide down to the street level to explore nearby restaurants — and even take a look inside to quickly understand the vibe of a spot before you book your reservation.

To create these true-to-life scenes, we use neural radiance fields (NeRF), an advanced AI technique, transforms ordinary pictures into 3D representations. With NeRF, we can accurately recreate the full context of a place including its lighting, the texture of materials and what’s in the background. All of this allows you to see if a bar’s moody lighting is the right vibe for a date night or if the views at a cafe make it the ideal spot for lunch with friends.

Immersive view starts rolling out today in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. And in the coming months, it’ll launch in even more cities, including in Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence and Venice. ... ' 

Overture Maps Emerge to Compete with Google

 Nice to see Competitive Geographical mapping, been using Google for some time.   Google has done a great job,  but want to see yet more creative things.   Open Source I see.   Note the number of participants. 

Linux, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft want to break the Google Maps monopoly

Overture Maps Foundation wants to end the oppressive rule of the Google Maps API.   By Ron Amadeo - 12/16/2022, 

Google Maps is getting some competition. The Linux Foundation has announced Overture Maps, a "new collaborative effort to develop interoperable open map data as a shared asset that can strengthen mapping services worldwide." It's an open source mapping effort that includes a list of heavy hitters: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom, with the foundation adding that the project is "open to all communities with a common interest in building open map data."

The Linux Foundation has a press release about the project and a new website for the Overture Maps Foundation. The press release outlined the scope of the project, which aims to deliver:

Collaborative Map Building: Overture aims to incorporate data from multiple sources including Overture Members, civic organizations, and open data sources.

Global Entity Reference System: Overture will simplify interoperability with a system that links entities from different data sets to the same real-world entities.

Quality Assurance Processes: Overture data will undergo validation to detect map errors, breakage, and vandalism to help ensure that map data can be used in production systems.

Structured Data Schema: Overture will define and drive adoption of a common, structured, and documented data schema to create an easy-to-use ecosystem of map data.

If you're saying, "Wait! isn't there already an open source map community out there?"  There is, and it's called "OpenStreetMap," the Wikipedia of maps that anyone can edit. The Overture press release says, "The project will seek to integrate with existing open map data from projects such as OpenStreetMap and city planning departments, along with new map data contributed by members and built using computer vision and AI/ML techniques to create a living digital record of the physical world."

Google Street View Turns 15

Always been a big fan, a way to record the whole earth!   And always expanding in new ways.   And Free.   Very impressive Google.  I am also struck about how Google maps, with streetview can be used to step back in time.  220 billion images. 

Street View turns 15 with a new camera and fresh features, May 24, 2022

Ethan Russell, Director of Product, Google Maps

Fifteen years ago, Street View began as a far-fetched idea from Google co-founder Larry Page to build a 360-degree map of the entire world. Fast forward to today: There are now over 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories — a new milestone — allowing people to fully experience what it’s like to be in these places right from their phone or computer. And Street View doesn't just help you virtually explore, it’s also critical to our mapping efforts — letting you see the most up-to-date information about the world, while laying the foundation for a more immersive, intuitive map.

While that’s all worth celebrating, we aren’t stopping there. Today, we’re unveiling Street View’s newest camera, giving you more ways to explore historical imagery, and taking a closer look at how Street View is powering the future of Google Maps.

Bringing Street View to more places with our newest camera

From the back of a camel in the Arabian desert to a snowmobile zipping through the Arctic, we’ve gotten creative with the ways we’ve used Street View cameras to capture imagery. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that our world changes at lightning speed. Our hardware is one way we’re able to keep up with the pace.

In addition to our Street View car and trekker, we’re piloting a new camera that will fully roll out next year to help us collect high-quality images in more places. This new camera takes all the power, resolution and processing capabilities that we’ve built into an entire Street View car, and shrinks it down into an ultra-transportable camera system that’s roughly the size of a house cat. But unlike house cats, it’s ready to be taken to remote islands, up to the tops of mountains or on a stroll through your local town square.  ... ' 

Updating Google Maps

 Impressive capabilities.

