I once saw a patent on that already earlier somewhere, which i assumed was the reason none of the automotive navigation UI's where doing this.

Just checked again, and it's verbatim this use case and even active until 2030 still:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100305853A1/en

3-D map display

Abstract

A computer generated 3-dimensional map display includes a reference icon identifying an observation point in the geographic area defined by the map, the map being presented on a curved surface which extends from a first plane to a second plane which is substantially orthogonal to the first plane. The observation point is located in the first plane. The display is configured such that the height of landmarks and buildings in a defined foreground of the reference icon are presented normal to the first plane, the height of land marks and buildings at a defined far distance are presented normal to the second plane and the height of land marks and buildings in a defined middle ground are presented normal to the non-linear portion of the curved surface. The geographic area represented can be translated along the curved surface to provide a perception that the reference icon is roaming through the displayed geographic area.

By no other than "Here and There" Schulze and Webb Ltd later rebranded to BERG.

The generic use case of a multiperspective camera method for that was arguable covered in a 1997 Disney paper latest.

Multiperspective Panoramas for Cel Animation https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall00/cs597b/p...

The patent application is not yet publically available, so I can't tell what aspects of the system they are trying to protect. They probably have some narrowly tailored features that they can protect. Maybe related to the rendering, or some toggle button feature of the display. But, as to the broad concept of a curved hybrid combination of street view and overhead view, I agree that they will not be able to protect that aspect.

I find that Apple Maps is typically pretty smart with its automatic zoom. For a typical intersection with just one turn to navigate, it will zoom in to give you a good sense of the lanes, stop signs/lights, etc. But when there are consecutive turns to navigate, or a heavily curved section of road (like highway on-ramps) it will zoom out and even rotate the map to show that upcoming context.

I remember for at least a while people would complain about how GPS navigation ruined their sense of the local area. Probably stopped hearing about it because people have just surrendered to the apps, but I think part of the reason is also that by default they were just zoomed in way too close. If you forced them back out a ways, I was actually learning a lot about my local area. Like, there's all these subdivisions around, you know, and from the outside who knows what connects to what, I'm not going to just duck in to a subdivision and physically navigate the streets to see how they're all connected, but driving around with the navigation made it much more clear... when it was zoomed out somewhat.

Took me a while to figure out what you're saying, now I assume you're using the "up is direction of motion"?

I use map view / north is up, which makes it reasonably easy to get he big picture - I encourage everybody to try it :).

That seems very wrong and unintuitive for U-turns.

So why not use 2D maps, have people lost the ability to read North up maps? I swear ever since paper maps have not been used in cars, people have gotten spatially dumber.

I agree and for me that weirdly felt more natural

Yea, I felt like I was perpetually at the top of a roller coaster and going over the hump, but never finding the bottom. And I like roller coasters. But no thanks. Not even sure what the benefits of this view really are.

I have no problem with VR, but this demo was very disorienting. I can’t even imagine trying to look at this while driving.

b-AR-f Bags - half surgical mask half airplane sick bag

Im clicking "Apply to YC" right now

> Google Maps (at least in the US, in my experience) is really great about telling you what lane to be in.

Having recently driven in Boston[1], the problem is that Google Maps tells you what lane you need to be in when the route divergence happens... it doesn't tell you what lane you need to be in to get to that lane.

So I would see guidance like be in the first or second lane (from the left) to make this left turn and all seemed well since I was in the second lane from the left. Then two more lanes merged in from the left and I had to get over two lanes and ended up on a two mile onramp for the highway to New Hampshire.

I see the same things locally, but it's not as obviously bad because I'm familiar with the local highways and also most of the local highways aren't as space constrained so there's almost always plenty of time to merge.

[1] I don't recommend it... we should have driven to the airport and returned our car and taken transit back to our hotel

I need to know what lane I'll need to be in next so I can plan in advance.

Not every road owner in the world has provided how many lanes a road has. To tell you which lane to stay in, it need to know how many there are!

It fails the task as often as not on large East Coast highways. Not nearly as bad on the West Coast.