I’m coming to Mapillary from the late great Microsoft Photosynth.
Photosynth had no requirement for one’s images to have lat/long coordinates for each image.
Rather, since they were using structure from motion techniques (as Mapillary now does) to solve the relative positions of the photos to each other, Photosynth would find the photos’ relative camera positions to each other and then allow me to rotate and scale the point cloud generated by my photos to fit the map.
That approach allows me to essentially make sure that my beginning and ending photo positions are correct and let all photos in between be automatically pulled into place.
I’m currently finishing my first Mapillary upload and was somewhat horrified that I had to drag each individual photo onto the map prior to upload (since my camera does not have a GPS on board).
I do understand that this site is all about geopositioning each image (and I applaud that) however I know from experience that the workflow of using images without GPS coordinates can be greatly simplified by solving the relative camera poses first and then aligning the entire group to the map.
Anyway, this is a pretty high priority for me in terms of whether Mapillary is going to be usable for me. I certainly don’t want to have to manually drag and drop hundreds of thousands of photos onto the map one by one and manually input the compass bearing for each one.
I know Mapillary uses OpenSfM, so you could do something just as usable as Photosynth with regards to mass aligning photos to the map. I’m just trying to make sense of your input workflow.
In the meantime, if anyone out there knows if one of the mainstream Structure from Motion/photogrammetry tools out there (VisualSfM, PhotoScan, ReCap 360, RealityCapture, Acute 3D Context Capture, etc.) has the ability to align one’s photos’ point cloud to a map and write the resulting GPS coordinates back to the source photos so that I could give them all an estimated GPS location prior to handing them off to Mapillary, I would appreciate a walkthrough on how to make that happen,
Photosynth had no requirement for one’s images to have lat/long coordinates for each image.
Rather,
since they were using structure from motion techniques (as Mapillary
now does) to solve the relative positions of the photos to each other,
Photosynth would find the photos’ relative camera positions to each
other and then allow me to rotate and scale the point cloud generated by
my photos to fit the map.
It’s a very interesting feature. I’d like to see it.
In the meantime, you can record a gpx file with your smartphone, and use a software or a script to correlate the pictures with the gpx, then add the compass direction.
record a gpx : OsmTracker, OruxMap, OsmAnd, … on Android,
Correlate: scripts from Mapillary, Josm, Geosetter, and many other…
You can get a glimpse of the idea around the 2 minutes 14 seconds mark back in Noah Snavely’s video from his original Photo Tourism project which inspired Photosynth.
Geoalignment is also mentioned in these two Photosynth blog posts (although not in very much detail).
Their user interface was much more polished but it’s very much the same idea as what Noah shows.
Alas, I am currently without a smartphone.
Also, I have a lot of photos taken over the last 8+ years which have no GPS track recorded.
It is primarily uploading them that I am thinking of.
i recommend you to use GeoSetter to manually geotag those old photos. regarding new ones, use a gps or smartphone to record gpx and then GeoSetter will take care of it (try to set the same time on both devices, if not you can adjust the time offset on Geosetter).
For those of us who aren’t map geeks, could you give a step-by-step explanation of how to process image tracks taken with OSMTracker so they can be uploaded to Mapillary?
Also, it’s my impression that OSMTracker does, indeed, include latitude and longitude for each photo, but please let me know if that is wrong.
I have a large number of photos linked to OSMTracker tracks that I would like to upload to Mapillary.
If you want to quickly test whether your image from the OSMTracker (or anywhere else) has the lat, lon information, just try to upload it in our web uploader. It will prompt you if the coordinates are missing from EXIF data. Mapillary
Yes, of course OSMTracker files contain latitude and longitude information. That’s why it’s called TRACKER.
Not having received an answer to my question about whether I can upload OSTracker files, I decided to upload several tracks from a recent hike. They uploaded fine and the photos disappeared from my phone. (If I hadn’t taken the precaution of making a copy first, you’d be hearing from my lawyer. You need to change that or make it explicit that photos will be removed.) The uploads seemed to go fine, but nothing shows up on the list of my uploads. So, what happened to the stuff. OSMTracker “tracks” consist of a GPX file and associated photos. Did they upload? Or are you processing them? What happened?
@techlady Sorry that I didn’t see your reply earlier. I suggest @-mentioning a username if you’re addressing someone in particular, since they will then get a notification. Also, the forum is first and foremost a place for community discussions (ref. here). For issue reporting, it works better via support@mapillary.com which is checked daily, so we will not miss your issue and will get to troubleshooting it quicker.
It seemed like you had doubts, which is why I suggested the simple test in our web uploader. I might have misunderstood.
In both of our mobile apps (iOS and Android) we display a message before upload that notifies you of the fact that the photos will be deleted from your phone.
For your particular case - did the uploads show up? Normally you should see them (and a related item in your feed) within a few hours. It can occur that it takes longer, but definitely not many days or weeks. If still lost, will you please send us an email to support@mapillary.com and we will do our best to track it down.
