Can I pinpoint the EXACT location of my fans using a single image?
19 mrt. 2021
904 828 Weergaven
A few weeks ago I successfully and swiftly identified the exact Bali swimming pool that a random Instagram model was snapped, following a request from an alleged victim of a catfish. I did this using a mixture of Geoguessr knowledge, Google Earth and Google's search engine. Following some dialogue with my impressed patreons, an idea was spawned. Why don't I make a series out of it where I try to successfully identify where my patreons/fans are using the small amounts of information that can be seen in the background? Here's the result.
Yessss AMAZING greetings from Santiago, Chile
Can't believe u search the bridge in my city Montreal!
Imagine if this guy had non public and hard to find information available to him. For example: facial recognition software, number plate running, street signs, phone numbers etc. If he were asked to find me for a crime or whatever I’d be scared.
Now I know that the bridge near to my house is called Jacques Something
What you need is a guy who took a computer graphics class - that's me. Think of a photo as a 2D frame hanging in midair. There are rays of light shooting out from the focal point of a lens behind it, through the frame, and hitting some point on a 3D thing we see in the image (oversimplification). Each ray that shoots through the frame is a pixel in the image; the point where it hits the 3D scene determines the color of that pixel. To draw a line from the camera (focal point) to some thing in the 3D scene, with only the 2D image, is tricky. The transformation from 3D to 2D is subject to "perspective distortion" which just describes how things farther away look smaller (and depends on the focal length of the lens being used). To go the other way, we would need to "solve" this transformation - which is typically done through photogrammetry, which would take 2 or more images and figure it out. Strictly speaking, you would need at least 2 photos to do such a thing, hence so many animals having two eyes to "solve" for depth in a stereoscopic image - fundamentally you have ambiguity in your depth information with just the one image. Less-strictly speaking, a good bodge will get you 80% there. Cheers
I don't think I've seen anything as mental as this ever. And I absolutely freaking love it. You're my new hero!
Dosnt look like Alaska
26:10 Whooooooa
Once I was dating with a girl. I didn't know where she lives, but asked her to send me a photo from her window. I sent her a huge bouquet of flowers to her address. She never replied, I dunno why 😂
13:35 use a minus sign before a search term to omit it from results. E.g. -jacques
So fun! Dunno how YT knew this is right up my alley, but it is. Keep up the great work!
Just do your line thing but from two or more different points, and find where the lines intersect.
I believe for your straight line technique you need to also take into account the angle of the camera
This guy has a PhD in Geography!!!!! 😂 😂 😂
If human can do this, imagine what an AI can do.
Here's a rather quick method (assuming the photo is taken vertically, which it is): Choose two objects on the photo that are on the same "width" (so for instance two objects that are 100 pixels to the right from the middle of the image). These should be the objects that you can identify on the map. Now connect these two objects on a map with a line. Camera is certain to be on this line too.
2b2t players:
"Is it New Zealand?" He's wearing a mask, there's your answer to that question 😂
Yo do you stream these
Did he just shoot his shot with Anna
Maybe search for image in google or watching a photo geotag ? It’s easier than spend hours looking on g earth...
“Oh Jesus, I’m in Brazil...” Hell of a place to be 😂
“They could be in their hometown of I don't know” I often visit that town, it makes my brain not know things.
Your method of drawing the line does not work because when you draw the line on google maps, this is a line which exists on the 2d plane in which lays the bridge (and the small town). When instead you draw the line on the picture, such line links basically the feet of your fan (which are indeed not at height 0) with the bridge (height 0). Therefore the projection of this line in google maps does not correspond with what you wanted
You said you'd combine 3 skills. You said nothing about singing!
This is really impressive. Wow dude.
10:12 "jobs near me" I thought he was doing this for a living
thats the default google autocomplete
19:53 you draw the line in the right angle to the horizon (almost directly down) because it is the shortest path from photographers feet position to the target. Any other line is tangential. This is also true if the target is actually not directly in the middle of the picture because of the lens barrel distortion correction. (Look for architecture photography, tilt and shift techniques)
You should be hired by some spy agency.
