Google Street View has been a staple of the internet for years now. It allows users to explore cities and towns all over the world without ever having to leave their home.
But now, a new feature of “Immersive View” was launched recently.
In this blog post, we will take a look at the technology behind Google’s Immersive Street View feature.
What Is Google Immersive Street View?
Google Immersive Street View is a recent feature of Google Maps that allows users to explore city streets as something like a sky view. You would be looking over a location from above, to understand the neighbourhood and area, and then drop to street view to see the specific locations, appreciating the area, even before you’re physically there.
In simple terms, with Immersive street view, you’ll be virtually flying above a building or street. Imagine you’re planning a trip to London and you are using Google Immersive street view to plan your trip. You’ll be virtually soaring over the whole of Westminster, noting all famous places you want to physically visit.
Immersive street view when combined with Google maps would give you helpful information, like the height of Big Ben. Using the time slider, you can even see how the place would look in different times of the day and different weather conditions.
Thus, Google’s Immersive Street View would help to understand live businesses, nearby traffic, and the street in general, before you even go there, similar to an aerial view.
How Does Google’s Immersive Street View Work?
The 3D Immersive View is powered by Google’s artificial intelligence algorithms, which take billions of Google Street View and satellite images and combine them to create a realistic 3D depiction. The images are then stitched together to create a single, cohesive view. Miriam Daniel, the VP of Google Maps said that Google Immersive street view helps create a rich, digital model of the world.
To create an immersive street view, Google’s algorithms first identify the edges of buildings and other objects in each image. It then uses that information to generate a three-dimensional map of the area. The algorithms also take into account the height of buildings and other objects to create a more realistic view.
Once the map is generated, Google’s algorithms render it in a way that makes it look like you’re flying over the area. The final product is a realistic, three-dimensional view of an area that you can explore just as if you were there in person.
Even though Immersive Street View can be generated for any street, to date only a handful of cities have been captured. The current list includes New York City, London,Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo.
Conclusion
Google Street View is a fascinating tool that allows users to explore the world from their home. It uses Google’s artificial intelligence algorithms, which take billions of Google Street View and satellite images and combine them to create a realistic 3D depiction. So, fly around in your virtual sightseeing using Google’s Immersive street view.
