GPS isn’t just for google maps. I’m a land surveyor and we literally use GPS every single day. Without it we’re basically fucked. We do hydrographic surveying and without GPS we’d have to basically go back to analog as 90% of the equipment on our boat would be useless. Good luck figuring out how much water is left in the Colorado river without it.
Im not exactly an expert on this, but i am very familiar with what my job requires. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) will be completely fucked without it as it’s built on decades of data and monitoring. You can’t just look for “alternatives.” Whatever Elmo has is not robust enough for the precision that is required for what we use GPS for. And without shit like that you couldn’t hit the broad side of a city.
One interesting alternative would be the Visual Positioning System (VPS) that Niantic has built from Pokemon go player data. Basically you can take a picture outside and your phone will know exactly where you are:
https://www.nianticspatial.com/locate#vps
Too bad they’re getting close to being bought out by a company that’s notorious for squeezing out every penny from their player base.
Edit: Correction, Pokemon Go is being bought from Niantic… The company itself is not being bought.
Would this work in a war zone if everything that used to be there was gone now?
I doubt it would work well, but with enough training data it would be able to pick up on some areas. Especially if there are large landmarks in the frame (mountains/hills/rivers, etc.).
It’s also what Google Maps live view is using. Street view imagery plus rough location plus on-phone camera sensor calibration data allows it to compute highly accurate positions relative to surroundings.
I’m kind of surprised that Musk hasn’t proposed turning Selective Availability back on.
The article is pretty vague, but I bet stellar navigation is a strong contender. Although, it works best only when there’s good visibility of the night sky
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Understood! Anyway, thanks to the ruzzian GPS, I made a left over the canyon. Currently dangling. I think its wrong!..oh wait, it’s because I didn’t tell it to not fly or avoid bodies of water. Got it!
That’s weird, I always viewed GPS as a form of American Imperialism. Sure, it’s a bit extreme maybe, but America does own and operate it and jam it when enemies try to use it.
Calling GPS part of imperialism is a stretch. It was put in the air at no cost to another country and can be used without cost by anybody, but nobody has to use it. Other countries can launch their own satellites if they want, but they don’t because that’s expensive and GPS is free. The US isn’t making money off of it or exploiting another country with it.
Yes, the US can jam it regionally when in conflict but of course why wouldn’t we? No reason to help the enemy.
technically, originally the GPS system was private, until made public, where it had error obfuscation, until semi recently it was released fully.
It was originally funded by the US government, still is, it’s just publicly accessible now.
(the original usecase being for shit like ICBMs and what not, obviously)
The one thing I miss from the TomTom era is I can’t have Brian Blessed give me directions anymore.
Maps still work without GPS though. I wonder how many people could find their location on one?
A good 5 years ago or so I was getting a breakfast burrito when an older couple came in asking for directions. They had an old school mapbook. It took a minute to orient myself, but I found they were on the wrong page.
Its one of my bucket list items, but an old school road trip with nothing but a mapbook and a compass. No real destination, no time frame. Just the open road and exploring. And no GPS to make it efficient or optimized where I’ll soar right past everything.
Don’t really need a compass for a road trip given you are just following roads. I went on a bike ride somewhat recently following a similar idea, using a tablet instead of a book but I just had an offline map and it doesn’t support GPS. I followed various paths and roads going around. Was a nice day trip.
