Google Street View, how big do you think it takes?

[chengbin]

The Google Street View is pretty cool. How much storage do you think it takes to store Google Earth? Do you think 250GB is enough to store it for a screen resolution of 480x272?

OK, maybe not all of Google Street View, but how about a city, or a province. I know it depends on size, how about a city like Toronto? How much storage do you think we'll need?

I think it might be cool if TomTom could provide the images for your specific city and download it yourself instead of using a high capacity 2.5'' HDD to store all of them when we only need 1 city.

What do you think? Do you think Google will let GPS makers use their database in the future?

 

[Malouff]

chengbin,

I hope you are talking about using Satellite image overlays in the Browse feature.

I don't see why you would be using your TomTom with "Google Street View" unless you were using the image viewer to show people what your house looks like driving by on the road.

If you are talking about the Browse feature then I do have experience in creating the image overlays.

I in fact wrote a comparison of programs I have used to achieve this in another forum.

A word of caution on this feature it is not used when driving.
It is more of a offline google earth.

It would be good for any of the following:
A. you already know the area but TomTom does not locate a lot of addresses.
In this case you could use the browse feature and tap on the location and navigate to it.
(Better then this why not save some space and just send the address to the TomTom from Google?)

B. If you want to see the area you will be traveling to.
(Again you could have also have done this at home)

C. For showing off the browse feature.

Perhaps I should create a user blog or a tutorial thread on how to do this.

Anyways as for your question on how much storage would it take to store Google Earth's satellite imagery.
I would also not recommend storing everything possible as it would be a lot of open land and let's not forget the oceans.

Here is a chart from SatMap suggesting possible sizes at each zoom level using an average image size of 9.01 Kb
The top columns are 1.Zoom level, 2. # of images at that level, 3. Approximate HDD space

 

[chengbin]

What I mean is when you're using the GPS in the car, the GPS has the street view image on the screen. You can show lane, point at POIs, point at your destination, etc...

Your chart doesn't make sense.

If street view is to be implemented on GPSs, there should be only 1 zoom level (and making the image smaller, but you don't have to waste space for that). Also, we're looking at the number of images needed for an average large city.

 

[Malouff]

chengbin,

Sorry, for the question about street view.
I now see that Google does not offer that in Canada.
They do in the USA and here is where you can learn about it
Street View

You are talking about the Browse Map feature.
The one you access by touching this icon

As far a the chart it is for global coverage.
Also each image downloaded always has the same size 256x256
At zoom 1 you get one image for the globe yt
At zoom 2 you get four images tq tr ts and tt

None of these programs however will export the original images in their cache
All of them will want you to select an area and they will stitch together a larger image.

I don't know exactly how big of an area of Toronto you want but it would depend on what zoom level you wanted on how much space it would take up.

Looking at this area at Zoom 10 for example

In that image at Zoom 10 there are two 256x256 images for that area.
[What is shown above however are pieces of those two images stitched and cropped together as that image is smaller than the original 512 x 252 image(s)]
If we Zoom in to level 11 the area now has 6 images for the same area.
At Zoom 12 it has 15 images
Something like zoom 18 it has 34277 images according to GYMViewer

Does a person need to store every zoom level?
No they don't.

You just have to ask yourself how detailed you need the area and if Google (or Yahoo if you want) has a constant zoom level for your selected area.

In your example Yahoo has a maximum zoom of level 18 but Google goes to 20 for the area I tested.

Back when I was making overlays some areas had a maximum zoom of level 16.

 

[chengbin]

Well, in a few months Google will support Canada.

 

[Malouff]

chengbin,

Google already does support satellite imagery for Canada just not street view.

I am getting confused by what you are wanting,
so you do want Street View images like this then?

Image from wikipedia - Google's Street View now has a new UI.

I have no idea on how a TomTom could use Street View images like this as they would not make a very good overlay.

The only other place that TomTom would let you use the images is with the image viewer and this function does not have anything to do with the map.

If however you are talking about satellite images and using the browse map feature then it is already supported.

They are however used more for an eye candy though as the TomTom does not update the browse map view when driving.

 

[chengbin]

The image you posted is what I'm looking for.

I agree that it is eyecandy, but I did say some use for it.

From my other post

"What I mean is when you're using the GPS in the car, the GPS has the street view image on the screen. You can show lane, point at POIs, point at your destination, etc..."

 

[gatorguy]

Blaupunkt veiled a system similar to what you're describing a few months ago. A vehicle mounted camera, generally on the dash, displays an actual tru-time image of the road ahead on your nav screen with the nav map superimposed on it. Pretty cool looking, but don't know how much it adds to navigation simplicity. Europe only for now.

 

[mvl]

Teleatlas / Tomtom is starting to collect the same info. This may be coming eventually. It would take a large increase in storage capacity, personally I wouldn't pay that much extra for it, I prefer the 2d mode anyway.

See here and here.

 

[canderson]

Teleatlas / Tomtom is starting to collect the same info. This may be coming eventually. It would take a large increase in storage capacity...

Now there's the forum understatement for the day! I don't know how many of you have played with the street view on Google, but the frequency with which they take shots for their "street level" video is pretty amazing. As a result, just mapping a single long street would require an enormous amount of data. The only practical way to make use of that kind of information, even for a medium sized town, would be to pull a frame or two across as needed from a 3G wireless feed. Pulling up images for a single location on demand -- that'd be a great 3G application. The alternative is a few terabytes of local storage (ouch) to cover a serious metro area.

I'm assuming you AREN'T asking for a realtime feed against your vehicle's motion. That would be a train wreck. Even if you had the data stored locally, you'd hate it. While the frequency of shots by the Google ground team is pretty amazing, it's not NEARLY high enough to keep you from going nuts if you'd try to watch it in realtime. The discontinuity between frames would be an eyeball bender. You'd be off the road soon enough with either an Excedrin headache or a bent fender.

 

[geeksworld1]

hi

I don't really see what all the fuss is about with Google Streetview, it's a excellent resource to locate places before you head out, much in a way that Google Maps enabled people to finally ditch those crappy A-Zs.

The privacy issues are a little moot, as your faces are blurred and number plates blanked out. So while you may recognise yourself in the photos I doubt anyone else would be able to.

Google will use it for their own gain, anyone who says otherwise is foolish. Much like GMail, the archive of all your mails allow for very exact context advertising based on your mails, I don't know how Streeview and Latitude can be monitized quite yet, but I guess they'll come up with something.

 

[mvl]

Google will use it for their own gain, anyone who says otherwise is foolish. Much like GMail, the archive of all your mails allow for very exact context advertising based on your mails, I don't know how Streeview and Latitude can be monitized quite yet, but I guess they'll come up with something.

Google has just ditched Teleatlas in the US and built its own maps. It says it did much of the validation by using streetview to confirm user-submitted edits.

I suspect they'll sell the map, and probably make a turn-by-turn app for Android.