First thought was he’s gonna be English based on his name, but England doesn’t have river valleys quite like this. When you said Canada my geology chops kicked in and I knew you were looking at the Laurentian Mountains and a major post glacial landscape. And the buildings and urban plan are also distinctly North American.
Just a Pro Tip you can check the Area where the photo was taken by opening the photo informations where you find om which phone it was taken etc. So you can lift the whole thing at the end if you have an Idea where it might be
Google is just an insane tool, when you think about it. Imagine how this has changed espionage and intelligence - that you can just type things in and find all examples of just about every feature on Earth...
people are going to send in photos of their ex-partner or their missing dad in order to figure out their current location xD
2nd one was easy... Google lens´ed the police sign and found the Popo Station on maps. After that, regarding the slope.. easy target. The pathway going up has a distinkt corner and couldn´t have been far from the station on this small island. w w w.google.de/maps/@22.2086535,114.0301372,3a,75y,127.74h,95.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBSBPJtZ5W5HqMRvwkxuVMg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 There ya go :D
How much you wanna bet US 3 letter agencies have software that will reconstruct a map of any roads in an image and automatically match it against a map database. The road layout in that neighborhood would be enough to get it.
You start talking Alaska and I'm like LOLno.
oof this is a questionable one, I'd think don't make this a series. You really don't wanna tell certain people how to go about this sort of thing.
It's probably already been said or discovered, but you have to draw the line so that it would continue past the dimensions of the photo through the center of the footprint of a theoretical tripod that the camera would be mounted on. There may be a more mathematical or geometric way to do it, but eyeballing it should get you within a meter or so.
Surely you take the piss a bit to extend the length your videos....
Hey, I think I know the best technique for drawing that line. First and foremost, drawing a line to the center of the photo doesn’t work. What you need to do is locate two landmarks in the photo that overlap each other (for example, the tip of a nearby steeple with a distant mountain peak right behind it). Next, go to the map and find those two landmarks, then draw a line between them. This is the axis that the camera POV will be on. Keep extending the line until you find the vantage point of the camera. Voila! If you can’t find any notable landmarks that perfectly overlap, no problem; you just need to find two landmarks that are aligned vertically. Let me explain: First, since the photo may not be level, start out by drawing a line along where the horizon is supposed to be (or just use an editing program to straighten the photo). Then find two landmarks in the photo and draw a line between them. If that second line you drew is perpendicular to the horizon line, then that means those two landmarks WILL line up with your vantage point on a map. (It’s basically the same as the first example, except we raised our altitude, causing the far landmark to appear right above the nearer landmark in the photo).
You can exclude words from a google search with the "-" operator. For example google "steel truss cantilever bridge green -Jacques -Cartier". But that's gonna be a problem if the bridge you're searching for was named after another person called Jacques or Cartier. But that's unlikely lol
When they submit the photos, have them submit a what 3 words address of the location, you’ll be able to guess within 3 meters...
what a fantastic idea! please upload more!
never make this man angry if you send him a selfie, he'll find your room on google maps
your method should work if you do a perpendicular line to the horizon from the bridge, and then open the map and get the bridge to angle the same
Put the man down!
Nós brasileiros estamos em todo lugar
you need to draw your lines in 3d space because the angle that will line up with the first bend in the apartment building from the pov of the photo needs to be in the air and not on the ground
"Oh my god I'm in Brazil" that sure is scary, hope you still have all you organs man
hey buddy did you know you can use - on google to remove results, you said the bridge kept dominating the search, I think you can use "" to remove a phrase
Use -keyword to remove it from Google searches!
