There are some great images here. I like how Google has been striving to document more beautiful places. The sheer amount of brainpower and processing that Google is putting into Streetview is truly staggering and unprecedented. Nobody else out there is doing it in this way.
On a more hand-made note, my company, http://360cities.net, has been publishing user-generated 360º imagery since 2006. I have built a tour of my own city, Prague, starting in 2004, which was before Google Maps or Streetview. We now have hundreds of thousands of images, (all high-resolution, completely spherical 360º photos) from every country of the world, including some very remarkable places in Antarctica, skydiving from an airplane, underwater, "remote" places such as Havana, Iran, Tibet, Burma, Easter Island, and so on.
To expand on what themstheones said: upvotes and downvotes are for increasing the visibility of a comment in proportion to how it contributes to a good discussion. Downvotes aren't punishment.
I can't believe I'm typing this, but after the new Google map changes, it runs so slow on my home and office computer that I was forced to switch to bing. It still works on my mobile, but its just unbearable on the other systems.
I hope they create a more streamlined version soon.
Definetly slower. Also, there's some features I miss from the old maps, like navigation on the map while on StreetView and the measurement ruler (from labs). But you don't need to switch to Bing as you can still change to the classic google maps.
I'm glad to hear I am not the only one with performance issues. That is a lot more upvotes than I expected, especially considering how google heavy the user base is here.
I love google's products and the fact that they all work together but everything seems to be running slower than it ever has before.
Looking at the comments below, it is pretty clear that other people are also having this issue.
It takes a lot for me to stop what I am doing, and move over to Bing so if I am doing it, other people are doing it as well.
They should put making all of their applications less CPU intensive at the top of their list, right away.
===Also, while I am complaining about Google products, the google news doesn't let me easily search by time anymore which has also forced me over to bing. Articles from 30 days ago are rarely useful.
Google can't wait to usher in a future where people stay in their rooms and eat Soylent while being entertained and exercised by their VR-enabled computers.
>Imagine if we had these kind of views of, say, the streets of London in 1900? This is worth doing for history's sake alone.
For one, yeah, "what if" we had these kind of views for the streets of London in 1900? I doubt many would care, same as not many care for 1900 music, 1900 books, 1900 photographs and such. Some scholars maybe.
Second, what the parent said goes beyond that. Essentially he says, the people of 2200 could have the streets of 2100 fully 3D imaged, but empty of life, with people of 2100 mostly staying at home and merely doing VR walks.
Now this might sound far-fetched and implausible, but not much more than telling 1900 people that in 100 years there would be cities were people rarely walk in public to go about their business but mostly go around with their cars.
> For one, yeah, "what if" we had these kind of views for the streets of London in 1900? I doubt many would care, same as not many care for 1900 music, 1900 books, 1900 photographs and such. Some scholars maybe.
You haven't seen the many-thousands upvoted threads of mashups of various locations in WWII and modern day? Or the sourcebooks that designers use for all the costume drama on TV and in movies?
As a fan and reader of history myself, you couldn't prove my point better.
I mean, if the best you can come up as "value most people get from historical data" is photo montages of WWII/now and better designed costumes for period movies..
Not only I am serious, but it's a statement of fact. Most people wouldn't care.
The same way most people don't care about archeological museums, old music and old books. How many copies do history books sell in your B&N, compared to cooking, self-help, crime novels and such?
At best, people watch some documentary on TV or visit a museum and quickly move on with their lives none the wiser.
(I, for one, do. I revel in old stuff, from Plato to the Retronaut website. And I'm doing a project with reconstructed ancient greek music. But people who care about such stuff are mostly outliers).
10% of people is still 600 million people. That's more than the number of scientifically literate people. Is science therefore irrelevant? Why are you bothering to make this point?
>10% of people is still 600 million people. That's more than the number of scientifically literate people. Is science therefore irrelevant? Why are you bothering to make this point?
You seem unable to grasp that something might be irrelevant TO most people (as in: they could not care less about it) and still relevant IN ITSELF.
Plus, science is a bad example, because it's totally unlike history or classical music. Someone not caring about science still comes into contact every day with products of science, they shape his life in major deegree, the economy he lives in, his health, his food, etc.
With classical music or history, people can forget about them and nothing happens to them (well, apart from them being less educated, but since most other people are too hardly anyone notices).
Originally you said "Some scholars maybe." Then you backpedalled to "10% of people." A bit of a difference.
Everything you're saying now is obvious, which is why I asked why you're bothering to make this point. It seems like you're just being argumentative for no reason.
Check your bipedal privilege cis scum. No but seriously, every time you feel the urge to make a luddite point remember that there are disabled people who are getting a whole new lease on life via enabling technologies.
Or, you know, poor people. There is a very large cross section between people who have access to computers and people who do not have the means to be able to visit the places that Google has documented here.
