# Leveraging BEV Paradigm for Ground-to-Aerial Image Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.01812 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01812/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 36 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Aug 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Contrastive Learning for Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15651/) (2020)
- [MagicDrive: Street View Generation with Diverse 3D Geometry Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02601/) (2023)
- [BBDM: Image-to-image Translation with Brownian Bridge Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07680/) (2022)
- [VIGOR: Cross-View Image Geo-localization beyond One-to-one Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12172/) (2020)
- [MatrixCity: A Large-scale City Dataset for City-scale Neural Rendering and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16553/) (2023)
- [Wide-Area Image Geolocalization with Aerial Reference Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03743/) (2015)
- [Lending Orientation to Neural Networks for Cross-view Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12351/) (2019)
- [Land-Cover Classification with High-Resolution Remote Sensing Images Using Transferable Deep Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05713/) (2018)
- [One-Step Image Translation with Text-to-Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12036/) (2024)
- [Consistent View Synthesis with Pose-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17598/) (2023)
- [Coming Down to Earth: Satellite-to-Street View Synthesis for Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06818/) (2021)
- [Multi-Channel Attention Selection GAN with Cascaded Semantic Guidance for Cross-View Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06807/) (2019)
- [OrienterNet: Visual Localization in 2D Public Maps with Neural Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02009/) (2023)
- [Cross-view Geo-localization via Learning Disentangled Geometric Layout Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04074/) (2022)
- [Cross-View Image Synthesis using Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03396/) (2018)
- [Fine-Grained Cross-View Geo-Localization Using a Correlation-Aware Homography Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16906/) (2023)
- [Boosting 3-DoF Ground-to-Satellite Camera Localization Accuracy via Geometry-Guided Cross-View Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08015/) (2023)
- [Geometry-Guided Street-View Panorama Synthesis from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01623/) (2021)
- [Open High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: The WorldStrat Dataset -- With Application to Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06418/) (2022)
- [Cross-view image synthesis using geometry-guided conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05469/) (2018)
- [Sat2Density: Faithful Density Learning from Satellite-Ground Image Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14672/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Spot the Fake: Large Multimodal Model-Based Synthetic Image Detection with Artifact Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14905/) (2025)
- [LOKI: A Comprehensive Synthetic Data Detection Benchmark using Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09732/) (2024)
- [GenClaw: Code-Driven Agentic Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30248/) (2026)
- [GAIR: Location-Aware Self-Supervised Contrastive Pre-Training with Geo-Aligned Implicit Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16683/) (2025)
- [UrbanFeel: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Temporal and Perceptual Understanding of City Scenes through Human Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22228/) (2025)
- [MajutsuCity: Language-driven Aesthetic-adaptive City Generation with Controllable 3D Assets and Layouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20415/) (2025)
- [Are VLMs Lost Between Sky and Space? LinkS2Bench for UAV-Satellite Dynamic Cross-View Spatial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02020/) (2026)
- [The Semantic Lifecycle in Embodied AI: Acquisition, Representation and Storage via Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08876/) (2026)
- [VFM-Loc: Training-Free Cross-View Geo-Localization via Aligning Discriminative Visual Hierarchies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13855/) (2026)
- [StreetDiff: Multi-view Street Scenes Generation via Cross-view Consistent Multi-view Stable Diffusion with Structure Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.09890/) (2026)
- [Earth-Agent-Pro: Towards Real-World Full-Chain Earth Observation with Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12533/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ground-to-aerial image synthesis focuses on generating realistic aerial images from corresponding ground street view images while maintaining consistent content layout, simulating a top-down view. The significant viewpoint difference leads to domain gaps between views, and dense urban scenes limit the visible range of street views, making this cross-view generation task particularly challenging. In this paper, we introduce SkyDiffusion, a novel cross-view generation method for synthesizing aerial images from street view images, utilizing a diffusion model and the Bird's-Eye View (BEV) paradigm. The Curved-BEV method in SkyDiffusion converts street-view images into a BEV perspective, effectively bridging the domain gap, and employs a "multi-to-one" mapping strategy to address occlusion issues in dense urban scenes. Next, SkyDiffusion designed a BEV-guided diffusion model to generate content-consistent and realistic aerial images. Additionally, we introduce a novel dataset, Ground2Aerial-3, designed for diverse ground-to-aerial image synthesis applications, including disaster scene aerial synthesis, low-altitude UAV image synthesis, and historical high-resolution satellite image synthesis tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that SkyDiffusion outperforms state-of-the-art methods on cross-view datasets across natural (CVUSA), suburban (CVACT), urban (VIGOR-Chicago), and various application scenarios (G2A-3), achieving realistic and content-consistent aerial image generation. The code, datasets and more information of this work can be found at https://opendatalab.github.io/skydiffusion/ .