Need beta testers for new 4x4 photo sharing site

[lucasz]

Hi guys, I've been trying to decide on a set of wheels and tires the last two or three months, and it was kind of a pain. Forums are great for discussion and text, but when it comes to finding photos of certain wheel and tire combos from different angles it's not a great experience. I put together a simple website that focuses on sharing photos with meta data to make visual searches easier. Right now it is all manual, but if people find it useful I could possibly add more automated computer vision fancy stuff.

The url is Meta4x4 and If anyone is interested I would love any feedback, ideas, comments, issues etc.

My vision is not to replace forums like this, but to provide better tools for visual searches of specific parts on specific vehicles so that people can get good visual ideas before spending hard earned dollars. A long term dream would be to integrate this capability into forum software so that you don't have to go to two different places, but that would be pretty difficult.

 

[Cringe]

I read your post here before I clicked on your link, so I went into it expecting something entirely different than what I landed on. After reading your description I envisioned typing in a query like 3 inch 4Runner lift and then a lifted 4Runner would be returned. When you clicked on the main image it would load into a slideshow that would 360 around the vehicle as you hit the left and right arrows, giving you different views of the vehicle. Instead there are just some random vehicle photos.

If you wanted the 360 thing, you should get people to park somewhere without a busy background and take 8 photos. Front, Back, Left, Right, and then the four corners, all taken landscape (not portrait). This would standardize things with regards to the views available to future users. If you really wanted to standardize things you would go shoot the photos yourself, maybe using a tripod and the same location for every vehicle, then you would just need the people to meet up with you.

All that said, I wish you luck with your project! I imagine it could turn into a lot of work real fast!

 

[lucasz]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah a full 360 around the vehicle would be cool, but that would be a lot of work to get everyone to do it the same. When I think about it, really just the front, back and side are the important angles, so maybe I should make it more simple.

Regarding the searching, what you're expecting is what it should do (minus slide show), but my simple search isn't that smart yet, you would need to do an advanced search. But I also just realized that I have a problem with case sensitive matching and some other strange error, so I need to fix it.

 

[lucasz]

Ok, search is fixed, so you should be able to do something like this to get pictures of all 2" lifted 4runners: Meta4x4
https://4x4meta.com/search/index?utf8=✓&query[make]=toyota&query[model]=4runner&query[lift]=2
There are only pictures of my trucks right now, so you won't get many results, but the idea is that anyone could join and add their photos.