Gopro Fusion Workflow

yeah, well they are probably hammered with all of the dev work on the marketplace and the apps anyway.
I wonder if the Web viewer is on github, @eesger might be willing to send a PR?

@gpsmapper so, looks like simply centering the equirect jpeg and then normalising on upload at least points the little cone in the right way? The fov indicator doesn’t seem to be displaying any sort of “image heading” info, so the cone is the only thing to rely on when determining where the sequence is going.
I guess if you don’t fix the heading and upload something that is 90deg off the actual camera heading, either the SfM magic will kick in as described @josealb (presumably deriving the relative movement direction from gps + sfm) or it will all be horribly broken (like one of those sequences where someone fixed the heading in the app the wrong way)
Will need to actually get round to testing this. Or maybe wait for the new Fusion…

Well, I went ahead and ordered a Fusion 360 today, and upgraded my computer’s video card yesterday so it can process the images. I’m also pondering creative mounting ideas. Imagine something jointly designed by Cecil B. DeMille and Rube Goldberg, and you’ll be close to what I’m thinking.

Frankly, reading through the posts about the camera, I was hesitant about buying this camera. I would like to mount it sideways, more to avoid the &*(^&#!! bug splatter on the lens than for wind drag (this is not an airplane, after all). But an easy answer to the question of what setting(s) to change to get the front of the rendered images pointing forward seems elusive.

It would seem to me that if the camera is pointed 90 degrees right of the true heading, the offset should be -90 (or possibly 270, I suppose). Am I missing something?

Ideally, one would think the stitching app would be able to do this when rendering the files. But one could also be wrong. I haven’t looked at the app because I don’t have the camera; and trying to figure out an image-processing app without images to process tends to be wasted time.

In summary, I really don’t care about the “why” so much as the “how.” What do I have to do to correct the images so they will be most useful? Is it something I should do before capture, in the app, in the uploader, or some combination thereof?

Thanks.

Richard

@GeekOnTheHill if I understood you correctly, you are referring to the yaw correction as mentioned above - this is done in Fusion Studio pre-rendering to point the centre of the image in the direction of travel (let’s all hope mapillary devs find a way to read gopro compass exif and we don’t have to do it…)

finally got round to rendering a test sequence. Have to say Fusion Studio doesn’t make it terribly obvious how to export time-lapses in jpeg.
Cropping out unwanted parts of the image was fairly easy and seems to have cut image size by 90% for 10% on the nadir - I cut myself out, and mapillary stitching on the nadir is a bit funny now, but seems ok otherwise.
As feared, a consumer 360 camera has disgusting image quality, and I plan to be doing 360 shots only for general direction awareness. Pilot Era might be interesting with 8k, but prices for 360 cameras shooting good images (and mostly not even having an on board location chip) are too high - even used Insta Pros are like 2k, without the GPS dongle. I could be ranting about this for a while…
Otherwise, the Fusion seems like the best Mapillary 360 camera, almost plug and play

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Okay, thank you for that.

I ordered some super heavy-duty magnets ($4.99 each at Harbor Freight) for my Rube Goldberg vehicle mount, which exists only in my head at this point. Each magnet is rated at 95 pounds, but I’ll lose a few pounds with the anti-mar covering. Still, I think it will be suitably overkill if I use even three of the four. I’ll use a safety strap just in case, though.

Once I get the thing mounted I’ll get a bit of footage to play with for a while before uploading.

Some footage I’ve seen with the Fusion is excellent, and some is crap. I wonder how much has to do with the SD cards. I have a dashcam that will work with almost any SD card, but the image quality is crap with the El Cheapo jobbies.

Around here, the scenes may look barren to humans, but they’re pretty complex for a machine. It will be interesting to see how well the camera handles the forests.

I can send you some files if you want to test out fusion studio beforehand, or you can get some from 360rumors.
Didn’t think about magnet mounting as a bit afraid of paintwork damage, but it sounds quite sturdy.

Most of the footage I’ve seen from Fusions looks ok zoomed out (as expected), but loses all detail zooming in. Colours are ok and dynamic range exists, but the detail is just not there, and no sd card would fix that.
If the rumours are true about the next fusion, we shouldn’t expect a bump in image quality…

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Thank you. I appreciate the offer. However, the camera will be arriving tomorrow, the good Lord and UPS willing, so I should have some footage to play with quite soon.

I built most of the mount today and posted a link about it here. I still have to finish the mast (the one in there was to align it while cementing the pipes, I have to install a U-hook for the safety strap, and I want to paint it. But it’s pretty much done.

