OpenStreetMap
adding an aerial sphere 360 panorama to the OpenStreetMap
Posted by Alex-7 on 25 July 2019 in English.I shot and added as an experiment the aerial sphere 360 panorama to the OpenStreetMap for the lake Lac de Tseuzier: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1642268
The sphere panorama itself is located on the DJI’s website: https://www.skypixel.com/photo360s/spark-78d50747-504a-4a84-90c9-6a02357eb70e .
Here is the link to the same panorama on Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/GZjbKr1J7hy3WgYU7 , and in the Street-View mode it is shown on the map as a small blue circle.
The area of this lake is about one square kilometer. The size of the panorama file is 1.8 MB. It is created with the Spark quad-copter, which weighs less that 500 grams. Spark creates and publishes the aerial sphere 360 panoramas to the Skypixel website automatically from the DJI Go 4 app.
I added it with the “image” tag. In my opinion, it is time to introduce a new OSM tag for the aerial sphere panoramas.
Discussion
Comment from PanierAvide on 25 July 2019 at 10:16
Hello,
Thanks for your article. If you are not aware of it, you might be interested in reading this wiki page : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Photo_linking
Note that, as it is defined now, image=* tag is better for linking to direct image file. For a new tag for 360° pictures, could have sense to make it easier to reuse (no need to check if image=* link is a 360° picture or not). But that also mean that we add yet another tag, and we already have image + wikimedia_commons + flickr + mapillary tags… I’m interested to discuss this however ;-)
Best regards,
Adrien.
Comment from aharvey on 25 July 2019 at 12:22
By including the wikidata id on each object (like in this case), you’re then able to upload many photos to wikimedia commons and link to a selection of photos.
Comment from Alex-7 on 25 July 2019 at 12:34
As far as I know, a sphere panorama cannot be viewed as an usual JPG or PNG image file, because it should be viewed in a special viewer.
Spark & DJI GO 4 app stitch a sphere panorama from 42 images, and only after uploading it to the Skypixel website it could be actually viewed as a panorama.
It seems to me that it is more natural to have a look around, up and down, than to look at a still image in one direction. It is what we are doing when we come to a place, we look around.
I am not sure that an aerial sphere 360 panorama should be treated as an usual still JPG photo. It seems to be a new technology, which gives a better impression and understanding of a geographical place.
Comment from Alex-7 on 25 July 2019 at 12:36
Unfortunately, I could not find a way to upload and view a sphere panorama at the Wikimedia Commons.
Comment from PanierAvide on 25 July 2019 at 12:48
Depends of camera/software, but most of the time a classical image is produced (with a size ratio of 2:1) which can be seen as a usual (example : https://images.mapillary.com/wqKTtmjKqoXTXk_Q6vNJeA/thumb-2048.jpg ). In that case, you must tell the rendering software to interpret it as a 360° image, and this picture is projected on a sphere.
Comment from PanierAvide on 25 July 2019 at 12:51
If you can produce such image, you can host it on WIkimedia Commons, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:360%C2%B0_panoramas_with_equirectangular_projection
Comment from Alex-7 on 25 July 2019 at 13:00
OK, I understand about an image with 2:1 ratio. But how a user of a map can view it as an interactive 360 panorama?
I am interested in the aerial sphere panoramas. They cover much more ground, up to a square kilometer, give an idea of the 3D relief of a place. It is easy to automate shooting from the air.
Comment from Alex-7 on 25 July 2019 at 13:09
And if I add such an 2:1 image to the Wikimedia category, the visitors of the category will not understand why this image looks so strangely.
It would be different, if there were an option to view an image as a panorama at the Wikimedia Commons’s image viewer. I think it will come to this before long, since sphere panoramas become more common.
Comment from PanierAvide on 25 July 2019 at 13:31
That’s the whole issue as now : we can’t distinguish in OSM data whether if image is 360° or not. So having a specific tag could help, or the data consumers should check the picture size or metadata (if I remember correctly, 360° images have special EXIF tags). This is not really convenient, but checking picture itself is the only way for an app/data consumer to be sure if it’s a 360° one or not.
Comment from zarl on 25 July 2019 at 13:42
Alex, you also need to add a template to your uploaded image to enable the panorama viewer for that image.
I.e. one of my panoramas contains a link (just have a look at the “edit” tab of that page to see how it works) so that you can see it in the viewer.
Comment from Alex-7 on 25 July 2019 at 14:15
zarl, Thank you. This is what I need. Now I can publish the panorama images at the Wikimedia Commons.
I just have to add the template {{Pano360}}. I hope that they would move this Panorama Viewer functionality to the standard category image viewer.
PanierAvide, I think a new OSM tag is needed. Something like panorama=some-panorama-file.jpg then there would be no mistake if it is a usual JPG photo or a panorama.
But even now, if a file is published like this: https://tools.wmflabs.org/panoviewer/#some-panorama-file.jpg it could be considered as a link to a file itself, since at the Commons the file names are unique.