Satellite images provide a wealth of visual data from which we can visualize in interesting ways. Land Lines is an experiment that lets you explore Google Earth satellite imagery through gesture. “Draw” to find satellite images that match your every line; “Drag” to create an infinite line of connected rivers, highways and coastlines.
Using a combination of machine learning, optimized algorithms, and graphics card power, the experiment is able to run efficiently on your phone’s web browser without a need for backend servers.
We used a combination of OpenCVStructured Forests and ImageJ’s Ridge Detection to analyze and identify dominant visual lines in the initial dataset of 50,000+ images. This helped cull down the original dataset to just a few thousand of the most interesting images.
Fast Data Lookup
For the draw application, we stored the resulting line data in a vantage point tree. This data structure made it fast and easy to find matches from the dataset in real time right in your phone or desktop web browser.
WebGL
We used Pixi.js, an open source library built upon the WebGL API, to rapidly draw and redraw 2D WebGL graphics without hindering performance.
Google Cloud Storage
All images are hosted on Google Cloud Storage so images are served quickly to users worldwide.
