This is really cool! It isn't quite what I expected from the idea of "street view" though; it definitely has a very full map, but it seems like there are only a few specific spots where you can actually see the world (i.e. the "street view" part versus the "Google Maps" part), and it seems like there isn't any way to move when in the "world" view compared to the "map" view. I'd absolutely love to be able to scroll through the whole world like I could in Google Street View, especially if it there were more than one point in time to choose.
Still, props to the OP for releasing. This is the exactly the kind of thing I'd get nerd sniped on.
First, I'd figure out a method for finding all walkable terrain on the map, then figure out some sampling function to approximate taking a screenshot every "n" steps.
Then I'd write a hack to get the emulator to fly me through all these points, take the screenshots, and dump them to a directory.
Then I'd spend a long time trying to get the "click through" and "blur" navigation method through street view working.
What is interesting about street view is that; your cursor is aware of what is the "floor" and what is a "house" or "surface" with high accuracy, and places that you can navigate to on the "floor" are highlighted before tapping on them. I wonder if some depth data is captured by the camera that allows this to happen, or if it's coming purely from the images/computer vision techniques.
TLDR: Even with the basic level of complexity OP had, I bet this took him a few weekends. I would get nerd sniped by the above, for like 4 months.
Why is that a problem? Scale isn't a non-issue, but it's a much smaller problem[0] than creating code to traverse the space sensibly while exporting screenshots and linking them together. Once you have the code to map-out a 10m x 10m chunk, it seems that scaling that up to cover the whole map would just be a case of letting it run longer?
[0] I assume - having never worked with game emulation
The map is still much smaller than the size of the area Google has mapped in Street View. And it can all be captured in a computer much faster than Street View cars can drive around.
I love projects like this. Very cool, but only possible by completely disregarding the fact that this is illegal under copyright law. As it is, I expect this person has already painted a sizable target on their back and there's a very good change they'll be sent a take-down notice once Nintendo becomes aware.
I think projects like this should be allowed to exist and that eventually people will grow very tired of how restrictive copyright law is and demand changes, but until that happens, I hope these types of projects continue to be created and spread in violation of the law for as long as possible until the lawyers finally come after them.
It's better that we see what kinds of things we could have without oppressive copyright laws and be upset when they are taken from us than for people to refuse to start cool projects just because they are doomed to be shutdown.
People are already tired, but there’s simply not enough of them to effect any change. Especially when opposing large, well funded lobbies that are de facto writing the relevant laws in the US and EU.
I don’t know how we’re going to be able to change this. I’ve voted for parties that are the most outspoken on this issue all my life. But somehow this never makes it into any actual policy.
I’ve even on multiple occasions called my representatives as parts of grass roots lobbies against new trade agreements or laws that would set us back even further. But even when such grass roots campaigns were successful, the same proposal would just return at most a few years later and the grass roots oppositions would get tired of trying to stop them.
Unironically, learn about the theory of politics and organize with others. The current political system will always act in the interest of business, it's basically an evolutionary system.
There is never going to be a financial insensitive to change how copyright law works because it makes companies a lot of money, and if one representative attempts to change the law, these companies can use that wealth to sponsor a challenger to that individual (most likely in the primaries for their next race).
It's dangerous to actively put any policy in place which goes against the interest of industry. But it isn't impossible, remember the government broke up Standard Oil, ultimately they do have the power to change laws if the political will is there.
> But it isn't impossible, remember the government broke up Standard Oil, ultimately they do have the power to change laws if the political will is there.
I can't confidently say that you're wrong and that such change is impossible (I honestly don't know and have made the choice to be optimistic), but I think it's fair to say that our political system and the environment it operates in has changed dramatically since 1911. Many of the changes we've seen since then were orchestrated by industry with the specific goal of limiting the possibility or effectiveness of the government interfering in their activities. The brake up of Standard Oil, or even Ma Bell, may not be a very good indicator of what is possible today.
Doomerism will always get us nowhere and is a tool of those who benefit from the status quo. Being optimistic and seeing a different future from that of today is a useful action towards achieving those goals, even if it may seem difficult. The political circumstances of an entire nation can change in a few days.
Basically nothing. We are living in a simulation of "rule of the people". But the system is built so that basically nothing changes for those with actual power.
Call my a disillusioned cynic but I believe democracy is the theatrical play that is being performed to make us believe we have some bit of influence.
> But even when such grass roots campaigns were successful, the same proposal would just return at most a few years later and the grass roots oppositions would get tired of trying to stop them.
If such things succeed they are an anomaly and the system over time evolves to find ways to ensure this firm of influence from the popolus will cease to exist. The current iteration you describe is crude but effective.
My idealistic heart would love for a way out that actually had a chance of success, but I just can't see it.
In the process of getting rich you will one day discover that your interests align now with those you once opposed as you are now part of the club. Welcome to the ruling class! (That is if you even get the chance to make it up.)
As for crowdfunding, the wealth distribution is such that even if the bottom 50 percent of the population in the US all united, they could be outspend by the top one percent 16 times overs. On a global scale it is even worse.