Three new ways anyone can update Google Maps

With all the change our world saw over the past year, people are relying more than ever on high-quality, updated information about the places around them — like if a nearby restaurant is open or if a local grocery store has updated hours.

To make sure your map reflects the real world, we make it easy for anyone with a Google account to contribute their local knowledge about more than 200 million places in Google Maps. These community-led updates help people everywhere make better decisions about what to do and where to go. And at the heart of the fresh information you see on Google Maps are Local Guides. This community of contributors who help others by updating Google Maps has reached a new milestone: 150 million Local Guides around the world. 

Today, we’re introducing three new Google Maps features that will help make sharing and finding local recommendations and information easier.  ... " 

Google Maps now Providing Pandemic Warnings

Accuracy involved and reported?

COVID-19 Google Maps updates

If your area is affected by COVID-19, you can use Google Maps to obtain relevant information on impacted places.    Tip: In some regions, you might find additional information related to COVID-19. If you select the alert on the Google Maps home screen, you'll find locally relevant links based on your current map view.... 

Google Maps and DeepMind AI

Another interesting example of AI pattern matching applications.   Use in location and mapping is intriguing.

Google Maps is improving travel ETAs with DeepMind AI
The partnership allows Google Maps to predict traffic jams before they appear. By Christine Fish

Google Maps helps users navigate over one billion kilometers in more than 200 countries and territories daily, and Google says its estimated time of arrival (ETA) predictions have been consistently accurate for over 97 percent of trips. That’s not good enough for Google, though, so the company partnered with DeepMind to use machine learning to make its ETAs even more accurate...." 

Google Maps Getting Lots more Detail

Makes Google Maps more powerful yet as a 'geography' experiment.   Sort of like tracing with your fingers on a globe. A truly interactive means of exploring at so many levels of detail.

Google Maps is getting a lot more detail  In TheVerge
Making natural features easier to see and streets easier to navigate

By Jon Porter@JonPorty
Google Maps is being redesigned to make it easier to distinguish between natural features in the environment, whether they’re mountainous ice caps, deserts, beaches, or dense forests. Google says the new maps will be available in the 220 countries and territories currently supported by Google Maps, “from the biggest metropolitan areas to small, rural towns.” Google says that street maps are also getting more detailed in select cities.

Google says it used satellite imagery as the basis for its redesigned maps and that this has had a “new color-mapping algorithmic technique” applied to it. The end result does a much better job of showing off the differences between natural features, such as between snowy peaks and dense forests or green fields and sandy beaches.   ...   (Many map examples below).

Database Archive with Map Interface

Free spatio-temporal database archive.    The world map interface is interesting, you can play with the data on the map, then download data as needed.   You can also add your own data to the map.

Dataset Archive Helps Researchers Quickly Find a Needle in a Haystack 
University of California, Riverside
Holly Ober
July 17, 2019

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have developed the UCR Spatio-temporal Active Repository (UCR STAR), a free archive of large spatio-temporal datasets available through an interactive exploratory interface. UCR STAR's interface is similar to that of Google Maps, as users can zoom in and out and pan around to get a quick overview of the data distribution, coverage, and accuracy. Important details are displayed once a dataset is selected, and the subset download feature allows users to quickly download the data for a given geographical region. Said UCR’s Ahmed Eldawy, “The map interface visualizes the data, so you can see if it’s a good fit. It’s like a catalog for datasets.”   ... '

Tracking Location and Activity

Further, related to my current data and activity investigation, its also very useful to see how Google uses Location History Tracking to infer aspects of behavior and activity, implications are that it works very well.   You can easily explore it from the Google Maps App.  It integrates with other behavior like nearness to stores, picture taking, and likely other key entries.  You can then see this on a map, or in a significant event trace.

