Time Travel by Mapillary
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles to do some research on time travel. After a couple of weeks of work on design and implementation, we arrived at time travel the Mapillary way.
It's fun to watch but even more fun to try out in our web viewer.
How can you travel in time?
If you are not yet a member of the Mapillary community, stop reading for a second and sign up here. Once you have signed up, you can continue reading.
At this point you may be thinking, "Is time travel possible with my Mapillary photos?" The answer is yes (you don't need a flux capacitor). Actually you don't have to do anything in particular; the photos you have uploaded to Mapillary of the same place at different times are already time travel enabled.
If you want to create a new time travel, here is what you need to do:
- Capture a sequence down some interesting path.
- Capture the same sequence some time later (e.g. a couple of months).
- Visit one of those sequences on Mapillary and press the time travel button (the clock-shaped icon at the bottom right).
Now you can travel between different times, using the slider.
Time travel in action (using 1.21 gigawatts)
For a better idea of all this, let me give you an example. Below are three sequences that I have taken in my hometown of Billeberga over a period of about six months.
Winter in Billeberga
Automagically they are now time travel enabled (see live example here).
Share the fun with #MapillaryTimeTravel
Every time you choose to share a Mapillary time travel on social media, we will create a custom photo, composed of a mix between the two photos you are comparing (like here).
Also we started up the #MapillaryTimeTravel hashtag to make it easy to find and experience other people's time travels. Below is a feed of all of the latest tweets with #MapillaryTimeTravel. If you share one, I will give you candy! (Not really—but you would deserve it).
/Johan and the Mapillary team