It's better that we see what kinds of things we could have without oppressive copyright laws and be upset when they are taken from us than for people to refuse to start cool projects just because they are doomed to be shutdown.
That seems like an odd argument to be making in a discussion about a cool project someone made despite it infringing copyright. Maybe copyright laws don't put people off in the way that you're claiming they do.
Or maybe there would be many more of such projects if people weren't put off from starting them in the first place by copyright laws.
Maybe, but based on the evidence we have that's just speculation. Perhaps copyright and fear of litigation isn't a common reason why people don't make things. As we see from the link this thread is about, people do make things using other people's IP.
Maybe copyright laws push people who are concerned about being sued to make original works instead of making nothing as you're asserting. That would actually be very a positive outcome, and arguably a great reason to keep copyrights. After all, there's nothing stopping people making things. The only thing they're prevented from doing is using someone else's IP.
We have lots of evidence of chilling effects from copyright law.
I suspect that many of the people who are creating things which violate copyright law are simply unaware that what they are doing is against the law (they feel that they have rights which they actually don't) or they misunderstand the law (See: "No Copyright Intended" descriptions on youtube videos).
Some certainly also think that enforcement is lax enough that they won't be caught, or at least not before others have mirrored the content, or that they won't face meaningful consequences when they are caught, but I think we absolutely cannot say that the existence of copyright violations proves that the laws aren't hurting us by preventing popular original works from being made.
> The only thing they're prevented from doing is using someone else's IP.
Not just that we'd have more cool projects like this because we wouldn't have lost the ones that have been taken down, but because we'd gain all the cool projects made by people who didn't or wont create something cool like this in the first place because they were afraid of the legal liability it opens them up to, or even because despite all the best intentions they can't navigate the system required.
See the "Copyright & distribution:" section from https://www.sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html for an example from an artist who almost wasn't able to make their work at all because of the problems. It was only extraordinary sacrifice that allowed that artist to bring her creative (and I think highly entertaining) work into the world, and that creator is convinced that a bar set that high leaves a lot of artists unable to clear the hurdle.
Not disputing what you are saying but I think the problem is also Nintendo here. Other companies love it when their players make projects like this with their work, and I've heard Sega even hired people who made fan remakes of Sonic. But for some peculiar reason Nintendo seem to absolutely determined to defend their intellectual property. What's annoying is that stuff like this isn't threatening their business model at all, and it could also be beneficial to them by raising interest in their product. But their decision to take revenue off YouTubers years ago was hugely detrimental to them as it lead many YouTubers just to avoid covering Nintendo altogether, and it's insane it took them so long to u-turn on it.
> Not disputing what you are saying but I think the problem is also Nintendo here. Other companies love it when their players make projects like this with their work
I agree that Nintendo deserves criticism for their aggressive enforcement of the law, but the real problem is the law that allows for it. I agree Nintendo's actions probably hurt them more than helps them, but clearly they feel otherwise. Fix the laws and it fixes the problem at its source.
There is a BOTW map app[1] from which the developper makes some money, I assume it to be illegal too but Nintendo has not taken it down. Maybe Nintendo allows that kind of side project to be made after all?
It doesn't really matter if it is or not. There's no way it'd ever get to court to decide whether it is or not if Nintendo choose to issue a takedown. The law is very one-sided in favor of corporations with deep pockets.
> There's no way it'd ever get to court to decide whether it is or not if Nintendo choose to issue a takedown. The law is very one-sided in favor of corporations with deep pockets.
This makes no sense. The law has nothing to say about anything until whatever it is has already gotten into court.
> The law has nothing to say about anything until whatever it is has already gotten into court.
That implies that the law doesn't make it prohibitively difficult or expensive for someone to go to court and effectively defend their actions against a company with trillions of dollars in assets.
We know for example that the law makes it possible for a very wealthy party to drag out or complicate proceedings with the goal of making it prohibitively expensive for a party with less resources to continue. I'd say that counts as the law having something to say before a courtroom (or a verdict) is reached
Or maybe we could respect the rights of the copyright holders? If you create a virtual world, and you don't want other people to run off with your creation, than maybe just maybe one should respect that? It's their world, you are a guest, respect their rules man.
Why don't you make your own immersive world and make a website about that? Why not make a website about another game that does not oppose fan projects?
IPR are not natural rights. In theory at least, we (the demos) give artificial monopolies on the basis that they encourage creativity and innovation.
If you sell or publish your work, and especially if people buy it from you, then it becomes part of the culture of our societies. It is right then that you lose some control, especially if you've made enough money to support you for a period long enough to make a new work/innovation -- it would be stupid of us to make IPR so strong that people who had been supported to become creators/innovators were then encouraged to stop.
Culture works in a space where shared experiences are remixed, where past cultural experiences are reworked.
We need to respect the givers of those IPR rights and respect shared culture a little more IMO.
This is of course my own personal opinion and in no way relates to my employment.
