Google Street View now includes interiors • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#41

Post by BSeward » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

scottmp10 wrote: post #25

BSeward wrote: post #6

Love the idea, but the Street View UI has never felt all that fun to use and it feels worse indoors. Walking around a shop or mall at Street View pace—12-ish steps for every press of a small, non-fixed arrow—is something I hope I never have a reason to do. The pancake ( http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/introducing-the-pancake-a-l... ) and the city-scale of things make moving on streets more tolerable (though Legoland…

You can double click on the ground to move to that spot, or on the side of a building to move there and look at that spot. I see that indoors you cannot do this, but hopefully they will add it.

Yeah, that's the "pancake". It works in street-level view because there's 3D spatial data to help bound navigable regions, and because when you're at street-scale you don't mind being a little off. In this comic bookery or in any cramped space I feel like I'd need slightly higher fidelity.

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#42

Post by nkurz » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 4:56 PM UTC

Here's another one: http://maps.google.com/?q=Scream%20Sorbet,%20Oakland,%20CA

This one's my business. They came to shoot the interior as a perk for participating in a "Google Offer". I think this is how they are rolling it out, at least in the Bay Area. To me, the results came out fine, although I worry that it now makes "casing the joint" a little easier.

It took them two visits to get it right. The first time apparently had some silly technical glitch where the automatic processor didn't stitch the photos together correctly. It took maybe 20-30 minutes for the full visit, which would make doing this universally quite a chore.

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#43

Post by webXL » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

sweet, that's pretty close to where I grew up. What other places can I "walk" into?

I dragged the little guy around, and all it shows are streets that I can view (even a parking lot, which seems pretty retarded).

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#44

Post by kb101 » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

This set me to imagining: every item in the store is dropped into a box before being put on the shelf. The box contains cameras on every interior face to snap a set of 360° views of the item. The UPC code is scanned and entered into inventory. The item goes on the shelf. If sold, the sale removes that item from inventory.

Each night after store closing, a Store View bot roams the aisles taking pictures and updating for the next day.

You browse to the store on Google Street View, go inside with Store View, and if you see an item you like, you draw a box around it and ask the image search algorithm to look for a match based on appearance. It finds the item, tells you how much it costs, and gives you the option to buy it.

Stores would get some basic frequency (annual?) of scan free, more frequent scans or keeping a bot on premises to scan every night would cost more. Integration of the online store would have a fee attached to every purchase. Prices and discounts could be updated daily and there could be different incentives for online vs. in-store purchases.

As data storage and computational power get cheaper and cheaper, and image recognition algorithms get more sophisticated, this would seem to be a potential outcome. A package of algorithms could even be marketed as a store manager: moving stock that has sat on the shelf too long with discounts, predicting what will require reorders soonest, integration with price comparison engines to analyze competitiveness, etc. Once imagery is dissectable and searchable in the same way that language is, things could get very interesting very fast.

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#45

Post by sundar22in » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

Looks innovative.

Userinterface needs some improvement, how about using a mouse wheel to navigate forward/backword. Move mouse left/right to turn.

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#46

Post by samtp » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

Now I have everything I need to plan a robbery. I can see the setup of the store and the best getaway route, all without having to step foot in the store before the robbery!

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#47

Post by robterrell » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

agotterer wrote: post #34

BSeward wrote: post #6

Love the idea, but the Street View UI has never felt all that fun to use and it feels worse indoors. Walking around a shop or mall at Street View pace—12-ish steps for every press of a small, non-fixed arrow—is something I hope I never have a reason to do. The pancake ( http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/introducing-the-pancake-a-l... ) and the city-scale of things make moving on streets more tolerable (though Legoland…

When did google start using flash for street view?

Since forever? As I recall it's always been Flash.

You might think you'd like to make a more open viewer, but Google won't let you. For example, someone reverse engineered the data formats (fairly trivial, they're just XML documents that point to the panorama jpgs) and Google cease and desisted their info off the web: http://igargoyle.com/streetview/

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#48

Post by simonbrown » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

robterrell wrote: post #47

agotterer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did google start using flash for street view?

Since forever? As I recall it's always been Flash. You might think you'd like to make a more open viewer, but Google won't let you. For example, someone reverse engineered the data formats (fairly trivial, they're just XML documents that point to the panorama jpgs) and Google cease and desisted their info off the web: http://igargoyle.com/streetview/

They have an experimental WebGL version.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-maps-in-webg...

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#49

Post by jakeonthemove » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

sundar22in wrote: post #45

Looks innovative. Userinterface needs some improvement, how about using a mouse wheel to navigate forward/backword. Move mouse left/right to turn.

You can move forward/backwards/anywhere an arrow points using the arrows on the keyboard and look up/down/left/right with the WASD keys - much better than clicking with the mouse :-).

Re: Google Street View now includes interiors

#50

Post by gammarator » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 5:17 PM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #42

Here's another one: http://maps.google.com/?q=Scream%20Sorbet,%20Oakland,%20CA This one's my business. They came to shoot the interior as a perk for participating in a "Google Offer". I think this is how they are rolling it out, at least in the Bay Area. To me, the results came out fine, although I worry that it now makes "casing the joint" a little easier. It took them two visits to get it right. The first time appa…

(Bay Area folks, this sorbet is amazing. Wish I hadn't moved out of Temescal...)