I use goog maps to plan hikes, to answer questions like "is this section of the trail kid / cub scout compatible"? Some trail sections are not. I can do a halfway good job with the satellite images and some topo knowledge but this new GOOG "streetview" trail UI is so close, yet so far from what I need.
What I need is something like a youtube of a high speed (maybe 30 mph equiv?) run down the trail.
I'm looking for stuff like hazards and issues. Like, oh, look, a swamp, either bug spray or forget it. Oh, look, a cliff, well thats very scenic but I'm not taking the kids there. Oh look, a whole field of poison ivy, best remember to corral the kids around there. Oh look, a blind corner and adjacent highway crossing, need to keep the kids under somewhat tighter control in that area. Oh look, picnic tables, guess where the kids are stopping to eat lunch?
Another obvious problem is the county I live in has at least 100 miles of trails either cross country or in parks, and the Mighty GOOG has ... the grand canyon. Well thats nice but I'm hiking a short segment of the ice age trail this saturday, not the grand canyon. Someday the streetview-like trail tech will be useful to me, but for years I suspect it'll be merely aspirational. It would be like having streetview for streets... but only in Mountain View.
Not to be snarky or anything, but have you tried calling the park office? US national park rangers, particularly in the parks with large backcountry area, are both very knowledgeable and very helpful.
That is good advice, but only works for national parks, and the closest one is 100s of miles away. There are not that many national parks east of the Mississippi. There are some, but its not like out west where it seems you throw a rock and it probably lands on a national park.
On the other hand the city I live in has three separate rails-to-trails conversions within 2 miles of my house and a riverwalk. Every little county park seems to pride itself on having elaborate marked hiking trails. In a land with lots of rivers every "three taverns and a gas station" village hovel seems to have some kind of riverwalk, aside from the big one in my hometown. Just one of the state-level parks in my county has 29 miles of hiking trails. I wasn't kidding about just my little county (well, little county as in half the surface area of Rhode Island) having 100s of miles of hiking trails.
I would like to hike a national park someday, but its so much easier (and cheaper!) to visit a local trail.
I was going on a kayak trip last weekend and sought advice from a someone at a state park that ran along the river. The ranger told me that one section had some "small rapids that I could go down depending on my comfort level," a description that while accurate is not very helpful.
I had to decide between taking a shorter trip and missing out because of being overly cautious, or taking the longer trip I planned on.
I ended up putting in downstream and paddled upstream to see them, and they turned out to be pretty big - lots of whitewater and 3 foot drop, something I would not have done alone and without a helmet.
Being able to actually see a picture would allowed me to make a much more informed decision. Pictures really are worth a thousand words.
You should check out a book called The Light Of Other Days, in which remote-viewing wormhole-cameras are invented and a situation similar to what you are describing plays out.
Arguably these are great advertisements for the places they represent. If you were choosing between places to travel to, I think this would be helpful.
Where do I apply and what is the hourly rate? I assume all travel expenses are also paid.
On a serious note, in the footsteps of OpenStreetMap that could be a great next community project: write the software for the infrastructure and the camera gear, open the designs of data collecting hardware (for the 3D printers) and let people upload their treks.
Seriously though, this is better done by locals who knows the place than by some Google minions.
I think the business model will be selling it to famous landmarks and malls, who have to do it for brand reasons (and then trickle down on the famous scale).
See the examples, Burj Khalifa (big ugly tower), Everest, Grand Canyon, Venice, highly touristic places.
Expect Eiffel tower, Liberty Island, not beautiful "treks".
If you look at the form, it seems they are looking for resorts and outfitters to document their local trails - people who have a vested interest in having more information to show customers.
A company profits (or intends to) from what it does, even if they don't directly charge for it. At the least, it adds value to their brand.
Of course it's even better here: Street View is part of maps which is a real business for Google, and they even added ads to map searches recently. It's also part of the Android maps offering.
Plus they get to keep the data anyway, so they'll eventually use those for AR, Google Glasses, and what have you. Oh, and the GPS data recorded by the Street View equipment also add data to regular maps and fix mapping inconsistencies.
I think the idea is that organizations with a vested interest in the success of this concept are going to help them, such as tourist organization. That could be a win-win.
Great, now when the f* am I going to get terrain back on Maps for Android?! Last summer, my phone provided some information about terrain difficulty for light hikes (serious ones should involve a paper map so that you're not screwed if you lose battery/signal/whatever), bike rides and whatnot. This summer, with a newer, fancier, Nexus 4, that information is gone. The world is flat, indeed.
If you use the distance measurement button, it tells you the elevation of the segment you are measuring, I believe. I know this is not the same thing, but maybe it's helpful.
The distance measurement tool has been removed from more recent versions of Maps. It's why I haven't upgraded to the latest version, as the elevation profiles from the distance tool are really handy.
I've noticed two features silently vanishing from my galaxy s2. Installed apps no longer appear in the search results from the Google Now widget and I no longer have the option to download a complete email in th ebuilt in email client.
