Friday, May 1, 2009

Google streetview. Taking a virtual walk down the streets.

Google seems working hard adding feathers to its cap which contribute a good to bring it in world’s top most admired organizations’ list.

though it has been long since google made its streetview technology public but it has been improving over the time and this made us tell you more of it.

Google Street View is a feature of Google maps and Google earth that provides for many streets in the world 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic views from a row of positions along the street (one in every 10 or 20 meters, or so), from a height of about two meters. It was launched on May 25, 2007, and has gradually expanded to include more cities, and in these cities more streets, and also some rural areas. These photographs are currently available for countries including United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Coverage is shown by dragging "pegman" from its position, on a map of any scale. Pegman is an animated character which sails over the google maps as you navigate.

The google street View car, is the key element which mounts a special google_street_view_car_prius_gets_ticketcamera over its roof which records through its 11 eyes in different directions this provides you a very attractive 3d space view of the world to explore by the streets. This is an amazing technology. The quality of pictures you witness is extremely good and that forces you think how much amount of space might be required for their storage. During their scheduled times, these vans keep travelling round the famous cities and building their databases and capturing content.

The Street View camera  One of the many secrets behind the camera_headtechnology is a patented 11 lens camera system that simultaneously takes photos in 11 directions based on a dodecahedron geometry. They can capture 30 frames a second of high resolution photography. That's right - we're talking high resolution video in digital 360.

The Official video

Visit StreetView[Via Google Maps]

Know ‘bout the enabling technology.[ The immersive Media]

Click Here for a very amazing video that will leave you drooling.