I love the Apple TV screensavers that are basically beautiful slow moving drone shots of landscapes, which you can get for Mac too [1]. There are expansion packs too you can pay for, with 3rd party videos.
And I kind of want the same thing, only of high-quality 3D rendered landscapes! For me specifically, slow flybys over Red Dead Redemption 2 landscapes, and also of real-life Microsoft Flight Simulator locations. Producing such videos would save all of the cost of real-life transportation, lodging, waiting till sunrise/sunset, flying a drone... And instead of having just 40 videos on rotation, you could have 10,000's...
I don't have the time to build it, but it's a hobby project I wish desperately that somebody would!
Yup I totally agree. It would be quite possible to do it in-engine for some mod-able games. For example, I just found this Cinematic Camera mod for Morrowind (one of my favourite games): https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46909/
Sounds like with some configuration it might do just as you describe. Not a general solution though, of course.
I used to have a Quake map screensaver that rendered the BSP files live. It was great, but with today’s open world games, it could be epic.
Besides Red Dead Redemption and Zelda, I would love to see this done for Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, Fallout, Borderlands, No Man’s Sky, etc., to name just a few
What would the copyright situation be for that? Would it be possible for games you own? Or in the example for Morrowind, what if you used OpenMW to render the landscape?
Very, very cool project! I think I actually prefer this streetview approach to the floating noclip approach, because a map + streetview that works like google maps cements the feeling that the game world is as real as my city -- here's the map in my web browser, no need to run a video game!
To your knowledge, are there any special tricks to store many panorama images so you could feasibly capture entire paths continuously through the map, or even entire maps for smaller games?
Thanks for the compliment! Glad you liked it! Currently the images are stored elsewhere on a free image hosting site and referred through their direct link.
Sorry I don't have any special tricks to share :/. I feel at this point it would probably be better to rip the game world from the game and artificially make it feel like a panorama when viewing and moving.
Also this would probably imply heavy use of three.js if I wanted to offer that in the browser.
This is the one game I wish I could wipe my memory of so I could experience it again. So many hours of enjoyment playing that game. Maybe in 10 years I’ll forget some stuff about it and it will be fresh again.
If you haven't played it on PC at high resolutions and framerates using Cemu, give it another go. It's an amazing experience that the Switch could never achieve.
I've been meaning to try replaying it as a pacifist. No weapons, just sneaking around and cowardice. Not sure how far I would get, obviously wouldn't be able to beat any of the divine beasts.
I especially like your idea because of the modern-age allusions in BotW. The Shieka-stone seems a lot like a smartphone with “apps”, that even lets you take pictures. The map in the pause menu could also be such an app, given its detailled geographical information and zooming/panning and marking capabilities. Why could it not have something like street view? :)
Very cool! I love it. Shared with my gaming group chat. Works perfectly on safari-ios too.
I don't know if data costs would be a concern with something like this, but I feel like the panorama images are fairly large. At least for a mobile user. You could follow a model like Google where you load a lower res panorama initially, and only load the high-res when zooming in. I looked at the github and the panorama library is Pannellum, which looks like it has a multiresolution format to do this. I've never used it but the docs make it seem simple.
Either way love it. I can't imagine it's very expensive but I wonder how much getting on the front page of HN costs in bandwidth.
Edit: looked deeper into the github and the images are hosted on imgbb. That's definitely the cheapest way to do it haha.
Woah this gave me a memory flashback to around 2002 when GTA Vice City came out. Some French guy made all-vice-city.fr.st (that link doesn't work now). It was made in Flash and was a map of vice city showing all the locations of stuff.
In addition to this being a cool project, I love the way the loading screens work. When I click on ‘click to load this panorama’ (which showed almost immediately), I expect that loading takes a while. Thereafter, you are kept updated on the loading progress, after which the panorama immediately loads. In this manner, it is no problem to wait a few seconds. Much better than just looking at a ‘loading…’ screen.
This doesn't seem to work properly on Firefox. I'm not getting any of the features people are talking about.
I get a zoomable map (that just pixelizes rather than maintaining clarity) and a few spots with a weird split box icon (can't quite tell what it is) that are clickable and you can pan around on that spot.
Does anyone know how far off we are from AI being able to take several of these photospheres of close-together locations, and generate the "in-between" views for users to experience smoothly exploring the world (without "jumps")?
For me (windows, chrome or ff), it works only on the blue markers, but zooming on the map does not make it more details, and the switch to street view leaves a blank canvas.
Maybe the gaming industry should be regulated like pharmesuticals. Game creators are more like drug dealers in some sense. They lure people with dopamine to addict and exploit.
Most views don't load for me in Google Chrome on Android on a Samsung Galaxy S21 - it complaints that the image is too large for the device(max size 8192)
Linking “How was it made” straight to a YouTube video led to me closing the tab in record time. Link to a page, embed the video, and a transcript or at the very least a brief text description.
Its a five minute video and a dense one at that with little fluff and a clear path from zero knowledge to these are the tools used to make this project.
