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At this rate, the Google camera car will be a feature attraction in the Pride parade
 
... You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up ...
 
I've been waiting for this. I can't wait to be able to get a plain view of some different places in Canada. BC being one of them. I've never been and I can't afford to go right now. With my first child being born, money's tight. I'm sure many of you understand. :p
 
It's quite an ambitious project: to photograph every square inch of a city's streets... wow.
 
Is that ever cool. I never tried this thing out until I saw this thread, so I loaded up a city I know somewhat well (Washington DC), and on the first intersection I pulled up I recognized someone standing on the street corner.
 
MetroMan said:
It's quite an ambitious project: to photograph every square inch of a city's streets... wow.
Click to expand...

it would be even more ambitious if the street views were hand drawn by artists. ;)
 
Personally I think it would have been better if they used high res Creative Commons photos of streets to make up the views. They could have used photos submitted by anyone, and they would be photos people had already taken, rather than vehicles going around taking the photos.
 
^ Do you know how Street View works? Different lighting conditions, camera settings, angles, and artistic expression would result in a jumbled mess. The beauty of Street View is that the photos are consistent so that it looks like you're actually driving by and you can look around as if you were there.
 
That and they also seem to have an added functionality where photos that have been location tagged are referenced by Street View, so that while you're enjoying the 360 panoramas you also have the option of looking at photos that people have uploaded to various sites
 
MetroMan said:
^ Do you know how Street View works? Different lighting conditions, camera settings, angles, and artistic expression would result in a jumbled mess. The beauty of Street View is that the photos are consistent so that it looks like you're actually driving by and you can look around as if you were there.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of how it works. It is possible today to use submitted photos to create a non jumbled looking flow of images.
 
Unless a photo is geo-tagged with Latitude/Longitude coordinates and tagged with precise heading using a magnetometer, then there's no automated way to stitch millions of photos from random people together. Again, people use different settings, different depths of field and focus, different lenses, shoot at different times of day so there is lighting/shadow discrepancies, and so on. As a professional photographer, I'd love get my hands on this technology you speak of.

Street View uses 360º photos at regular intervals to give you the smooth transitions you see. That cannot be replicated by random photos taken by people around the world.

What can and is being done is have people's photos of an area viewable in context in Street View as whatever explained, but not as the main 360º view of an area. Google's system works great, I can't wait to see Toronto's Street View go live.
 
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Great technology :) I don't see it soon becoming the principal Street View source but it's definitely interesting as a form to look at streets in more detail via other's photos.

GPS cameras are the next big thing and we've begun to see them hit the mainstream market over the last year.
 
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