Orbify.eu pitches warped Inception-style 3D maps for navigation

Orbify.eu, a two-year-old Norwegian startup, wants people to see the world in a new way – through a warped lens that bends rendered map scenes into the dream sequence perspective seen in Christopher Nolan's movie Inception. The geospatial biz, co-founded by Karsten Huitfeldt, is developing image processing software that folds a …

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Humanity out of ideas

Whats wrong with a lean top view map?

Nothing, but apparently humanity has no more good ideas.

[Dan 55]

Re: Humanity out of ideas

We have good ideas but then we have other not-as-good ideas which are somehow more successful.

Here Maps had a viewpoint that was much better than Google Maps but then they added Android Auto support and as a result had to use the Android Auto SDK to draw the map and it still doesn't look as good as it did before.

Seems like here they're trying to combine a close 3D viewpoint and a further-away overhead viewpoint but there will probably have to be a setting in their maps app to enable it, otherwise it will scare people off because it doesn't look like Google Maps.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Humanity out of ideas

Navigation on the Nokia N9, probably the best navigation on a phone that I've had.

The phone was a bit underpowered for the task at tines, but that could also be said of some dedicated Sat Navs.

Then came HERE maps, and it all went south

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Humanity out of ideas

I seem to recall that Nokia licensed TomTom for its first phones – I had something before the N9 that had to have an external GPS receiver and can confirm that, at the time (around 2008), performance was amazing.

Fast-forward to 2026 and SWMBO's car has an embedded version of TomTom on it that is sadly way less accurate than Here, which we tend to run in parallel as a result.

[BartyFartsLast]

" but not a whole lot has happened with the navigation design itself."

Well, yeah, that's because it works really well and doesn't need bollocks like that to distract drivers.

Still, they'll suck up a bunch of VC capital before they crash and burn so it's all good right, techbros enriched, gullible idiots separated from cash, rinse and repeat.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

OMG

"Standard UX best practice involves providing the user with a seamless, unified, and continuous design language built around optimizing their experience,"

[RPF]

Re: OMG

Bullshit-bingo Full House!

[segfault188]

Roller coaster view best reserved for roller coasters

After viewing their demo using the link in the article, I definitely won't want to replace Google Maps in Android Auto with this roller coaster view of the world.

The extra detail would distract me from driving. I like the simple Google Maps navigation interface without even the 3D buildings option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Roller coaster view best reserved for roller coasters

I agree. It's actually fun on a desktop (although I haven't found a practical benefit) but in a car it will take a lot of cognitive processing which ought to be reserved for the road.

So good and actually impressive fun, but (a) can't see a practical use (yet, may need to add more caffeine) and (b) IMHO really not for car use.

[HorseflySteve]

What's wrong with these people?

It's seems that they've forgotten the purpose of a navigation app so, in the (no doubt) forlorn hope that some from Orbify.eu is reading this, here's what I actually need:

Purpose: I'm here but I want or need to be there

Requirement: Show me the quickest & safest way to get from here to there, optimising the route with recent accurate maps for whatever method of motion I chose. Update the route if new hazards occur on the route during my journey & tell me how long it's likely to be until I arrive there. Use sufficiently low power to ensure the battery doesn't die before I arrive.

Optional: Simple Views of significant waypoints so I can ensure I am correctly positioned to make the required manoeuvre; Views of signs to reassure me I haven't deviated from the route

Not required: 3D renditions of every building, lampost & tree or livestock in the fields I'm passing (that horse in the demo probably isn't still there today).

There is absolutely no point to this. When I'm driving down the road, I don't need to know anything about the buildings I'm driving past unless there causing a hazard (e.g. on fire), especially as they might not even be there anymore (e.g already burnt down) so just stop it already!

[SuLegato]

Re: What's wrong with these people?

Agreed.

It looks great for passengers but very distracting for a driving that should be focused on not crashing.

Rendering engines are system resource intensive.

[HorseflySteve]

Re: What's wrong with these people?

"It looks great for passengers" but it's still pointless as, if they want to see what's outside, all they have to do is look out of the windows...

It's a collosal waste of computational power & resources for absolutely no good reason.

The programmers of this are just trying to show how clever & imaginative they are, but all they are showing is that they consider style to be more important than usefulness which, sadly, has become pretty much the norm for websites over the past 20 years...

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Or you can just keep using street directories and paper maps. Funnily enough,they never crash or go wobbly.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

With the added advantage keeping your (posterior) hippocampus exercised.