I wound up picking up the magnets at Home Depot because Harbor Freight was taking their time shipping the order, which I wouldn’t have mind had I not spend almost as much for the 2-day shipping as the magnets cost. The cost was pretty much a wash save for the fuel and the time.

If you cover the bottom of the magnets with something very thin, like self adhering shelf liner; and make sure the roof is clean (some wax doesn’t hurt, either), the magnets don’t cause any damage. I used to use magnetic antennas for two-way radios, and they never caused any problems. (And if they do, that’s what polishing compound is for.

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Hi all!
Does somebody have any idea of how to batch-export panoramas in Fusion Studio? I’ve only seen a single image export option: screen|690x178
I’m using the latest version of Fusion Studio (V 1.3.0.400) on Windows 10.

Thanks. :grinning:



decent. Ukrainian mapillary community is amazingly active - slava ukraine!

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if you haven’t found it yet: you need to go to the “rendering” stage, and there under export options among video files you’ll find jpeg and possibly raw. need a screenshot?

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Hi 4004, found it a couple of minutes before your replied. Not as easy, if you are too focused on that 360-button. :wink:
Thanks for that hint, anyways.

Just wanted to add some comments regarding GoPro Fusion use and performance.
Frankly I am not satisfied as the camera itself has a lot of issues (overheating, poor gps, short battery life, big weight, general fragility).

After trying multiple tests I must say that in my opinion this camera is generally usable for bike and foot trails capture and not very good for road (car capture).

Main issue with the car capture is mounting. You can mount Fusion using several options on the roof of the car, but, since the car is generally big and large part of the image is occupied by the car itself.

The only way to improve that situation, is to invent a custom mount on a long pole, which should be at least 1.5m above the roof, 2m even better. Something similar to what you can see on the photo above, or in this thread:
http://mapillary.trydiscourse.com/t/pvc-pipe-magnetic-roof-mount/3035/8

But here come the big cons - poor driving experience and all the limitations related with having such a long ‘monster’ on the roof. Often I am driving highways at 120-140kmh speed and this setup does not seem to be suitable for that kind of use. Also forget about tool booths with height barriers, underground parkings, garages, etc.
For car use I think externally mounted action cam like Xiaomi YI or more expensive GoPro Hero will do much better job (while not delivering 360’ imagery).
Internally mounted dashcam will work as well, however, part of the picture will be ‘lost’. Blackvue DR-900S appears to be a very good option thanks to excellent support by mapillary tools.
Other (legacy) dashcams will require much more effort for pre-processing

So, now a few words about GoPro Fusion in bike&hike scenario.
Generally it’s ok, however, weight is a bit high in my opinion and you have to be very careful as the camera lens are very fragile.
Also, I must warn users that built-in GPS hardware is a very unreliable.
First it can stop working any minute (mainboard overheating or due to whatever else). Also accuracy is very far from being acceptable, especially in dense-buildings or nature locations with obstructed or limited sky view. SO, ALWAYS record a GPS track with your smartphone or any other GPS tracking device.
I have tried Fusion when hiking along the river in the gorge (in the mountains) and compared the ‘tracks’ later.
Fusion: approx 50% of images were missing GPS coordinates. The ones which have them - accuracy was between 5-10 and 300 meters, so the resulting track was not usable.
Osmand tracker on smartphone in the pocket: only 3% of GPS fix loss, overall accuracy was much-much better. Only 10-20 points (out of approx. 2000) were having 100m+ accuracy, while majority was between 5 and 10 meters

Re the workflow, this one works good for me:

  1. stitching in fusion
  2. exiftool to adjust all dates to match actual GPS date/time
  3. Geosetter or exiftool to update GPS coord. with the ones from the track you have recorded (could be probably skipped if you are lucky and no gps-fix lost with good sky view)
  4. Upload with Desktop uploader
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My experience using the Fusion 360 has been okay. Not perfect, but okay.

It’s only completely lost its GPS once (presumably due to overheating as the weather was exceptionally hot). It’s messed up on an image or two in an otherwise good sequence now and then, but the uploader usually catches those shots and rejects them. If not, they become obvious once the map is displayed, and I can manually delete them.

I haven’t had any problems with the time. Perhaps it synchronizes itself to the computer or the GPS. I really haven’t researched that. But the time hasn’t been off since I set it up.

The overheating is the biggest pain. I didn’t even bother trying to map the past few days because it’s just been too blasted hot. But that’s not completely a bad thing because hot days are usually hazy.

