I've always thought racing games should take this perspective, which would fix the problem that (in first person view) your most important information (how does the road ahead curve?) is concentrated in a small part of your screen and hard to see. This would combine the utility of a minimap of the road ahead and the nice overview you get going downhill in a single view.<p>I've already made 2 prototypes of it (a race-track on the inside of a sphere), but as always, didn't get very far. There's probably a more optimal projection to be found than a sphere, but it's an easy start.
"Here & There" is a street map taking a similar approach: <a href="http://berglondon.com/products/hat/" rel="nofollow">http://berglondon.com/products/hat/</a>
I saw these the other day and wondered—could you make these programmatically with a drone? Have it lift off, tilt downwards, and stitch them together...
I had some tears ago the idea of using this proyection for navigation maps in cars. This was when inception came out of course.
The idea was adding a new kind of display for your TomTom in your car windshield. Obviously you need a very powerful hud-augmented reality generator to display a map like this in your windshield and don't have the image block your actual road view. Way too out of current technology and my capabilities.
We'll have to wait some more years for something like this.
Reminds me of that city-bending scene from Inception<p><a href="https://youtu.be/dG22TcpjRnY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/dG22TcpjRnY</a>
Could creating automated software for this be a potential computer science master thesis? I know this would be alright for a bachelor and probably not substantial enough for a PhD thesis. But I'm wondering if it is academic enough for a master thesis.<p>I might consider to switch, since what I'm doing now is not a project I believe in and I'm only doing it to get the paper.