Use it or lose it. It's an observed phenomenon of increased reliance on Sat Nav leading to decreased spatial navigation ability

[Brave Coward]

Use it or lose it

Friend of mine, in her sixties, came visiting me the other summer, in my very small village. One morning, she wanted to go to tiny park in there, to relax in trees shadow. Instructions to go there were: 'out of my house turn right, then first left, then first left again, and there you are'. The whole trajectory being less than 300 yards.

She got *lost* while trying to come back, and had to *hitch* a local driver to find my home again. She used to live for many years in quite remote areas (think central Africa, south American forests and so on). She has been heavily relying on navigation devices these last years.

[Charlie Clark]

I think the two don't have to be mutually exclusive and learning the basics of map reading from a paper map will give you skills that you can still use with a digital system.

When planning bike holidays, it's difficult to beat proper paper maps with important additional information such as, I don't know, gradients… but on the road something on a waterproof device (I use my phone) with audio cues is difficult to beat. And, yeah, you should have paper with you in case you lose power.

[IGotOut]

Yeah paper maps. Because they show that the road is closed and the diversion signs are complete bollocks pointing to "Road closed ahead signs" at either end on a 13 mile stretch of road (welcome to living where I live).

Because paper maps contain the new road layout built 3 months ago.

Paper maps are fine for walking but little else.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't entirely agree. Yes, a paper map will never be quite as up to date as things like Google Maps, but it also means nobody can suddenly change how they work or add an advertising front end when the shareholders demand more moolah, and it doesn't leak any personal data. Where I go is my business, and my business only.

More importantly (to me, YMMV), a map provides wider situational awareness, it gives you oversight. With a GPS you get where you want to go, full stop. A map can show you interesting things en route that you can visit without anyone paying the map providers to be shown before anyone else.

So yes, a GPS is the most efficient* for going from A to B, a paper map gives you oversight that may help making the A to B a bit more interesting. You can zoom out on a GPS, but that won't give you as much detail. And it won't work without power., could become important if the moronic trend of building more AI data centres continues.

* _{Assuming you're not in a self driving car that may take a lot of detours just to have more time to expose you to ads. IMHO that is pretty much guaranteed to happen.}

[Phil O'Sophical]

And irrespective of whether you're using a GPS or a paper map, you still need to engage your brain and accept that the information may no longer be accurate. Unfortunately when people see that a road on a paper map is no longer open they tend to accept it but when the SatNav says "turn here" they just turn, no matter what their eyes tell them.

[Anonymous Coward]

.. leading to real life execution of jokes such as "Please come and pick me up, I have water in the engine" "Where are you?" "In the canal".

As well all know, thanks to Top Gear, only a Toyota Hilux survives that. No, wait, that was a sea :).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: they never crash or go wobbly.

[impeccably timed inconvenient gust of wind has entered the chat]

[tiggity]

If anyone from Orbify is reading this - your demo website fails at the basics (needs NOSCRIPT checking to tell user JS is required) - some of us still care about online security & habitually browse with JS disabled.

Once I decided to allow JS it took a ludicrously long time to load (I wandered off too do other stuff after it had been stuck on 90% for over 2 minutes) & it was not worth bothering with - needlessly distracting - there's a good reason most navigation systems give a simplified view in that most drivers are focusing on the roads and so when they check the navigation aid they need to process information quickly and accurately - and a simplified view just showing the key information helps

[Androgynous Cupboard]

It also didn't work on Links. And then it started raining and this website didn't every keep me dry. What a piece of shit.

So much negativity.

Data visualization is hard - it's as much art as science, and not every idea works. I don't know if this one has hit the mark, but as a way of combining two different datasets (street layout and photographic imagery) it's very clever, and I applaud the attempt. There is always, always room in this world for experiment and innovation.

[DrSunshine0104]

As a fellow GIS professional, I think it has some potential but the demo is hitting on one of my pet peeves, over reliance on aerial photograph.

Aerial photography is extremely noisy for navigation at anything above 1:3000 and while they are clearly below that scale in the flat portion of the map, the fact it is splatting makes the noise a bit more worse. And I get the interest why, LiDAR with gaussian splatting at the right density could be much smaller than street-view photography AND containing 3D spatial information might have some use cases. This tech is pretty popular in GIS implementations right now. I personally like my maps more of a simple lines, maybe some building footprints navigational map. But lots of my coworkers who use my maps are not and would find this useful.

Perhaps, for their next demo a version that has a simple vector maps at the flat section that morphs into a street-view as your approach the view.

The thing I was a bit more interested in was the idea of having distant features being compressed. A more logarithmic approach to drawing maps where further you are to the map center or your caret, the further your can see. I find current navigational apps only scale out when you speed up, and sometimes not far enough in my opinion. I would want something like this that shows nearby turns but as it pulls back shows more of a route overview.