Nokia's new mapping site: HERE.net

[Mise]

http://here.net/

Now, at first glance, it seems like your standard mapping service. Search for McDonald's and it gives you McDonald's. Search for directions and it gives you the fastest route. Search for your house and it shows it to you.

But then you switch the Map View (top right of the map area) to 3D. And have your brain explode from the awesomeness.

You pan around a bit and you notice that, in addition to the satellite imagery being incredibly clear and bright, the SIDES OF THE BUILDING are textured. And, if you click the little trapezium symbol at the bottom to pan up, YOU CAN SEE THE SIDES. Rotate the "dot" on the circle at the bottom and YOU CAN SEE THE OTHER SIDES.

I'm only guessing, but I think what they've done is combined Nokia's (very high-res) street view imagery (which you can see if you zoom all the way in), and combined it with the clear and bright satellite imagery, to create models of every single building in the city. I'm using London, which has street view on this mapping software, but other cities like Bristol, Newport, Cardiff etc don't have street view, and thus don't have this awesome 3D map thing.

Anyway, this is probably the most awesome thing I've seen. The reason it's awesome is that, if I'm right, they don't have to go to the trouble of manually creating models for every building in a city, and manually texturing them all. They do it through algorithms that match satellite imagery with street-level imagery. Amazing stuff.

Now all we need is for someone to take all this 3D data and turn it into a giant Counterstrike map...

 

[LamaGT]

They kinda look like improved apple maps, all of the buildings are melting apparently

 

[Mise]

What city are you using? It looks fantastic in London. Flawless.

 

[Zelig]

No street view imagery in Canada, so worse than either Bing or Google.

 

[LamaGT]

What city are you using? It looks fantastic in London. Flawless.

Random area of Milan. But anyway London is melting too, and the map doesn't load terribly fast for some reason, though the results are already impressive.

 

[History_Buff]

Google and Microsoft is working on doing the whole 3D thing for the whole world right now (I'm on my laptop, so I can't see how Nokia's works). Google I believe is working on fleets of unmanned aerial camera drones, Microsoft is a little behind them.

And though their name escapes me, somebody already makes such drones that you can buy. Though the mapping integration isn't exactly easy.

 

[warpus]

Toronto looks amazing, but my hometown is so blurry that it's even hard to locate on the map, even before you jump into 3D mode.

 

[Mise]

Random area of Milan. But anyway London is melting too, and the map doesn't load terribly fast for some reason, though the results are already impressive.

Hmm, really? It looks great on mine!

 

[schlaufuchs]

It is pretty neat. I feel on the whole it's smoother than googlemaps, but they don't have streetview for my hometown yet. And I found the directions system to be rather fiddly. Then again, googlemaps' directions are also rather fiddly.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Didn't work for me for some reason. But I an already see the first movie criminals planing on this thing if it is really supposed to cover.. everything?

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Wake me up when they start doing the X-Ray flyovers and the interiors are mapped too.

Then yes, we can play the greatest game of counterstrike ever made.

 

[bhsup]

It is with great sadness that I must inform you all that Butler, MO does not benefit from all the neat things London apparently gets with this new site.

 

[mangxema]

Eh, it's still too washed out for me to consider using it (even if I did live somewhere they've worked on) but I can appreciate the effort.

 

[Zelig]

Eh, it's still too washed out for me to consider using it (even if I did live somewhere they've worked on) but I can appreciate the effort.

Turn up the saturation in your video card drivers?

 

[Skwink]

Nice

 

[LucyDuke]

Holy crap, London looks amazing. New York City looks pretty nice, Boston looks damn good. I'm excited to see this expand to Providence and elsewhere. Awesome find, Miseass!

 

[Evie]

This is pretty amazing. Can't wait to see Ottawa and Montreal added.