Are there any practical options for adding 360 photos into a map?

Help and support
1

I am very new to mapping software and how to get various elements into maps.

My use case is wanting to supplement an outdoor education center with a number of 360 images, dropped onto a map so that potential customers can have a virtual look first.

I have a 360 camera that has no GPS or compass. I have used it to capture a number of test images.

I then used EXIFGui to add GPS data to the images. Not perfect positioning.

I found Mapillary and that seemed good, until I found that it does not let you adjust the position of the images after importing them, nor does it let you change the rotation of the 360 images so they are pointing the correct direction (as indicated by the rotating wedge shape on the image indicator).

Nor does it let you change how the images are linked together.

I found OpenStreetMap and JOSM.

After some learning, I found that OSM does not hold images, so other tools are needed to do that. Like Mapilllary, or Kartaview. Except Kartaview does not support just uploading images from a browser or similar. It has to go through their phone app. Not going to work, since the images are on my desktop and from another camera.

And Mapilliary is useless for this purpose, because of the above mentioned lack of any editing capability.

JOSM has some nice plugins that let you change the GPS position and rotation of imported images, then write that data back to your original files.

If Mapillary let you edit how the images are linked together, then this would be a reasonable solution.

And Google Streetview have REMOVED the ability to upload 360 still images.

I’m currently trying out Google Maps and uploading the images, Waiting on the images to appear. But even then, I can’t see any tools to add linking between images.

A few people mentioned Wiki Commons or photo sharing services to give a place for images to live, and create the linking in OSM. Ehhh… I really hope that isn’t the only option.

When I started this little quest, it all looked like it might work.

But after a week of research and searches, it seems like its not as simple as I thought, and in fact seems pretty impossible.

So I am posting in the hopes that someone may have some information, either about how to use these tools to create something like what I described, or maybe theres a tool I’ve never heard of.

2

Maybe “umap” is what you’re looking for?

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Thanks for that info. It looks like it could be useful. However, it also can’t upload images.

Cheers

4

Can’t help you with linking images but have to mention that because of licensing issues, you can’t have any link of any sort between OSM & any Google mapping product - Maps / Streetview / Earth etc.

5

Kartaview supply a script for bulk uploads on their GitHub page.

Mapillary provide a similar set of instructions and scripts.

I’m not particularly wonderful with python, but I managed to follow their instructions a few years ago to upload several thousand photo’s.

However, that may not produce the result that you want. The images will be available to browse, and OpenStreetMap mappers can use them to supply information to help them update OSM, but it’s probably not going to help you with potential customers.

If you can manage your own site, then the suggestion about “umap” might be your best option.

Good Luck!

6

@JokerNZ I’m Said from Mapillary team and wanted to share that we have Mapillary desktop uploader where you can upload your images to Mapillary and be able to view imagery on the map. Desktop Uploader.

I found Mapillary and that seemed good, until I found that it does not let you adjust the position of the images after importing them,

You can use below tools to edit your GPS position of your images.

nor does it let you change the rotation of the 360 images so they are pointing the correct direction

You can modify image orientation in the desktop uploader as well. Let me know if you have any further question, happy to help :raised_hands:

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I’m not particularly keen on seeing approximate GPS-tagged photos in Mapillary. We depend on Mapillary for precise data to review and update information in OpenStreetMap.

Note: I manually edit the Exif data of my Mapillary camera uploads, but I mainly rely on GPX traces. There might still be a small offset, usually just a few meters.

You can check out some of the answers in this topic: Trail Photo Uploads for OpenStreetMap Solutions.

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I don’t think this is true. As long as the layers don’t interact (i.e., you just use OSM as a basemap then have an independent data layer of differently-licensed 360 images) then it still complies with ODbL. Since it sounds like OP is interested in creating their own map (not using the images to contribute to OSM) then it would be fine.

The principle that a map maker can make and publish a map made from several distinct horizontal layers without being obliged to share data from the non-OpenStreetMap layers has been established for several years and is much clearer with the switch to the ODbL. Here we formalise and state what we are happy with and give examples that we hope will help potential OpenStreetMap users with incompatible sources.

Source: Licence/Community Guidelines - OpenStreetMap Foundation

9

Can you expand on how you expect potential customers to find this map, for example does the education centre have its own website, potentially with the ability to host the photo files, and/or to embed maps in the source code?

I think the answers so far reflect two rather different ideas. Some assume you want to add links to these images to the public OpenStreetMap database (which anyone else could then edit), whereas others are aimed more at a stand-alone map independent of OSM (perhaps just with an OSM-derived map as a background). If you could answer my question above it might help to focus the answers. If you have seen any example of something similar elsewhere, that could also be useful.

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10

If you have a own server:
http://phpmygpx.tuxfamily.org/

11

All good questions.

And thank you, everyone, for their suggestions and ideas.

To answer @alan_gr . The group does have a website. And the intent would be to have a map page on their site where people could land, and look around.

This is a outdoor education site that is entirely volunteer run by Scouting New Zealand. And there is a lack of strong technical knowledge that may be neccessary to update 360 images on a page. Hence, I was trying to find a way of creating those “hotspots” on an active map, so that people like myself, or future volunteers, can update the information in a way that isn’t onerous for these volunteers.

Now, I do need to find out for sure the level of technical knowledge of the people who run their website, but I am reluctant to get all enthusiastic and make something that works for a while, but is hard to update. Especially if I stop being able to help them.

I’m trying to find appropriate levels of technology that leaves them able to make their own changes (ideally) or at least finding someone who can make changes to a simple map may be easier…

I was looking to use Google Maps image uploader and the ability to add spherical maps to Google Maps. But that was discontinued just last year. Otherwise it would probably have been pretty much ideal.

Now that I understand what Mapillary is intended for it actually could be a solution. In that I could go and create a timelapsed set of tracks, with GPS. Then Mapillary would connect them all together into a smooth walk through.

If that was then accessible via an embedded map on their website, it may work well.

Is that possible?

Below is my mea culpa of misunderstanding what Mapillary and other such tools are actually for. Only if it gives any context.

As I worked my way through the many mapping options, I found that I had misunderstood the purpose and intent of a number of them. Mapillary was a major one. I was coming from the point of view of, say, Google Maps where I knew it was possible to add small numbers of 360 images, and make them appear on maps. (Not possible anymore however, as I found lately.)

Mapillary, for instance, is much more of a tool to enable image sequence (movie?) uploads along with GPX and heading data to then make available to mapping tools (like OSM) in order to improve the actual maps.

And one of the reasons for limited changes to GPS data is to try to encourage original data to be of good quality. And then useful for updating maps.

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