Reality Mapping vs Digital Twins

This Esri article sounds like a lot of marketing word salad, but the animated GIF is cool!

True Orthos vs Trad Orthos & ArcGIS Reality

First, what is ArcGIS Reality?

I'm not entirely sure, here's what Esri says: ArcGIS Reality is a suite of photogrammetry software products designed to enable reality capture workflows for sites, cities, and countries.

One main feature seems to be the abilaity to create & use so-capped True Orthophotos as opposed to Traditional Orthophotos.

• True Orthophotos vs. Traditional Orthophotos: Why do pixels matter in the age of AI?
• The Different Types of Ortho Images Created in ArcGIS

The animated GIF below demonsrates the main difference between true orthos & trad orthos. 

Historical Aerial Photos

Remember when air photos were a thing? Well, they still are! This place https://e-topo.com/mapv2.aspx offers the low-res 300 dpi versions for free somehow.

The Earthporn Map

Unfortunate name, but there is nothing 'porn' about it - just a map of the r/EarthPorn is a subreddit: The Earthporn Map. Could be a useful tool to plan your next vacation!

Thomas Cole & The Oxbow

Source: https://www.facebook.com/lostnewengland

GeoSpy

GeoSpy can geoference photographs without any spatial information & apparently it works quite well - more @ https://flowingdata.com/2025/01/23/geolocating-photos-automatically/

That's pretty cool & also scary...no hiding anymore from the AI...

Tourism & AI

Cool combination of tourism & AI: Google Talking Tours. Here Google combines Street View images & panoramas with an AI-generated narrative. Currently this only covers some 55 major sites, but you can easily envison this for literally anywhere.

Open-Source Streetview

Google Streeview is obviously great, but (also) obviously a proprietary system. Here's a new open compilation of 10 million street-level images from 688 cities: https://ual.sg/project/global-streetscapes/

Yep, seen them all...

 

AI, Images, & Stereotypes

This type of kind was entirely missing from GTC: How AI reduces the world to stereotypes

Alternatives to Google Street View

Maps Mania has compiled a nice list of open-source alternatives to Google Street View, for example Panoramax, Mappillary, and KartaView. These apps can be useful to share your own street-level photos, for example for your own project.

More here: https://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2023/11/alternative-street-view.html

Photogrammar

Photogrammar (by Yale University) is classic DH: mapping 170,000 photographs taken between 1935 and 1944.

Comet NEOWISE

Cool ISS pic from NASA: Comet NEOWISE

Dollar Street

Dollar Street is pretty cool - a great addition to more 'objective' stats about human development and welfare. This - combined with something like Google StreetView - would make for great learning experiences in a World Regional Geography or Cultural Geography class.

Moviemaps

This is cool: Moviemaps

I suppose you could just do this with a screencasting app: open a map, photograph, etc. and gives your audience a guided tour as you narrate. This would be a great assessment tool for a planning or geography class!

EarthPorn

EarthPorn is great (and safe): mapping-out awesome photographs of the world based on Reddit posts. Try the different options & design your next vacation!

High & Low

Here are some cool 360 deg immersive experiences:

• Climbing the Zugspitze
• Climbing El Cap
• Going deep into the Son Doong Cave

ArcGIS Quick Capture

ArcGIS Quick Capture is a fun app and allows for quick and simple field data collection, for example photographs.

KartaView

KartaView is the open version of Google Street View - cool.

Mapipedia

Mapipedia is a new interactive map which can help you map and share your geotagged photos. That's all: funs and even a little useful. Here's a demo: https://mapipedia.com/s/u/drdave/demo.html