I have to agree, at least in terms of these Trek sites. The latest versions of Safari, Firefox, and Chrome constantly use 50%+ of my CPU to render these pages, without me having to scroll or interact at all. For a site that doesn't use any plug-ins, it sure heats up my laptop like a plug-in would.
* Edit: I only meant to agree that these specific Trek sites feel very slow, not "all Google services."
I hope they render some of these for the Oculus. Making View, a Norwegian company with similar 360 degree camera technology has released a few Oculus demo clips of people doing amazing things with their cameras. http://makingview.no/makingview.com/?page_id=1691
I would do this in a heartbeat, even for a substantially reduced salary. Assuming travel expenses and meals/shelter are paid for (within reason) I'd travel all over the world for an opportunity like this. Awesome. Google's been coming under a lot of fire lately but between this and Google Loon[1] I think Google's cooking up some really innovative, practically useful and genuinely creative toys for the world to play with.
It would be nice to try something like this with Oculus Rift and video. Would probably be a cool experience to view the trip down the Amazon Basin in a video and thanks to 360 degree camera / video capture, one would be able to move the head around and get an interactive experience out of it.
I would like to try something like this just to test what kind of "being there" feeling would be achievable with the current tech.
See my link below for an Oculus demo using 360 degree cameras. It's doesn't feel nearly as fluid or 3D as the other Oculus demos, but it's promising nonetheless.
Never mind the actual window-washers and builders who made these buildings are de-facto slaves to the Monarch of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Then in the next demo over they try to get all multicultural with the first nations language "ᓱᑯᑦᑎᐊᓃᒃᑲᓗᐊᕐᖓᑦ ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ? "
Arabic is a bit like English. Just like how England is not the country with majority of English speakers, In the same way 'Arabs' don't make up all the Arabic speakers.
Arabic speakers exists in nearly every country where there are Muslims. Which is what nearly 30% of the world population?
I see you got downvoted, but ruins of all kinds have always been popular, and a classic recent linkbait has been "pictures of the ruins of abandoned Detroit", seems like every popular magazine / website has tried that one as linkbait.
It seems both inevitable, interesting, and on topic.
Using census records I found the house some of my ancestors lived in about a century ago. The neighborhood has gone, uh, dramatically downhill since then, I wouldn't go there today without kevlar and a rifle, but it was interesting to view the original mostly unmodified house on streetview.
There is also a whole "urban explorer" subculture out there and legally obtained pix of ruins would be interesting.
I actually wasn't even joking. I install a shit load of alarm systems down there. Around 10 a month, in abandoned properties. Thought it would be an interesting take on Trek.
They should hook up with a buddy of mine eric! He's currently going to all 194 countries and having some amazing experiences. Seems like the perfect partnership!
If some startup comes along and provides stunning zoom-able StreetView pictures of some no-name street in Tel-Aviv and two clicks later it can show you the red light district in Bangkok, all for free and all taken in 2013, I think a lot of people would give that startup its due.
I'm not sure you appreciate the engineering infrastructure at work here. This isn't special because Google is doing it, it's special because it's really hard to do. How would you go about attempting this project as effectively as Google with the resources of a typical startup company?
Creative...but I don't think it would have the same fluidity to Google's Trek. The images wouldn't be as up to date or "real time" as they could be because you'd be caching images that are potentially several days or weeks old.
And if you scripted a time limit for images, e.g. only within a few hours, you'd heavily limit the amount of usable images you had.
With "agents in the field" Google could potentially update its feeds whenever and as often as it needed. The difference would be having an in-house image-generating infrastructure or...well...tag-searching Instagram.
Current top comment in this thread is exactly about a company doing it since 2004 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6210281 ). I'd never heard of them before; if anything, this is free publicity for them. Tide raising all boats etc etc.
What a blatant PR attempt to put lipstick on a pig.
Do not forget who we're dealing with, Google gave the NSA unrestricted access to every system without any legal challenge. No amount of pretty photos will make up for that.
On a more hand-made note, my company, http://360cities.net, has been publishing user-generated 360º imagery since 2006. I have built a tour of my own city, Prague, starting in 2004, which was before Google Maps or Streetview. We now have hundreds of thousands of images, (all high-resolution, completely spherical 360º photos) from every country of the world, including some very remarkable places in Antarctica, skydiving from an airplane, underwater, "remote" places such as Havana, Iran, Tibet, Burma, Easter Island, and so on.
Our "editors' picks" are something I'm really proud of. https://www.360cities.net/search/@tags-editorspicks
here is our world map. zoomed out, you should see only "great" stuff: http://www.360cities.net/map
Other services that are similar to 360cities include http://viewat.org, http://roundus.com, http://arounder.com, http://photosynth.net.
Then there are the services for iphone/android 360º app, but these images are far lower in quality overall: http://occipital.com/360/verse and http://dermandar.com/worldmap
edit: made all links clickable