Comments on: This is what happens when you take the blue pill and the red pill.

This is what happens when you take the blue pill and the red pill.

Room 641-A — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:15:17 -0800

Postcards From Google Earth: "I collect Google Earth images. I discovered them by accident, these particularly strange snapshots, where the illusion of a seamless and accurate representation of the Earth's surface seems to break down. I was Google Earth-ing, when I noticed that a striking number of buildings looked like they were upside down."

Clement Valla (previously) explains how Google's The Universal Texture system is changing the way we see the world:

"At first, I thought they were glitches, or errors in the algorithm, but looking closer I realized the situation was actually more interesting — these images are not glitches. They are the absolute logical result of the system. They are an edge condition—an anomaly within the system, a nonstandard, an outlier, even, but not an error. These jarring moments expose how Google Earth works, focusing our attention on the software. They reveal a new model of representation: not through indexical photographs but through automated data collection from a myriad of different sources constantly updated and endlessly combined to create a seamless illusion; Google Earth is a database disguised as a photographic representation. These uncanny images focus our attention on that process itself, and the network of algorithms, computers, storage systems, automated cameras, maps, pilots, engineers, photographers, surveyors and map-makers that generate them."

The Universal Texture WebGL Earth Documentation WebGL Earth 3D Digital Globe

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:27:58 -0800

CoooOooooOOoOoooooOOool.

By: nevercalm

nevercalm — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:29:09 -0800

Yeah, this is great.

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:32:43 -0800

There are other artists working on Google Maps. Satellite Connections, by Jenny ODell. Finding Art In Google Maps, where Odell reaches into the junk drawer.

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:34:08 -0800

Apple's Maps app was doing things like stranding people in remote locations in Australia. That's a bit different.

By: Anitanola

Anitanola — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:34:57 -0800

Voting for this as best title ever! I am a fan of Google Maps--Street View and Earth entertain me. I have seen some things I questioned but nothing like these. Wonderful.

By: Pantengliopoli

Pantengliopoli — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:53:36 -0800

Googledor Dali. Great post.

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:55:05 -0800

I love the images, but how are these not glitches/bugs? I really don't get that.

By: _paegan_

_paegan_ — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:00:47 -0800

I don't understand why but I really loved those images. They drew me in and kept me mesmerized.

By: hexatron

hexatron — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:04:10 -0800

I'm a little mystified by the conspritorial tone of the article. Texture mapping is just how computer graphics deals with fakinig detail on crude polygonal models. Those flat bridges and buildings--no actual civil engineering artifacts were harmed in making them (tho they are pretty funny-looking).

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:04:11 -0800

It's like they took my hot wheels set and laid it out on the earth.

By: Ickster

Ickster — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:20:57 -0800

I love the images, but I'm not sure the accompanying text is anything more than a bunch of fluff. Saying the distortions aren't 'glitches' is like saying that a program that adds 2 + 2 and gets 3.999 repeating doesn't have a glitch. Just because it follows the imperative of the program doesn't mean the output is somehow special or priviliged, it just means the program has shortcomings. Maybe you don't count them as logically incorrect, because we can interpret the warped bridges in the same way we can interpret that 3.999 repeating equals 4, but from any practical standpoint, yeah, they're glitches. The discussion of how the rendering engine actually works is interesting enough, but the author kind of lost me right off the bat.

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:27:45 -0800

Strong whiff of MFA here, from the bullshit artspeke saying mostly nothing to the OCD-like collection exercise of using hundreds of things to show what ten would adequately. I like it anyway.

By: tylerkaraszewski

tylerkaraszewski — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:36:47 -0800

Yes, after five images I get the idea. Google doesn't have elevation data for bridges. Ok. That's the whole thing.

By: Malor

Malor — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:43:42 -0800

You know, like or hate Google, one of their core competencies has become mapping. Look how completely Apple, historically a highly competent software company, faceplanted when trying to replace Google Maps with a homegrown product. Apparently, if you spent enough billions on something, you can get pretty darn good at it.

By: ashbury

ashbury — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:44:10 -0800

Where are the upside down buildings? I only see roads that aren't represented properly.

By: the cydonian

the cydonian — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:54:35 -0800

So reality also has rendering glitches like early versions of SimCity and Tropico had. Who knew!

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:09:11 -0800

Next phase: A civil engineer designs and executes a highly irregular, bone-jarring, surrealistic bridge over a gorge so it renders correctly in Google Earth.

By: axiom

axiom — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:14:15 -0800

These are some odd postcards. "I'm at another weird overpass/bridge, wish you were here!"

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:17:39 -0800

Googledor Dali. "The Persistence of Bridges"

By: gjc

gjc — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:21:08 -0800

I love the images, but how are these not glitches/bugs? I really don't get that. I think the assertion is that the software is doing what it is supposed to do, but is getting slightly wrong data. There was the one picture of the dam where the parking lot stretched up the side of a hill. This means the satellite imagery is not perfectly registered with the topographical data. Think about trying to wrap a globe with square sheets of paper. There are going to be trouble spots. As for the bridges, yeah, it seems like they just don't have elevation data for the road surfaces. Or it too is off by 20 feet and the computer gets confused.

By: Ursula Hitler

Ursula Hitler — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:22:07 -0800

I do love a good glitch. Most glitches are just annoying, but this is a really good glitch. Our Time Warner cable is quite crappy in most respects, but at least some of the glitches can be entertaining. Lately it's been doing this crazy thing where parts of the image on TV kind of freeze in place and slow down, while the rest of the image keeps moving. In practice what this means is that you'll be watching a stand-up comedian and then suddenly he'll have four arms, all seemingly solid and in movement, and then he'll turn his head slightly and suddenly he'll have two faces. Whenever you're watching TV, you never know when the people on it will turn into freaky shapeshifting monsters like something out of The Thing. Apologies for linking to Buzzfeed, but they had a pretty entertaining list of FIFA glitches today. That first one will make you have nightmares all day long.

