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Comment by BSeward | Hacker News Reader

Love the idea, but the Street View UI has never felt all that fun to use and it feels worse indoors. Walking around a shop or mall at Street View pace—12-ish steps for every press of a small, non-fixed arrow—is something I hope I never have a reason to do.

The pancake (http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/introducing-the-pancake-a-l...) and the city-scale of things make moving on streets more tolerable (though Legoland is not bad: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=legoland&hl=en&ll=33.1...), what's the interface for person-scale, cramped interior navigation? Until there's a solid answer this doesn't seem very enjoyable.

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The Street View UI in the Google Earth app lets you walk around using first-person shooter WASD controls.

The surrounding textures are pasted onto simple 3D rectangles approximating buildings and houses. As you move, they transition into each other, giving you the least distorted view possible. With a fast connection, it feels pretty realistic, like you're walking around the neighborhood.

Almost like how mipmaps, if done well in 3D games, aren't really noticeable.

12-ish steps for every press of a small, non-fixed arrow—is something I hope I never have a reason to do.

I accidentally discovered some keyboard commands to navigate which feels slightly easier, though the constant pausing to re-render the image is wonky.

The UI is definitely not enjoyable but I still like the effort and what we have now. It's been a great way to scout places in advance to figure out where I'm going and suitability for renting.

You can double click on the ground to move to that spot, or on the side of a building to move there and look at that spot. I see that indoors you cannot do this, but hopefully they will add it.

Yeah, that's the "pancake". It works in street-level view because there's 3D spatial data to help bound navigable regions, and because when you're at street-scale you don't mind being a little off. In this comic bookery or in any cramped space I feel like I'd need slightly higher fidelity.

When did google start using flash for street view?

Since forever? As I recall it's always been Flash.

You might think you'd like to make a more open viewer, but Google won't let you. For example, someone reverse engineered the data formats (fairly trivial, they're just XML documents that point to the panorama jpgs) and Google cease and desisted their info off the web: http://igargoyle.com/streetview/

They have an experimental WebGL version.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-maps-in-webg...

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