Wrocław: 360° panoramas: search for volunteers

I’m thinking to buy 360° action camera to do a tons of panoramas and then upload them to something like Mapillary.

Why?

  • I want to create more opensource content

  • This will be a source of fresh information for OpenStreetMap community

  • We can add details of yards and parks

  • We can update information about shops and other POIs with a labels, I think there are a lot of changes after COVID started

  • I want to capture Wrocław I know, create opensource history of Wrocław in panoramas

Mapillary recommends GoPro Fusion 360. A used one cost about 1200 PLN, so I can afford this. It has internal GPS, so it should be very easy to use it, but it is better to do some post-editing before to upload. Also, in theory, it is possible to use the camera together with high-precision GNSS tracker.

But I’m afraid the camera will be useless most of the time: I will probably use it 1-2 times per month. I think it will be better to share this camera with 5-10 people, who will use it too. Location Wrocław is not mandatory, it maybe even more important to create fresh panoramas for a villages and cities around Wrocław.

  • Does anybody here want to use such camera to create panoramas and upload them to services, which can be used for OpenStreetMap purposes?

  • Which service(s) to use to share the results, in addition to (or instead of) Mapillary?

  • Do you know any possible legal issues?

  • Any other idea/advice?

Most important legal issue are human faces. You should blur them before uploading.

I mostly edit my city Radom, where there is some guy called “Radomski Dron” who uploads many 360 photos from air of Radom. You can see him here https://www.facebook.com/RadomByDron
From my experience I can say that his work is very helpful in editing. He makes photos of new investments, constructions zones etc. So this is the source of actual photos and thanks to him I have made edits and it was much easier to edit. I am going to move to Wrocław and I’ve already have an interest in editing that city, because the quality doesn’t please me, so I would like to make some improvements and edit more. The actual high quality ortophotomap is from 2018 and this is a city of very fast development, so of course, I think that I could be interested in cooperation, I could use that during edits.

Mapillary will do it automatically, but I don’t know about another services (I want to upload to multiple services).

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/KartaView

As I understand (from messages in OSM website and from Discord channel “OSM Polska”), people are more interested in fresh aerial images from drone, than from the land.
Then currently I’m not going to buy a 360° camera.

I assume that the group of people that are interested in 360 imagery exists but to engage in your project someone from that group would need to be active near Wrocław AND actively engage in the mentioned community channels. I contribute 360 myself and would like to utilise some better equipment but I think that my location (Warsaw) is a deal breaker in this case.