Street View: We can trike wherever you like | Hacker News Reader

Street View: We can trike wherever you like

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37 pointsalexandros14 comments

I want to see them attempt Venice; although technically 'street' view would not be accurate. It would not be easy, between canals, pathways, and especially all the bridges: foot traffic only, with stairs, and you'd have to keep the camera steady somehow.

The results, though, would be very cool.

I don't think holding the camera steady it that big a deal. In the video, he's biking a non-paved hill-path, and the outcome is fine. A bit of shock-absorption and a fast shutter is all that's needed.

I expect this is part of the reason they only have pictures from bright and sunny days in most places.

Yes, Stedicams are standard equipment in the film industry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steadicam

I wish Google would make a web interface that pre-cached the street view frames and implemented a better mouselook and keyboard controls so you could 'drive' the streets. It would be a great way to explore and learn the layout of new areas.

I suspect the problem Google has with a lot of things is scale. To take this for example it might not seem like a big deal to pre-cache images but when you look at the millions of people who probably use Google maps and assume that a lot of that cache will be wasted (people closing the site, people only going 1 of possible 3 ways at an intersection, etc...)

So even though each individual is only caching a few wasted images per visit the end result is probably terrabytes of wasted bandwidth for something that's a fairly minor feature (I agree it would be nice but it's not a "must have")

Oh, I agree, but it would be cool :)

There are keyboard controls already: the arrow keys work (at least on Firefox on Mac OS) to go forwards and backwards and turn, + and - to zoom.

Oh - I saw what I guess was a prototype of this about a year ago on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA. The rider was stopped and fiddling with something. Didn't look as slick as the one in the pic, but it did have some big Google stickers on it.

I should have taken pics of it, because people I told about it didn't really believe me.

I have a project that is doing the same thing, long before Google invested in a Trike:

http://openviewproject.org/

Our goal is to make this kind of tech available to anyone who wants to put it together, with a solid software infrastructure to do interactive panoramas.

If you're interested in helping and have Python / Django experience, please contact me!

Wherever we like. . . Really?

How about a shanty town? Or a drug compound deep in the Colombian jungle? Or just a plain ordinary war zone? Come on Google. Where's your balls?

I wonder when they will start mapping the inside of public buildings.

I wonder when they'll start combining street view with infrared depth sensing to create high detail street level 3d projections...

They seem to be more keen on crowdsourcing the 3D part, with that new Sketchup plugin.

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