The other big annoyance is the slow transfer speed from the camera, along with the camera’s tendency to break sequences into folders mid-stream, which causes Fusion Studio to vomit. Both problems are solved by copying the SD cards to the computer using a car reader, and processing each folder pair individually. It’s no big deal, but it’s annoying that it’s necessary.

As for getting too much of the car in the raster, I’m not sure that would be any different regardless of the camera. Spherical is spherical. I designed the mount you linked, by the way, and I found I actually had to shorten it a bit from the pictures in the thread. Most of the roads I map have overhanging branches.

But again, I don’t think that’s a camera-specific problem. On a spherical image, you’re going to get the car in the picture; and if you have something mounted on a mast on top of the roof, it’s going to hit low-hanging things.

If I’d paid full-price for the camera, I probably would be more annoyed with its shortcomings, quirks, and needs for workarounds. But I paid about half-retail. Maybe less. I forget exactly. So given that this is basically a hobby for me that happens to benefit the public, I’m satisfied enough that I didn’t return it for a refund.

But yeah, it does have some annoying shortcomings. If I were making a living doing this, I would have returned it already.

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+1

true, what I was saying is that any consumer 360cam is not car-use friendly.
After several tests I gave up trying to set it up the way I will like. Thinking of pros and cons I have ended up with the standard action cam mounted on the hood. It is not 360 degree, but gives a perfect and sharp front facing shots with a good angle and proved to be stable and hassle-free even when driving highways @140kmh. Chances to catch the bug are not very high given the small size of the lense.

I have left Fusion only for bike&hike scenario, which happens not very often.

p.s.
I was not satisfied with the Fusion capture quality either.
Frankly, they look awful for a cam with 600 EUR price-tag

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Yeah… At that speed, I think it would look like crap.

I generally keep at the speed limit (prima facie with a 55mph / 88.5kph cap on most roads) or slightly less. At those speeds, the quality is passable enough, meaning the signs usually are readable. Some of the sequences actually looked quite good. Others look grainy and occasionally pixelated.

I think it’s a bitrate limitation, possibly one of the camera’s self-protection mechanisms when it starts to get hot. It’s also true that leaves and foliage, while soothing to the human analog eye, play havoc with digital imaging. Finally, I’m old enough to remember when 2.0 MP cameras were state-of-the art. I spent a lot more money on a lot worse cameras back in those days. So all in all, I’m satisfied with the Fusion 360 for the price I paid for it.

Because I’m doing rural roads, the degradation of image quality at high speed is less of an issue. All we really need on trails through the woods are speed limit signs and road surfaces, when you get down to it. Trees, skies, and clouds are pretty much the same anywhere.

So again, for what I’m doing, I have no complaints bad enough to make me return the camera. But yeah, I can understand how it wouldn’t work out for everyone. And I agree, spherical really isn’t an ideal format for mapping.

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Here is an example of an important forest road sign that is captured in a disturbing smart phone image and not in the 360 image.

yeah, I guess if you paid 500+ for the Fusion in 2018/19, you might not bee too impressed. I think they are discounted quite heavily now.
On the car capture point, I think google/bing have the same problem, which is why 360 imagery is mostly confined to cities. Capturing something useful on the motorway, with a massive drag-increasing object on the roof is not the way to do it. You could try more suction/magnets for peace of mind, but it would still be a hazard. I am planning to get a circular plastic frame to mount (not sure how though…) on top of the car as a precaution from cameras falling off - when one of the mounts failed previously the camera just fell on its side but could slide away if at speed).
Either way, the solution is cropping/masking, but you do lose a hefty bit of the image and basically render some of those precious megapixels useless.
Until we get prosumer level cameras with GPS (or you can try xphase if you don’t need gps), we’ll have to make do with what’s available.
I’ve actually found Fusion imagery surprisingly useful in a dense rural environment, where even house numbers where readable being close to the road.

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I added a safety strap anchor to my mount on the advice of a deputy sheriff who quoted some obscure law about anchoring. With nearly 400 lbs (181 kg) of magnetic force holding the mount in place, it hasn’t moved so much as a hair so far. But attaching an anchor point was no big deal. I’ll take a picture of it the next time I have the mount on the roof.

thanks. I keep trying to find other ways of securing gear apart from suction mounts/magnets, which should be easy considering I have railings, but didn’t find anything cheap and universal yet

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Here are some pictures of the tie-down. I just pass it through the rear doors and through the hand grabs in the rear of the cabin.

Putting half a twist in the strap will null out the aerodynamic lift and stop the strap from vibrating.

The tie-down is really just to keep the police happy because those four magnets have never moved so much as a whisker. But it was easy enough to do, and the extra safety margin can’t hurt.

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