Night Walk in Marseille [video]

This was great.

I didn't care much for the narration, but perhaps that's because when I travel I prefer to explore things on my own. The captions and videos were helpful though.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that you didn't have to follow the green track (though you miss out on the pictures and videos). I discovered it by accident, actually. At some point in time I found out that I had become disoriented and had been going backwards for some time. Rather than go through the entire track again, I wanted to see if I could take a shortcut. It works.

You know what would be cool? Incorporating some sort of "Choose Your Own Adventure" elements into something like this. Kind of like Myst, but in real-world settings.

I wonder if someday we can get to the point where StreetView is a continuous flow... like instead of tapping the arrow and waiting for the next slide to load, you would just smoothly walk forward or backwards along a track using up/down arrow.

I guess it would be technically possible already, but Google would have to snap their images with much smaller distances, and make them load in much faster... space requirements would be huge lol.

Most immersive experience I've had on the internet so far, the added videos & interviews absolutely made it.

Did my own graffiti spotting during this walk: http://i.imgur.com/JX9uJLn.png

Same guy disappearing into the wall in two different places, I wonder if there is more of him?

A few weeks ago I purchased a Leap Motion Controller: one of those devices that tracks your finger movements and translates them into actions on your laptop screen. I was pretty impressed with the device's accuracy, but I ended up returning it because I didn't see how it had practical applications for my own work. After the initial excitement of moving windows with your hands (pretending you're in a sci-fi movie) fades off, the old-fashioned method of clicking is simply easier and more convenient.

Viewing this "Night Walk" demonstration, I felt an inkling of regret about returning Leap Motion. As others have noted, the experience is very immersive and exciting. The only thing holding it back, in my opinion, is the medium of mouse and keyboard. I wanted to move fluidly through Marseille instead of incrementally, through clicking and jerky motions of the mouse. If this kind of 3D / WebGL / geospatial content becomes more prevalent on the web, I can see a stronger practical use case for everyone owning Leap, or something like it.

> Ah snap. The Night Walk experience is not optimised for your device or operating system.

Great. Please don't tell me what's wrong with my browser or os.

A camera taking lurching steps through the Marseilles nightlife? Meh, it's been done. ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuOecH5NoXs

Sweet, it's great to see his hometown in a post on HN :)

I think it is broken in Chrome on Linux.. unless it is supposed to be a series of stretched out looking pictures taking up a small portion of the screen that spin around on their central axis and flip upside-down when you drag your mouse, and you can only navigate with keyboard arrows..

Does anyone know what team(s) are responsible for these kinds of projects at Google?

Page seems non-functional, wants me to plug in headphones? Chromium Version 33.0.1750.152, linux box.

Edit: reloading made it work.

Anyone know what this is and why it's blurred out? http://imgur.com/yi0sCEC

Also, videos are not playing right for me on firefox (audio only).

Cool! Very immersive and this is coming from an oculus rift owner.

I was thinking the next step up from this would be to setup 360 degree cameras every 10 or so feet along this path and have them all record for say an hour. Then you could 'walk' from point to point and see/hear/track the city.

But I actually think this curated approach is much better as it helps you cut out the noise and tell a better story.

This is awesome even if you know the place pretty well, and the sounds and music totally enhance the experience! Thanks for sharing.

This is pretty cool.

Neal Stephenson's "Command Line" comes to mind, where he talks about how experiences are distilled and summarized for an end user. I have a vague negative feeling toward this, but I can present no argument.

Totally engrossing.

Please hook this (and Street View) up to https://github.com/richtr/threeVR.

How it works: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/w3c-device-orientation-us...

Live demo: http://richtr.github.io/threeVR/examples/vr_basic.html

"Ah snap. The Night Walk experience is not optimised for your device or operating system."

No night walk if you're not in the googleverse.

"Your headphones will give you the best experience." I'm wearing my headphones, thanks Google. Can I watch this now?

This is a taste of augmented reality. I like it. I'm left a bit unsatisfied though. I want to experience the real thing now.

Anybody can point to anything else "interesting" in the presentation than the "graffiti" and the technical side of making a lot of 360 deg night-shot panoramas with sound?

And is there a possibility to make the link to some particular spot?

(I can't imagine graffiti interesting to those who aren't themselves doing them. It's subjective, I know, and I respect that others have other views, I've heard about Banksy etc).

Nice implementation.

Marseille has a severe graffiti problem, doesn't it? Mais c'est dégueulasse!

can anyone give me ideas\links on what HW & SW I would need to make something like this? Would love to make an adventure game with this concept! Cheers!

This is the type of thing that Google Glass was made for.

Would love to try this out in VR!

loved this, hope for more

Very engrossing.