In fact, it works too well.  And though Google painstakingly provides a means of stopping or selectively deleting all or any part of it, they are now accused of still using the underlying data to infer commercially behavior, even if you turn it off.     They are being sued regarding that:

See;  https://mashable.com/article/google-location-history-tracking-lawsuit.amp

Follow Locations on Google Maps

Interesting idea, follow locations.  I add: Perhaps start thinking of clusters of locations as well?  Subcribe to locations and clusters?  Reminders that you have not been there in some time?

Google Maps now lets you ‘follow’ your go-to locations
Follow your favorite store like you follow friends on Twitter

By Chaim Gartenberg   @cgartenberg on the Verge

Google Maps for Android is getting a new feature today: the option to follow locations and businesses like you would an account on a social network, letting you stay in the loop on any news, events, or upcoming offers that are featured there.

Those updates will show up in the recently added “For You” tab that Google already uses as a personalized feed of local recommendations and restaurants. Allowing users to personalize that section a bit more by adding their favorite stores seems like a natural extension of the functionality, especially as Google seems to be set on adding more social features to Maps. .... " 

Google Map's Moat

Google Map's Moat.  Mapping is modeling, for and about a particular context.  So the details and comparison between Apple and Google are fascinating.  Been using both to compare myself, but am not seeing all the details.

How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps?   Cartographer Justin O’Beirne  looks at the details.

Over the past year, we’ve been comparing Google Maps and Apple Maps in New York, San Francisco, and London—but some of the biggest differences are outside of large cities.

Take my childhood neighborhood in rural Illinois. Here the maps are strikingly different, and Apple’s looks empty compared to Google’s: .... "

 " ... Google has gathered so much data, in so many areas, that it’s now crunching it together and creating features that Apple can’t make—surrounding Google Maps with a moat of time. 

It makes you wonder how long back Google was planning all of this—and what it’s planning next.

As we saw earlier, Google seems to have associated its building and place datasets together:

So Google likely knows what’s inside all of the buildings it has extracted. And as Google gets closer and closer to capturing every building in the world, it’s likely that Google will start highlighting / lighting up buildings related to queries and search results.  ...... " 

Apple vs Google Maps

In Flowingdata:  

In Google and Apple mapping approaches.   I have looked at both of these for years now on the IOS smartphone.  A close comparative look at different mapping approaches.  Variation in data and design.   Choices in different user experience.  Shows the incredible investment and multiple redesigns that have been made.

Google Maps Location Sharing

Google Maps Location Sharing is being rolled out.  Google had a service like this some time ago, that allowed you to very selectively share your instantaneous location among trusted 'friends and family'.   We examined it for possible commercial applications.  Its back again,  with it appears, more alerting and selectivity about sharing.   Privacy considerations. Might it be used for things like ride or delivery sharing?  API for linking to commercial supply chain systems?  It is noted in Wired that they are gathering location data.

Business Traffic in Real Time

We aimed to use public real-time webcam images to gauge traffic.   Google maps can now provide some of that same type of data, perhaps to estimate demand of products and resource use. Can see this being very useful in combination with other kinds of data.  Smart city applications as well.

Google Maps now tells you how busy places are in real time
by Eric David

Google Maps has offered its “Popular Times” feature for about a year now, allowing users to gauge how busy a business will be at certain times of the day based on past history.
Now, Google is making the feature a bit more useful — and creepy — by showing real-time stats using location data taken from people’s mobile devices.

“Just in time for the Black Friday swarms, we’re adding a real-time look at how crowded a place is right now, to help you decide where and when to go,” Jamie Aspinall, a product manager at Google, wrote in a blog post. “Whether you’re rushing to pick up a last minute gift or seeking a lively bar for some festive spirit, check Popular Times for a sneak preview of what to expect when you arrive.”

The new feature uses anonymized information from the Google Maps app that tracks where a device is located. More specifically, Google’s location data code tracks when users enter a predefined geographical boundary, for example a specific address or GPS location, and when they leave. Since Google Maps is one of the most popular map tools around, this effectively means that Google knows roughly where you are at all times. .... "