oakmachine / projects / 280N
2025-08-25
Highway 280 in the Bay Area is a designated scenic highway, and thus it is miraculously free of billboards. A few miles away, and running parallel, highway 101 is chock full of 'em.
But what if you could scrub those billboards away and see something a bit nicer on your commute? Same for the utility poles and overhead wires: visual clutter. And perhaps even the street signs.. if you're a local (or navigating by GPS) you probably don't need em.
Donald Hoffman argues that our perception is a false mapping of reality, and he says that we are better off for it! I think we could continue "enhancing" our perception and tune out man-made visual clutter like ads. We can trade it for a more aesthetic environment, custom to your liking.
With AI inpainting and VR this is possible, albeit not in realtime. I generated sequences of images using the new Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (nano-banana). Each iteration for a ~1MB image took about 30 seconds and costs about $0.05 USD.
Starting with a google street view image of 101N, we gradually remove visual clutter and then turn up the natural elements:
101N again, closer to SF:
Exiting the city on a notoriously ad-strewn stretch:
Could your self-driving car show you this as it navigates the true obstacles? Could it render true obstacles as something else more aesthetic?
Just a plain walk down the street, you probably don't need the traffic signs unless you're lost, nor the utility poles and wires, or the parked cars:
Next up: photospheres in a true AR/VR rig.