Hacker Remix

Mosaic REALMAP: Explore Prague in detail with 1.26M images

157 points by programd 5 days ago | 38 comments

dt3ft 3 days ago

So how do we explore? Is there a link somewhere in the article?

programd 3 days ago

After I posted the item I realized that there was no link and it's one of those "email us for access to the data" deals. Which I think is a mistake on their part. Nevertheless this is a great project and I wish there was more of this kind of work out there.

Maybe it's time to start an open source effort to do something similar in some corner of the world? You'd need access to the mapping camera hardware, obviously. Who would be willing to fund it?

kfarr 2 days ago

That sounds pretty similar to mapillary

mosaic360 2 days ago

author here. Hello!

This dataset is the result of many, many hours of actual driving, with our own camera hardware (mosaic X, designed and built right here in the czech republic) and dual RTK + GNSS/INS/VSLAM system to allow extremely precise positioning.

I would like to encourage adhering to the CC-BY-NC-SA license as much as possible. I would like to at least have a quick dialog which each person who grabs this dataset to explain this as clearly as possible.

This data is not public domain. It was created through tremendous effort and sunk cost, and I would like people to use it for research / learning purposes and to share their results with the world. Releasing all the data with a public link is honestly a bit too scary for me at this point.

Hence the signup form :-)\

After you sign up, you'll get a link to the dataset. First a link to a very small dataset, which is all we have managed to anonymize so far (we have to obscure faces and license plates in order to adhere to GDPR legislation). We will make the entire dataset available in a few weeks.

dansky 2 days ago

Thanks for making the dataset available. As I recorded several city walks with multiple cameras simultaneously (usually 3-6 Osmo Pocket in 4K60) I'd like to create Gaussian splatting datasets from many such walks. What costs and hardware requirements can be expected for city-wide GS datasets like the one of Prague?

I'm wondering if I can create them myself or should donate the many TB of multicam recordings.

dangsux 3 days ago

[dead]

dansky 3 days ago

There are many YouTube channels walking through cities as the movement and sound add more to the atmosphere than street-view like experiences. I also happen to cover Prague many times like [1] in 2020 without many tourists.

One thing I started a few years is multicam walks. This means that I carry some 4-6 Osmo Pockets to actually film in several directions simultaneaously - example: Dresden [2].

The editing process is taking multiple hours so I have hundreds of unreleased recordings. If someone has a hint on AI assisted multicam editing, where to start (like better gaze prediction etc. from VR) I'd be interested - especially feeding all camera streams and let a NN decide the best camera angle and cuts to be between 4-11s?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7HIfklyF9w

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulzq8sorvR4

hellomrsparrow 3 hours ago

Hey I have been working on some ideas in the same vein for a bit. Taking input as videos and extracting the most interesting parts out of it. I can try testing it out on your footage. If it works, you can incorporate it in your pipeline as well :) Drop me a mail if you're interested (luzenmictlan (at) gmail)

bloated5048 2 days ago

Walking videos at evening in HDR look great on HDR TV! I love them! Especially comfy in a cold season.

Thanks for making them, will definitely watch some!

aeontech 3 days ago

Is it possible to stitch your footage into a 360 projection? If so, you could definitely upload it as either 180 or 360 degree video, which would allow for VR use cases as well.

dansky 2 days ago

I guess 180 would work. There is 360/VR content on YouTube yet it seems not mainstream yet. I also have a 360° cam that I rarely use. BTW, half of all my viewers watch this type of content on TV according to the stats.

I guess subtitles, HDR and decent editing are more important for now so I'm looking for AI help in the editing part. Subtitles are already supported by GPTs

andrewshadura 3 days ago

Wow, driving in the pedestrian zone around Staromák is bad enough already, but they also happily post pictures. Not okay.

mosaic360 2 days ago

We obeyed all laws when capturing this data. As you might notice, old town square does allow vehicles under special circumstances (delivery vehicles, mostly)

clovemolecule 2 days ago

Have you every heard about Google Street View?

jesprenj 2 days ago

Maybe they got some special permission?

notachatbot123 2 days ago

There is zero mention of privacy in the post so probably not.

thrww120956 2 days ago

Permission to drive in the pedestrian zone.

It's legal to take pictures in public places in the Czech Republic, no need to ask permission for that.

mosaic360 2 days ago

We are, obviously, adhering to all GDPR laws in the release of this dataset.

karel-3d 3 days ago

Hate that I can't put this on wiki commons because of the non-commercial license.

rvnx 3 days ago

Especially without link in the article

mosaic360 2 days ago

There is a link to a signup, and we will share the data with you.

We would like to know who wants the data and why. Because that's interesting, and we hope to make new relationships out of this. Throwing the data into the void is a bit too scary as the first step. Maybe next time? :)

thanks! Jeffrey and the Mosaic team

rvnx 2 days ago

I understand, I just wanted to see the quality of some of the pictures to see how it compares to Google Maps or Apple Maps.

This way it can help to understand for which uses Mosaic X could be potentially useful (and this could bring creativity, e.g. to develop a game).

Satellite imagery providers often give a couple of sample pictures in the public as well.

mosaic360 2 days ago

Hi, sorry but that is not the purpose of this data. We are releasing it for research and education purposes.

You might redirect your critique to the other ~1000 companies in the world who have such data and don't release anything at all under any terms.

karel-3d 2 days ago

Sorry it's just a mild complaint. I am still happy that this dataset exists! Just my first thought was "ah I will put it on Wikimedia Commoms", and then... I realize I can't.

mosaic360 2 days ago

Yeah, we have our own self-serving reasons for sharing this dataset as you might guess, and I hope that we see some nice outcomes from having shared it.

What specifically would you like to use for wikimedia commons? You don't need all 1.25 million panoramas for that, do you?

karel-3d 1 day ago

A subset is a good idea. I will write you later.