# Learning Dense Flow Field for Highly-accurate Cross-view Camera Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15556 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15556/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [Fine-tuning CNN Image Retrieval with No Human Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.02512/) (2017)
- [VIGOR: Cross-View Image Geo-localization beyond One-to-one Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12172/) (2020)
- [Where am I looking at? Joint Location and Orientation Estimation by Cross-View Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03860/) (2020)
- [Coming Down to Earth: Satellite-to-Street View Synthesis for Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06818/) (2021)
- [Localizing and Orienting Street Views Using Overhead Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00161/) (2016)
- [Beyond Cross-view Image Retrieval: Highly Accurate Vehicle Localization Using Satellite Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04752/) (2022)
- [Visual Cross-View Metric Localization with Dense Uncertainty Estimates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08519/) (2022)
- [SliceMatch: Geometry-guided Aggregation for Cross-View Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14651/) (2022)
- [Ford Multi-AV Seasonal Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07969/) (2020)
- [Real-time Kinematic Ground Truth for the Oxford RobotCar Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10152/) (2020)
- [CVLNet: Cross-View Semantic Correspondence Learning for Video-based Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03660/) (2022)
- [GAMa: Cross-view Video Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02431/) (2022)
- [Satellite Image Based Cross-view Localization for Autonomous Vehicle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13506/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [FG2: Fine-Grained Cross-View Localization by Fine-Grained Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18725/) (2025)
- [Weakly-supervised Camera Localization by Ground-to-satellite Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06471/) (2024)
- [Leveraging BEV Paradigm for Ground-to-Aerial Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01812/) (2024)
- [Multi-weather Cross-view Geo-localization Using Denoising Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02408/) (2024)
- [Seeing through Satellite Images at Street Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17001/) (2025)
- [BevSplat: Resolving Height Ambiguity via Feature-Based Gaussian Primitives for Weakly-Supervised Cross-View Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09080/) (2025)
- [GeoDistill: Geometry-Guided Self-Distillation for Weakly Supervised Cross-View Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10935/) (2025)
- [Loc2: Interpretable Cross-View Localization via Depth-Lifted Local Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09792/) (2025)
- [PIDLoc: Cross-View Pose Optimization Network Inspired by PID Controllers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02388/) (2025)
- [Last-Meter Precision Navigation for UAVs: A Diffusion-Refined Aerial Visual Servoing Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04352/) (2026)
- [ViewBridge:Revisiting Cross-View Localization from Image Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10716/) (2025)
- [Cross-View Localization via Redundant Sliced Observations and A-Contrario Validation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05369/) (2025)
- [BEV-Patch-PF: Particle Filtering with BEV-Aerial Feature Matching for Off-Road Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15111/) (2025)
- [VIRD: View-Invariant Representation through Dual-Axis Transformation for Cross-View Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12918/) (2026)
- [GeoFlow: Real-Time Fine-Grained Cross-View Geolocalization via Iterative Flow Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21943/) (2026)
- [Seeing Across Skies and Streets: Feedforward 3D Reconstruction from Satellite, Drone, and Ground Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07978/) (2026)
- [Empowering Feed-Forward Reconstruction Models with Metric Scale via Satellite Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08205/) (2026)
- [Fusing Satellite Imagery and Planimetric Maps for Cross-View Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10166/) (2026)
- [Cross-View Yaw Estimation in Location Uncertainty with Line-Aligning Yaw Scoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22094/) (2026)
- [More Than Where You Are: Learning Semantics, Structure, and Geometry from Cross-View Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12429/) (2026)
- [OpenCVL: An Open, Diverse, and Large-Scale Dataset for Fine-Grained Cross-View Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.25274/) (2026)
- [Ground-to-Satellite Localization in Unconstrained Image Collections for 3D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29211/) (2026)
- [ARC-Loc: Leveraging Azimuthal Ray Convergence as a Geometric Cue for Direct Cross-View Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04965/) (2026)
- [How to Reduce Localization Ambiguity? Geometry-Semantic Constrained BEV Representation Learning for Satellite-Ground Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39127/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the 3-DoF camera pose for a ground-level image with respect to a satellite image that encompasses the local surroundings. We propose a novel end-to-end approach that leverages the learning of dense pixel-wise flow fields in pairs of ground and satellite images to calculate the camera pose. Our approach differs from existing methods by constructing the feature metric at the pixel level, enabling full-image supervision for learning distinctive geometric configurations and visual appearances across views. Specifically, our method employs two distinct convolution networks for ground and satellite feature extraction. Then, we project the ground feature map to the bird's eye view (BEV) using a fixed camera height assumption to achieve preliminary geometric alignment. To further establish content association between the BEV and satellite features, we introduce a residual convolution block to refine the projected BEV feature. Optical flow estimation is performed on the refined BEV feature map and the satellite feature map using flow decoder networks based on RAFT. After obtaining dense flow correspondences, we apply the least square method to filter matching inliers and regress the ground camera pose. Extensive experiments demonstrate significant improvements compared to state-of-the-art methods. Notably, our approach reduces the median localization error by 89%, 19%, 80% and 35% on the KITTI, Ford multi-AV, VIGOR and Oxford RobotCar datasets, respectively.