Tracking with Street View

Google Maps APRS is a Google Map displaying real-time information collected from the Automatic Position Reporting System Internet network (APRS-IS). APRS is used by amateur (ham) radio operators to transmit real-time position information, weather data, telemetry and messages over the radio.A vehicle equipped with a GPS receiver, a VHF transmitter or HF transceiver and a tracker can transmit its

A Real-Time Map of the World's Joggers

Sports Tracker is a free sports tracking app for Android, iPhone and Nokia Symbian devices.The app maps your runs or bike rides and collects data on your speed, distance, step-count, elevation and times. As well as using Google Maps in the app the Sports Tracker website also features a smart real-time map of sports enthusiasts who have most recently used the app.It is even possible to click on

Create a Real-Time Flickr Google Map

.net magazine has published a great tutorial on how to create a real-time animated Flickr map. The tutorial was written by James Christian and Ben Gannaway the creators of the excellent Net-a-Porter Live Google Map.The tutorial explains how to create a Google Map that animates in near real-time through images posted on Flickr. The tutorial includes how to work with the Flickr API and how to

Boston's Buses Live on Google Maps

With TransitSpy you can follow Boston's MBTA buses live on Google Maps.Using the sidebar you can select any combination of MBTA bus routes and view in real-time the position of the buses on those routes. As well as the live buses all the stops on a route are displayed on the map. If you click on a bus-stop's map marker you can see how long you will have to wait until the next bus arrives.

Live Shipping Containers on Google Maps

This Google Map allows you to track in real-time the huge shipping containers of Maersk as they travel around the world.The position of the ships are displayed live on this Google Map. You can click on any of the ship map markers to view a photograph of the ship and read further details, such as the ship's destination and current speed.This map presumably uses the Automatic Identification System

Livebookings Live on Google Maps

Online clothes retailer Zappos started a trend when they created their live Zappos Map. This real-time map was created to show the latest orders placed on Zappos live on a Google Map.The Zappos Map was quickly followed by Net-a-Porter Live, ThisNext and The Book Depository Live. Now Livebookings, Europe’s largest online booking service for restaurants, has released a live map of restaurant tables

Munich's S-Bahn Live on Google Maps

I'm a great fan of live real-time maps of city transit systems. There is something about watching trains moving in real-time on a map that really appeals to my inner geek.This real-time Google Map of Munich's S-Bahn shows the transit system's trains live as they move around the city. Each train is represented on the map with a numbered map marker indicating which line it is travelling on.You can

Live Tour de France Map

It has taken a while but I have finally found a live real-time map of this year's Tour de France. The map shows the real-time position of 13 of the riders. The map sidebar shows the current speed of each rider and their current heartbeat. Beneath the map is an interactive elevation chart of the current stage. SRMLive_________________

Live VoIP Calls on Google Maps

OnSIP, a provider of Voice over IP calls has released a real-time Google Map of calls made using its service.The map makes nice use of the drop marker animation in the Google Maps v3 API. Each time an OnSIP customer makes or receives a call, a map marker is dropped on the live map, openly displaying call volume peak and trend information. A marker is dropped on the map every time an OnSIP

Australian Ash Cloud on Google Maps

Planefinder.netThe ash cloud created by the eruption of the Puyehue volcano in Chile continues to cause huge disruption to plane flights in Australia. Real-time flight tracking website planefinder.net is using Google Maps to show the location of the ash cloud as it drifts around the southern hemisphere. The ash cloud is predicted to linger over south-east Australia for some time, causing

The Mapping Event of the Month

Hurtigruten: Minute by MinuteThis is incredible and pretty mesmerising!Norwegian Public Service broadcaster NRK are live broadcasting the voyage of the cruise liner Hurtigruten around the Norway coastline for 134 hours. As well as amazing live footage you can follow the position of the cruise liner on a real-time Google Map.No money seems to have been spared for this live broadcast from the

Real-Time Shopping on Google Maps

Net-a-Porter LiveOnline fashion shop Net-a-Porter has created a real-time Google Map showing the location of every purchase that is being made on the website live.Every time someone on Net-a-Porter adds an item to their shopping bag or shares it with a friend the item is shown on a Google Map at the location of the customer. The item is also displayed in the map sidebar with a brief description