I gasped when he put the man down on the police path... unreal
1:45 that's nice of you to find someone's pet
Soo what is your name on OSRS... maybe a good video to find location’s within osrs
29:58 it might unsettle your girlfriend if you say "very beautiful, i've seen the unblurred version"
va dorim drum bun is in romania and it means we wish you good trip or something like that, it is not a name of a location
@23:00 I think the issue is the google earth lines are topographical whereas the line you drew on the photo are essentially a view vector. You could try to take a screenshot in the google earth view at a similar angle (without clipping back to brasil) and drawing a similar view line on top of the screenshot to compare...
I love to see Age of Empires and Roller coaster tycoon2 on your desktop. Those are 2 games from my childhood that I will never stop playing
You should ask the people for the original photo through email where the metadata isn't stripped. It contains the lat/long of the location the photo was taken.
18:18 That's the same thing I think when I wake up
Bruh one of the photos was my Spanish teacher
Anyone else down here looking for Rick Savage? Lol
I think your technique with the lines is kinda right, but it doesn't work out because of elevation. On the photo's the lines are straight, while with different elevations that line would be "crooked" so to say.
your line drawing technique is actually not the correct way to do it. you need to make a vertical line in the middle because when you make a slanted one, the change of levels messes it up.
Imagine if your scroll wheel could talk
he must be bored af
bruh, i luv ur work, but trigonometry doesn't work like that...
I do believe that drawing the line from a target point on the photo to the bottom center of the picture could be a viable strategy for determining the location/alignment of the location *BUT ONLY IF* the picture is NOT zoomed in. That picture being looked at and compared to @22:32 is clearly zoomed in, meaning the bottom of the photo is going to be artificially shifted to the side away from the initial focal point.
the trick for the lines is draw a line from the center of the picture to bottom center and copy that to google earth
You have absolutely incredible patience
I saw my home in the background of the one bridge
Trust your brain's ability to interpret perspective in photos. Imagine like you're the guy, walking around left and right a bit and let your brain take care of the parallax and foreshortening.
18:20 I almost pissed myself from that
Le pont Jaque cartier XD
If you stand on the road in the bottom right of Anna's photo you can turn around and see the balcony.
What an idiot doesnt know where to draw the line /s
Local Fairbanksan here, honored to be even considered as a location by the man himself GeoWizard
18:10 YOU ARE GOING TO BRAZIL!!!!
este men esta enfermo
Forget the center of the photo. Find two landmarks that are vertically aligned, preferably to one side of the image, and draw a straight line through them on the map. Then find two more from the other side of the image and do the same. They should cross at the location of the camera on the map.
maybe lens distortion
18:18 "oh jesus I'm in Brazil" Me too, man... me too
I love the fact that the picture from the girl in the italian lake(city of stresa, lago maggiore) is where I spent all my childhood summers, the swimming pool he sees is the one I used to swim in, and the big grey boat is the one I used to jump off to get into the lake. Quite emotional, thank you for the video!
Do these photos have geotags? The geotag has GPS coordinates that you could reference to verify your guess. You can see the geotag in Windows by right clicking the image, selecting properties, then it should be under the details tab.
TFW the thumbnail to a british youtuber's channel is your canadian 7k pop. hometown
You want projective geometry.
Team up with Lockpicking lawyer?
Oh Jesus I'm in Brazil
The line you draw should be from that farther point to the center of the photo since it is the center of the lens (you have to keep in mind this line is at an angle so idk if this will work)
I do this to find filming locations.
when you're born in brazil 18:18
Why do I feel like this is what my girl is doing whenever I post a picture of me w/ the boys somewhere 🤔
4 chan users be like
1:40 right up your street eh?
4:17 Eyyyyy my homwtown
Hey :) awesome video! You have to keep in mind that different lenses on different cameras with different focal lengths, produce different compression in the image... so at 22:40, ur not triangulating the point the picture was taken from because it looks like a 50mm lens and not a wide
so to answer ur question at 22:50, its a good idea, you need a photographer ;)
The photo line method's gotta be a straight line down the center of the photo, if you start offcenter somewhere then the terrain height has parallax that deviates from the line you're drawing.
See the thumbnail and im like..thats where i live haha
Can you find Atillah Hildmann? The German police would be happy about that ^^