Indoor Google Street View of the British Museum

The idea is great, but I've got really awful tearing when I move the camera around. I also have repeatedly tried to zoom in on something by double clicking and have been transported to another room. If I'm close to a wall (which I'm likely to be if I'm looking at an exhibit there) then I need to move the cursor out of the window as otherwise I've got a partially transparent rectangle covering the exhibit.

It's interesting, but it feels like there are a variety of problems that aren't issues when using streetview because of the context which suddenly become major problems.

The HDR effect on those images is gross. Also, the white balance looks way off (blueish) to my eyes. I'd say that the overall image quality is not very good with reflections and poor resolution that severely limit the view of details. Such a pity given the value of the assets on display and the incredible opportunity of accessing them with this tool.

The British Museum's "A History of the World in 100 Objects" is a fantastic way of exploring some of the items in the museum. The short radio programs give a great background and context to each item:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/a_history_of_the_world....

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/british-museum...

one of my favourite things about living in london was access to museums

i would go into a museum just because i was walking by

on my walk from work i would stop in three different museums along the way just to look at a single piece in each

it is very freeing, critically and creatively, to be able to examine a single piece and then leave

there is often a pressure to 'get your monies worth' at stateside museums causing a numbing fatigue that informs the popular opinion wherein museums are boring or intended for 'someone else'

one of my favourite pieces in the british museum was a bust of apollo(o) where the sculpture had apollo tie the hairs from the side of his head into a square knot across his forehead

when i got into the street view i quickly walked the route i so often did in building

but lo, they must have moved, or removed?(i), the bust.. heartbreaking

if you are in london right now and have yet to have seen either the hunterian museum or the sloane museum(ii), they are across the street from each other, do so now

the hunterian is a surgeons museum, basically accumulated by a single individual, that boasts some 300 bottled specimens and a huge collection of medical instruments through the ages.. a textbook on mid 19th century lithotomy was eye opening

(o) https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/bust-head-of-apollo-...

(i) https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/asset-viewer/Aw...

(ii) https://www.google.com/maps/place/hunterian+museum+london/@5...

VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift, combined with this will allow so many individuals to experience such museums who would otherwise never be able to attend in person.

I would have loved this as a kid (not to say I don't love it now).

I marvel at the fact that children growing up now will be able to take resources like this for granted. Amazing.

One of my favourites: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/asset-viewer/Aw...

Fantastic idea, terrible implementation. Too many slow steps walking through bare areas, clicking does unpredictable things... apparently now I have a super zoomed in view of a cabinet door?

A much better approach would be, instead of designed around me turning around, have it designed around the objects turning around?

The exposures are definitely off, and they keep switching from one image to the other. There is a cheap fix which would nonetheless make browsing much more pleasant: transition each image from the previous image's exposure to the current one over a second or so.

The British Museum was the first museum I visited where It was all... "holy shit - museums can actually be super interesting!" ...that said, Imagine how boring this place would be if Britain hadn't colonized half the world at one point in time :)

In the next version, it would be cool if they could include "hotspots" where you can click and hear the audio that you'd get if you were there.

There's a bunch of "interior" Google Streetviews. One of my favorites is the Gershwin Theatre (Wicked) in NYC: https://goo.gl/maps/Up1vUm9xVJB2

I wonder how easy it would be to combine this with Oculus-like VR to make a fully explorable space? I guess you'd probably have to generate a 3D image of the space and texture it with street view photos. Is that doable?

Maybe time to change name to "foot view", or "pedestrian view", or something. Street view is becoming a bit anachronistic.

This is much trickier to navigate than a street. I overshoot what I want to look at with almost every click

Cursor key navigation seems broken on Firefox, unfortunately.