There's a parallax effect in Street View on Apple Maps that separates out the layers of every image. Things like lampposts or telephone poles all rotate slightly differently to whatever is behind them.
And it's such a subtle effect that I still break my brain trying to determine whether or not I've made it up.
Imagine expending that much development time and effort for something you're not even sure is there. And somehow I still find it enviably cool.
Street View is such a missed opportunity. In 2007 it was visionary and essential to create the map data that allowed Google Maps to win. In 2026 it is a symbol of Google's stagnation. Essentially zero improvement in user experience for more than a decade, in a time of incredible advancements in computer vision.
By now we should all be flying around the planet in a seamless 3D reconstruction unifying street level and satellite views and allowing smooth free camera motion all the way from space to the front door of buildings and even inside. Many years ago I saw internal Google demos of dramatically improved Street View rendering, none of which ever made it to production. Google has consistently failed to recognize the value of the product and systematically underinvested in the user experience.
> In 2007 it was visionary and essential ... In 2026 it is a symbol of Google's stagnation.
Since around ~2010, Google's culture has gradually transitioned from exploring, discovering and building new businesses to defending and extracting maximum value from existing businesses (eg Enshittification).
I was vividly reminded of this listening to the Acquired podcast's three episode Google arc last year. Although the hosts don't explicitly call it out, they do such a good job of exploring all the ways in which pre-2010 Google was incredibly innovative. visionary and exciting, the contrast to today is sobering.
While Google deserves credit for leading the way on early AI research pre-2010, they squandered much of their pole position because LLMs were more threat/risk to their huge legacy search business (despite being deployed under the hood). Then, only when the external threat became undeniable, did they respond - requiring a huge come-from-behind to regain most of the lead they'd lost.
Streetview is such an incredible product - one of the few digital products that still manages to bring me joy every day. it'll be a shame when it's inevitably enshitified.
Tangential comment but I still don't understand how we have technology to identify a car license plate from space but we have pixelated images from Antarctica on Google Maps / Google Earth. Why not publish that and make it accessible? Is it true that Antarctica is not easy to scan due to ice and snow?
The workstation paragraph seems like a humble brag. Most of us yearn for a set-up like that! Especially with the price of components going up thanks to AI and corporations buying all the hardware to support it.
The author is known for deep dives on data sets like that (I'm following him on Linkedin for that), so makes sense they always mention their setup even if it doesn't apply to his specific data set.
Just a regular brag, I'd say! He mentions it at the top of every blog post, including irrelevant details like the case. "Weird flex, but OK"
The visuals are neat looking but I was hoping to see more details like correlating capture recency with countries, population, economic status, etc. to see what causes areas to get the most and least love from Google.
I find it interesting that Germany is lit up like a candle, despite having relatively strict privacy laws. Nowhere else are there more buildings pixelated in Street View than in Germany.
I'm a bit upset that there's no screenshot of Africa in the call outs at the bottom.
With the detail spec that the author describes, it reminds me that I have an identical CPU but I couldn't get my RAM to run at the advertised 5600Mhz. Hopefully there's updated BIOS so I can try did the issue again. Anyone know if I'd notice meaningful difference by flight from 3600 (what the pc reports) to 5600Mhz?
It is wild to think that Street View was once the most futuristic thing on the internet. Now it feels like a digital relic. The idea of a seamless transition from space to the front door has been a demo-room staple for years, yet we still have that clunky 'click to jump' navigation. It is not just about the visuals. It is about the lost metadata. There is so much semantic information in those images that could be powering a much more intelligent map, but instead, it feels like we are just looking at a very large, very static photo album.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 61.9 ms ] threadThere's a parallax effect in Street View on Apple Maps that separates out the layers of every image. Things like lampposts or telephone poles all rotate slightly differently to whatever is behind them.
And it's such a subtle effect that I still break my brain trying to determine whether or not I've made it up.
Imagine expending that much development time and effort for something you're not even sure is there. And somehow I still find it enviably cool.
Edit: Apparently it is "Nova Map" base tile set from ArcGIS.
By now we should all be flying around the planet in a seamless 3D reconstruction unifying street level and satellite views and allowing smooth free camera motion all the way from space to the front door of buildings and even inside. Many years ago I saw internal Google demos of dramatically improved Street View rendering, none of which ever made it to production. Google has consistently failed to recognize the value of the product and systematically underinvested in the user experience.
Right and if they did you'd likely be complaining about how they ruined Street View by making it a slow bloated mess and should have left it alone.
Since around ~2010, Google's culture has gradually transitioned from exploring, discovering and building new businesses to defending and extracting maximum value from existing businesses (eg Enshittification).
I was vividly reminded of this listening to the Acquired podcast's three episode Google arc last year. Although the hosts don't explicitly call it out, they do such a good job of exploring all the ways in which pre-2010 Google was incredibly innovative. visionary and exciting, the contrast to today is sobering.
While Google deserves credit for leading the way on early AI research pre-2010, they squandered much of their pole position because LLMs were more threat/risk to their huge legacy search business (despite being deployed under the hood). Then, only when the external threat became undeniable, did they respond - requiring a huge come-from-behind to regain most of the lead they'd lost.
https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google-the-ai-company
Costa Rica seems also to have more coverage than I see here.
Paraguay too.
We don't. State of the art imaging satellites are in ballpark of 20cm/px.
Here is what antarctica looks from a satellite: https://space-solutions.airbus.com/resources/satellite-image...
The visuals are neat looking but I was hoping to see more details like correlating capture recency with countries, population, economic status, etc. to see what causes areas to get the most and least love from Google.
Since anyone can request a building be blurred forever, I imagine it'll just get worse.
With the detail spec that the author describes, it reminds me that I have an identical CPU but I couldn't get my RAM to run at the advertised 5600Mhz. Hopefully there's updated BIOS so I can try did the issue again. Anyone know if I'd notice meaningful difference by flight from 3600 (what the pc reports) to 5600Mhz?