All articles tagged with #geospatial
Google pulled the plug on a new AI image generation feature in Google Earth just hours after its global debut, citing policy-violating generated imagery and the need for stronger guardrails, despite potential uses in education and real estate; the company said AI-generated images are watermarked and not shown in the main experience while it works on safeguards.
Google Earth now offers an in-browser flight simulator (accessible via earth.google.com) that lets casual users soar over the globe, view 3D buildings and imagery, and navigate with keyboard shortcuts—crashes pause the flight so you can restart your journey.
Hengefinder is an app that predicts moments when the sun or moon lines up with city streets or buildings, creating a “henge” frame. Using astronomical calculations plus road data, it delivers instant results worldwide, showing sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset for any place. Available on iPhone, Android, and the web, it stems from open-source code by Victoria Ritvo and highlights the real-world complexities of modeling roads, latitude/longitude, and the nuanced definition of “sunset.”
An Iranian physicist proposes the Great Pyramid of Giza served as a gravitational transmitter and interstellar beacon to communicate Earth's position to extraterrestrials; he cites its coordinates and alignments as encoded data, but the idea is speculative, not peer-reviewed, and physicists say there was no ancient technology to broadcast such signals.
NASA offers a free interactive tool that uses Landsat imagery to spell a user’s name in natural Earth formations, viewable from space.
Niantic is developing a 'Large Geospatial Model' (LGM) using data from Pokémon Go and other products to enhance spatial intelligence in AI. This model leverages millions of scans from players' smartphones to create high-fidelity 3D maps, enabling computers and robots to better understand and interact with the world. The data, collected from a pedestrian perspective, includes locations inaccessible to cars, offering unique insights for the AI model.