Greek Flights in Real-Time on Google Maps

Greek Aircraft TrackingAs one of Europe's favourite holiday destinations Greece sees a lot of aircraft traffic. This Google Map lets you view all the civil aviation flights over Greece in real-time.The map shows the location of all of Greece's major airports and of all the planes currently in flight in the country's air space. If you click on one of the plane shaped map markers you can view

Grimsvötn Ash Cloud Google Maps

Grimsvötn Ash Cloud EvolutionToday the ash cloud from the Grimsvötn volcano continues to drift across Europe, causing the closure of a number of airports in northern Germany.This Google Map shows the current position of the ash cloud. The map creator is updating the position of the cloud every six hours. The map also shows the position of Grimsvötn in Iceland.Also SeeFlightradar24 - this Google

The Volcanic Ash Cloud on Google Maps

Flightradar24The eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland has caused a huge ash cloud that is now affecting flights in Iceland and Scotland. Flightradar24, the live flight tracking Google Map, has now added an overlay to show the current position of the cloud.The map shows the movements of flights in real-time. At the time of writing the map shows that most European flights seem to be

What the Space Station Astronauts See

Current Position of the ISSThe opportunity for space tourism is probably still a little way off for most of us. Whilst we all wait for Richard Branson to make space travel a lot more affordable we will have to make do with this Google Map showing the current location of the International Space Station on Google Maps.The map shows the current view from the ISS looking down at the Earth. So you can

The Copenhagen Marathon Live Map

Endomondo: Live Copenhagen Marathon MapThe Copenhagen Marathon is running at this very moment. A number of the runners are carrying GPS units and you can follow them live on this Google Map from Endomondo.The map includes a plan of the route of the marathon. Profile pictures of the runners display their current location on the course. If you mouse-over any of the profile pictures you can view the

CBox Unbiased Truck

I've modified the scene in the Kajiya path tracer a bit more: it now consists of a Cornell Box out of axis aligned boxes with the (in)famous truck from Unbiased Truck Soccer:

Color bleeding from the red and green wall:

The screenshots were rendered with 8600M GT (6 fps default view). On a GTS 450, the demo runs at 70 fps in default view. It should run at >200 fps on a GTX 580 with 8 samples per pixel. This new path tracer is just incredible fun, I can't stop messing with it.

Executable and source code at http://code.google.com/p/tokap-the-once-known-as-pong/downloads/list

UPDATE: a more challenging lighting set up with an open box only illuminated by the sky:

The truck seen from behind, indirectly lit by skylight bounced off the back and side walls. As expected with standard path tracing, the noise is a lot worse in this scenario. Bidirectional path tracing should converge faster using fewer samples.

Real-Time Parking on Google Maps

SFparkThe San Francisco Municipal Authority has released a Google Map to help improve car parking in the city. The new map displays real-time information about where parking is available so drivers can quickly find open spaces.As part of the new initiative San Francisco now periodically adjusts meter pricing to match demand. To help keep car drivers informed about the variable meter prices SFpark

Incredible real-time GPU path tracer using WebGL

Yesterday I came across another awesome GPU renderer (made by Evan Wallace), it's a very neat and extremely fast path tracer using GLSL shaders running in the browser:

http://madebyevan.com/webgl-path-tracing/

A WebGL-enabled browser is required to run this (I highly recommend the latest Chrome build from http://www.khronos.org/webg/wiki/Getting_a_WebGL_Implementation#Chrome.2FChromium (the Chrome Canary build works great if you're on Windows, Firefox 4.0 crashes and other Chrome versions didn't work for me, it just keeps loading).

It's great fun to edit the scene: move the light or objects and see soft shadows being cast in real-time (60 fps) on the walls and other objects. You can also change materials and add extra objects. It renders blazingly fast even on very low end GPUs. Very impressive!

Source code for the path tracer:

view-source:http://madebyevan.com/webgl-path-tracing/

There's also a GLSL version (Mac OS X):

http://www.madebyevan.com/glsl-path-tracing/

With this technology, a path traced physics simulation like the one in this video is perfectly possible in real-time on a current GPU. Or maybe a real-time path traced version of Tetris ;)