There's a guy on Twitch who livestreams "playing" a game with something like this, except there's no map. It's a similar site that shows you a random location and he basically "walks" around and tries to drop a pin on a map as close to the point as possible. Sounds kinda boring but I ended up watching an hour of it and it's interesting the sort of visual clues and techniques you can use to suss places out.
It's sort of like being omnipresent, how could it not be intriguing. One thing that's missing - live 3D footage viewable with your Oculus Rift... One can dream.
I would love to know how much Google spends on StreetView.
When they first started sending those cars around, I think everyone collectively mocked, "Haha. Well you're certainly not going to photograph every street in the world."
That was actually a little bit sobering for me. I thought the AI techniques they use were much more general, autonomous and independent of map data. I didn’t know that location information of traffic signs, pavement etc. are taken from map data. But it makes sense to prefer data from most reliable sources.
When I first saw the article for the google patent on free ad-powered taxis[1], I immediately thought that it was another way to get get more cars for street view.
I think they buy a fair bit of their data from third party vendors, but I'm not positive. Still, aggregating and organizing all that information is impressive.
Had a play.. nice site. I did feel slightly cheated than in 15 guesses 80% or so were in the US. A tiny bit less random and a bit more variety would be great :)
What's your randomizer? Maybe it's just me or maybe a lot of France looks the same but I swear I'm seeing a lot of repeats, perhaps as much as 1 in 20.
Random street view locations are retrieved from a database (on-the-fly lookup is too slow); France had not so much records; that has changed over the last 5 minutes though. Try again :)
Areas not accessible by car, like pedestrian areas, narrow streets, alleys and ski resorts, are sometimes covered by Google Trikes (tricycles),[2] snowmobiles[3][4] or boats.[5] On each of these vehicles there are nine directional cameras for 360° views at a height of 2.5-3.0 meters (8.2-9.8 feet),[6][7] GPS units for positioning and three laser range scanners from Sick AG for the measuring of up to 50 meters 180° in the front of the vehicle.[8] These are used for recording a rough 3D model of the surroundings, enabling faux-3D transitions between distinct panoramas where the environment images are momentarily mapped onto this 3D model while being crossfaded to create an animated perspective change as the user travels from one panorama to another. There are also 3G/GSM/Wi-Fi antennas for scanning 3G/GSM and Wi-Fi hotspots.[9] More recently, high quality images have been based on open source hardware cameras from Elphel.[10]
It says "sometimes", though, so not sure how the other pics are captured.
I believe they have Street View backpacks. Not sure of the specifics, but if I remember correctly you can walk around with the backpack and take pictures of places that cars can't get to and have them added to the map.
They have the Google Street View Trekker program[0] where they have the backpacks similar to the units mounted on their Street View cars. They tend to do "tourist attraction" type areas like monuments, parks, and so forth.
I wonder if this will be the next step for them; mapping all indoor and outdoor locations, integrating relevant ads into the street view of certain stores?
Yup, same train for me. Came back to this thread just to post it, only to find you two already had.
I recall some "random street view" site a while back having the same behavior. Not sure if it was a different site, or same one is just making the news cycle again.
Amazing. This is literally the end of a small road in the middle of nowhere (no offense), Lithuania. How few people ever see this person's home, and how few outsiders does this person come across in their back yard? And all of a sudden, here we are, all looking at this person's yard with more intrigue than they'd ever guess.
It's funny seeing the attention these vehicles draw coming out in some of the photos. This is especially true on dirt streets in the middle of residential areas.
Walk this one back down the street, you can see the pedestrians watching.
I'm getting lots of really pretty scenery in Bulgaria. So much that it's making me think about moving. I love this!
People interested in mapping and computers may also like this BBC Radio 4 programme "mapping the void" which covers some of the open sourced volunteer projects. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03s6mf0
Great! I am getting lots of beautiful scenery. An up vote/down vote or ratings system would be great, and then you could start compiling a list of the most beautiful (or interesting) views.
I've been enjoying a similar site, http://www.mapcrunch.com/, for 2 or 3 years. It is very well done. You can select one or many countries in the options menu. It's a great way of enjoying the world from your couch.
