[rob74]

Er... it's not entirely clear, but apparently the infringement claim was based on "the ability to zoom from the globe graphic all the way down to a particular neighborhood"?! So something a mildly talented programmer could come up with in (generously estimated) 1-2 days tops? And sure it looks cool, but claiming this animation is original enough to be patentable is stretching it a bit...

[seabird]

I strongly encourage you to try and achieve this in less than 24 working hours with the hardware and software that was available at that time. Even if you "cheat" and use high-end workstations and ~25 years of new knowledge and hindsight, even a talented programmer would likely struggle with this problem for multiple months.

[ffhhj]

Hmm, tech from '95... using VESA BIOS extension and high/extended memory modes, you might be able to modify Doom source code for the optimized 3D operations, but you'd still need to create a LODed-megatexture database and an API to serve it, unless you want users to "Insert CD 23 and press Enter".

[ant6n]

Haha, just do a planet sized doom level. Easy peasy.

[flohofwoe]

Good luck trying to do any sort of 3D rendering in Doom ;)

[arthurcolle]

Is this what you imagine?

```

import gis

gis.renderGlobe()

```

the actual tiling logic, data storage requirements, performant rendering in something like a shitty 1990s browser... I don't think you have an appreciation for the difficulty of bootstrapping this ex nihilo.

[rob74]

Well, the article (more or less) says that it ran on an SGI workstation (some photos are available here: https://artcom.de/en/?project=terravision), of course it would have been impossible in a 1990s browser. What I actually wanted to say was that, while the technical feat of programming something like this in the nineties is certainly something to be proud of, I still think that the basic idea of zooming in from orbit to a certain section of the globe is too obvious to be patentable - and from a purely mathematical point of view (ignoring things like levels of detail of 3D models, memory limitations, the actual 3D programming etc.) the signature zooming-in animation from Google Earth (which apparently was also present in Terravision) is not that complicated to implement either.

[jandrewrogers]

This was definitely non-trivial at the time. Even now the only way it would take "1-2 days tops" is if you use a naive design that ignores important edge cases and leverages a lot of code and computer science that did not exist then. Geospatial is hard.

[bpodgursky]

I don't disagree that it's not patentable, but high-performance GIS / tilemap scaling manipulation is not nearly as simple to build as you are imagining.

[perl4ever]

"The problem, once solved, will be simple"

(possibly Thomas Edison, who I believed was accused of stealing IP a lot)

[ahazred8ta]

There's (analog) prior art for the zooming from 1957, 1968, and 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film)

[jebronie]

So easy! Why didn't they just import it into Unity???!!! Thats you.

[SilicaAndPina]

This comment made my day thank you

[wrnr]

As generous as the half a bowl of rice Kim Jong-un gives to his loyal subjects.