By: trackofalljades

trackofalljades — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:33:58 -0800

I don't see any upside down buildings either, am I missing something? I think I looked at all the "postcards" there are and they're all nearly the same thing...twisty roads.

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:02:28 -0800

Apple's Maps app was doing things like stranding people in remote locations in Australia. What a wasted opportunity to make some improvements. Let's say I enter "Hooters" into the maps app, and hit the directions button. If it then directed me off a cliff, jolly well done.

By: cmyk

cmyk — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:30:21 -0800

Looks like Google has tapped into my subconscious mind. Anyone else have dreams like that? You're driving along and suddenly the road has turned into some terrifying rollercoaster thing with enough confusing overpass interchanges to be straight from a cartoon of the future as envisioned in 1938? ... just me then? Okay. Carry on.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:44:48 -0800

I love the images, but how are these not glitches/bugs? I really don't get that. OK, the Valla quote is really speaking metaphysically. Obviously it's a "glitch" in that it does not display the world correctly -- but then there are all those perfectly flat buildings.... What he's getting at is that the GE software has effectively created an alternative view of reality, something that this Postcards guy is tapping into. There are a few freaky railroad viaducts in my hometown that I think it would be amusing to traverse in the way that they are displayed, as cmyk alludes. Ursula mentions video glitches. I think the standard VHS glitch was an artifact of its time. Movies like Videodrome explored the glitchiness of broadcast television. Before that (a time I still vividly recall) was the amusement and reality-bending of just running film faster, slower, or backwards. If you go back to early animation you see a lot of fascination with the form itself, with the gag of it all being just drawings, and of the possibilities inherent with all that. I think this is just a new instance of that with a different technology.

By: cometwendy

cometwendy — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 03:28:32 -0800

My non-Euclidian neighborhood: no bridges here, still wonky 39° 57' 32" N 75° 12' 13" W

By: sammyo

sammyo — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 05:45:05 -0800

My first glance thought was "oh is this in China where they did some really funny cheapo civil engineering?" but halfway through the second glance, "funny render glitch, everyone needs a hobby".

By: Atreides

Atreides — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 06:07:44 -0800

At some point we discover that the guy is paid by the Apple iOS Map Division.

By: Now there are two. There are two _______.

Now there are two. There are two _______. — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 07:12:57 -0800

I don't see any upside down buildings either, am I missing something? I think I looked at all the "postcards" there are and they're all nearly the same thing...twisty roads. I think by "upside down buildings" he means stuff like this. Find the spot where the road goes over a "hill" with two black cars on it, and look to the right. It's the same basic glitch: a 2D picture of a building, taken from directly overhead, has gotten "draped" over a steeply tilted 3D surface in an incongruous way. To me the effect looks more like the building has been pitched 90° forward rather than turned 180° upside down. But that's nitpicking — one way or another there's some very clear spatial Wrongness there.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 10:45:07 -0800

There are other artists working on Google Maps. David Thomas Smith "Google Maps" Your City As a Persian Rug

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:18:19 -0800

Postcards, eh? "Wish you were here; glad I am not. Wobblingly, Your Friend wenestvedt" On Preview: Damn you, axiom! *shakes tiny fist*

By: Splunge

Splunge — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:56:49 -0800

Well folks it was mighty hot today. How hot was it? Oh it was hot, trust me.

By: schmod

schmod — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:58:26 -0800

Malor: "Look how completely Apple, historically a highly competent software company" Apple may be considered a highly competent software company.* However, nobody in their right mind would consider them to be competent purveyors of web services. This has always been a key weakness for Apple. They've been getting better at it, but they really shouldn't have bet the farm on it, like they did with Maps. It's not at all surprising that the Maps debacle happened; Apple were working well outside of their core competencies. And, yeah. Google are really good at what they do when it comes to mapping. *I'd actually challenge that statement, given the company's series of very public failures to develop new products and standards throughout the 1990s, which ultimately led to them buying their current flagship software product from a competitor, but I digress...

By: schmod

schmod — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:01:55 -0800

Splunge: "Oh it was hot, trust me." The scary thing is that something like that actually happens to railroads when it gets too hot.

By: Room 641-A

Room 641-A — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:31:59 -0800

"Oh it was hot, trust me." Also, earthquakes.

By: Twang

Twang — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 20:17:43 -0800

buying their current flagship software product from a competitor And taking it a few dozen iterations farther. (Speaking as a not-Mac-philosophy fanboy and not-Jobs-fanboy.) And NeXTSTEP - a very innovative and competitive OS - was only a competitor while Apple was failing badly, not after they had to re-import the Jobs magic. Nice try there. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure the Maps debacle would never have happened if Jobs had been around. Now I'll stop before I counter-balance with the thousand point critique.

By: werkzeuger

werkzeuger — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:59:49 -0800

Our Time Warner cable is quite crappy in most respects, but at least some of the glitches can be entertaining... Our over-the-air DTV receiver is like this, only in our case the glitches look like someone's facial skin has melted off and revealed the skull underneath. It's actually pretty disconcerting.

Comments on: This is what happens when you take the blue pill *and* the red pill.

This is what happens when you take the blue pill *and* the red pill.

By: limeonaire

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Comments on: This is what happens when you take the blue pill and the red pill.

This is what happens when you take the blue pill and the red pill.