You’d think Google would have cut them a check at CES.
Earlier this year, a little Swedish company called C3 Technologies took CES by storm, demonstrating their incredible iOS and Android apps that leveraged formerly top secret missile targeting technology to create ultra-realistic 3D maps.
Fast forward seven months, and C3 Technologies’ website is a ghost town, and C3′s parent company, Saab, has sold off it’s 57.8% stake in the company in a deal that is worth over $157 million dollars. So who bought them? Our best guess: Apple. Saab has only said they sold their stake to a “Western company,” but watch the video above, and look at this tech description, and then imagine iOS 6 with this technology baked in:
C3′s models are generated with little human intervention. First, a plane equipped with a custom-designed package of professional-grade digital single-lens reflex cameras takes aerial photos. Four cameras look out along the main compass points, at oblique angles to the ground, to image buildings from the side as well as above. Additional cameras (the exact number is secret) capture overlapping images from their own carefully determined angles, producing a final set that contains all the information needed for a full 3-D rendering of a city’s buildings. Machine-vision software developed by C3 compares pairs of overlapping images to gauge depth, just as our brains use stereo vision, to produce a richly detailed 3-D model.
Wanna bet Homeland Security, et al is/was their customer so as to more easily see where you live?
If the lawyers had a blast with street view, wait ’til they get a load of this!
“Wanna bet Homeland Security, et al make use is/was their customer so as to more easily see find you live?”
Wow. Want to clean that up Uncle Dave so that it is a sentence that makes sense? Or has DU lowered it’s writing standards to allow complete gibberish?
[What, you don’t understand that most interesting of languages, Half Asleep? Alright, translated closer to English.]
Whoopie. So someone did an xcopy on the matrix. 😛
Actually, I thought it was pretty cool.
Meh… SAAB doesn’t usually deal with silly companies such as Google or Apple…
Looks exactly like Nokia Maps 3D to me, also interesting that Oslo was one of the first cities available on that service too. http://maps.nokia.com/3D
This blog should be called “Uncle Dave Uncensored”
“Wanna bet Homeland Security, et al is/was their customer so as to more easily see where you live?”
See where I live? Yeah thats what Homeland Security wants. /sarcasm
This tech is fantastic for everyone. Good and evil.
In context, this blog could be called “Uncle Dave, Ungramatical” but I don’t want to harsh anyone’s grove given my own lower standards.
I find google street view to be the most valuable characteristic for getting the feel for the place. France did it first with a near real ((ok, I take some license)) street experience of Paris.
Can steet view 3 D be far off?
Hey?!?!?!==Does anyone know if you can view Google Street View thru 3 D glasses or some other similar connectivity? The whole reason I got a computer was to have my own holodeck.
Man, the future is so simulated, I need corneal implants.
Next, Google looks in every window.
Ohhhh… Ahhhhhhh..
It makes sense for Apple to buy them. The application appears to have lots of bling with very little real utility compared to alternatives (bing maps, google streetview, a paper map…)
But Apple are masters of presentation over content so it should be a big success – one more reason for iPhone users to compulsively stroke their devices whilst bumping into things.
Now I just get “This video is private”
Too bad.
the video is down, but google search still has 5 sec previews starting at 0:04, 0:28, 0:55, 1:21
# 9 “Next, Google looks in every window.”
http://tinyurl.com/23qxj9
That link to the Nokia maps site is amazing. The detail is just incredible.
China might be on the list of potential buyers. As the US declines to due to bad choices they are climbing fast.
Bing Birds Eye is still a bird in hand and free. In my opinion, the 3D is in the same ball park (except for the fixed perspective) and the resolution seems better.
Dead Link