It's a canvas element that they render to now. It's very similar to the previous Flash implementation, in that it's an area of the screen they can draw on. It just happens to be in Javascript instead of Actionscript now.
But if i go to maps.google.com and zoom in, it apparently is using flash and doesn't work. The linked site does work. I'm guessing there's some API you can use for google maps, and it uses the non-flash version. But is there a way to use the non flash version on maps.google.com?
That's great and all, but a real screensaver provides a cheap way to lock a computer, and is functional and can be beautiful as well. This is beautiful, would love a screensaver of this to lock my computer when I step away from it.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 201 ms ] threadhttp://geoguessr.com/
One second I'm on a dusty, slippery looking dirt road in Peru. The next I'm about 15km NE of Monaco on a winding, single-ish lane mountain road.
When they first started sending those cars around, I think everyone collectively mocked, "Haha. Well you're certainly not going to photograph every street in the world."
xxx = crawl and cache, yyy = reachable pages on the web xxx = scan and preview, yyy = published books etc
Google's self driving cars are just doing that.
EDIT: I can't find the post I once read, but this post also makes some clear: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130502024505-99...
EDIT 2: Here a video of the presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk @ 3:30 you can see the generated (and stored) point cloud.
I'd love to see some of those point clouds. Maybe Google has an artist-in-residence who could 3D print varies landmark locations?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7114079
Btw you could use city location from wiki/dbpedia to generate random lat/long.
http://randomstreetview.com/#fnso2_17h6mm_b0_a_-8
http://randomstreetview.com/#68vsh_19xpmm_100_a_-1
http://randomstreetview.com/#vbpgr_60bxi_b6_a_-1
http://randomstreetview.com/#953ql_19j07c_1ix_a_-g
Areas not accessible by car, like pedestrian areas, narrow streets, alleys and ski resorts, are sometimes covered by Google Trikes (tricycles),[2] snowmobiles[3][4] or boats.[5] On each of these vehicles there are nine directional cameras for 360° views at a height of 2.5-3.0 meters (8.2-9.8 feet),[6][7] GPS units for positioning and three laser range scanners from Sick AG for the measuring of up to 50 meters 180° in the front of the vehicle.[8] These are used for recording a rough 3D model of the surroundings, enabling faux-3D transitions between distinct panoramas where the environment images are momentarily mapped onto this 3D model while being crossfaded to create an animated perspective change as the user travels from one panorama to another. There are also 3G/GSM/Wi-Fi antennas for scanning 3G/GSM and Wi-Fi hotspots.[9] More recently, high quality images have been based on open source hardware cameras from Elphel.[10]
It says "sometimes", though, so not sure how the other pics are captured.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View
[With 2300m vertical it's a long way from the top of Les 2 Alpes to the bottom, also it is a classic "upside down" ski area].
http://randomstreetview.com/#nbqp4_-1ro0vr_19_a_-9
http://randomstreetview.com/#c51wy_1aj9ay_48_a_-1
[0] http://www.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/trekker...
http://randomstreetview.com/#rrrxi_91xj4_-1g_0_-19
http://randomstreetview.com/#rkof5_5zmfd_-av_a_-a
http://randomstreetview.com/#rklpm_5zotk_-k_a_3
Maybe I got the cached results of a prior search?
I recall some "random street view" site a while back having the same behavior. Not sure if it was a different site, or same one is just making the news cycle again.
http://randomstreetview.com/#wrua5_dhcmy_2m_a_-3
Seriously, this is a fantastic thing you've made. I'm enjoying it immediately.
Walk this one back down the street, you can see the pedestrians watching.
http://randomstreetview.com/#-6p0t9_-nfxtl_qa_a_-2
People interested in mapping and computers may also like this BBC Radio 4 programme "mapping the void" which covers some of the open sourced volunteer projects. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03s6mf0
http://randomstreetview.com/#p0sb5_f2nu7_p7_a_-f
Then I clicked next a few times and visited random parts of France, Lithuania, Norway, and Harju County, Estonia on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
This is really cool.