This is absolutely phenomenal! Blows my mind!
Show HN: Instant Google Street View
91–100 of 102 posts
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#92This project does something subtle, yet amazing with perception, including one's perception of technology. We've had Street View for half a decade now; the novelty of the fact that you can pull up an instant 360-degree panorama for a significant percentage of street addresses in the developed world has worn off. Yet this makes it new again – I found myself laughing like a child as I slowed down my typing, watching my…
Contrary to what some of the commenters said about this being non-useful and just novelty, I think this brings forward one of the best features of Google Maps by cutting out a lot of (potentially frustrating) steps in the UX. Here’s the typical flow for finding street view when searching on maps.google.com: 1. Submit search query 2. Review results list 3. Repeat 1-2 in case user did not find their intended target 4a.…
You are right, although IMO that benefit comes more from cutting out the in-between steps, rather than the "instant" quality of this application. What I mean is, cutting out all those steps so you just type the address (with autocomplete/suggestions) and immediately see the streetview, is really really great. But--and I realize I might be in a minority here--they didn't need to cut out the final step, which is to press enter to submit :) But then, I've always found that feature in Google Instant very distracting, and go to lengths to disable it for myself.
Either way, that's a very keen observation, there's quite a few steps to go from an address to a streetview in the current form of Google Maps and this app does solve that.
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#93This is totally awesome. BTW, I've been meaning to ask for a while though: what sort of algorithm is running that detects edges and orientation so when the mouse is moved, the small white circle or quadrilateral seems to touch the objects in the image?
The Street View cars have LIDAR which which gives them distance data. They must be constructing a 3D model from this data.
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#94I'm curious, is there any kind of ranking being done on the candidates for an imprecise address? Any kind of image analysis to determine which ones are the more 'interesting'?
Asking because it seemed to me that when the address is imprecise, it's mostly more prominent locations that are being shown.
[later edit] It's probably just using GMaps' suggest feature I guess?
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#95Some places you might find interesting: scott's hut shackleton's hut Itsukushima Shinto Shrine
Taj mahal hotel bombay is also cool
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#96Unfortunately it doesn't work on the iphone because the input field doesn't call up the keyboard. Probably pretty easy to fix this.
I have no iOS device to test unfortunately - difficult to debug!
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#97Just messing around...
"A": Nothing
"AB": Fine
"ABC": Fine
"ABCD": Where am I?
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#98Even though lots of people have praised the creator, I couldn't leave without saying well done :). This is absolutely fantastic work. There is something amazing about being able to jump across the world a keystroke at a time. I loved the attention to detail with the "Share", "Download" links... this is going to come handy during house-hunting time :).
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#99This is totally awesome. BTW, I've been meaning to ask for a while though: what sort of algorithm is running that detects edges and orientation so when the mouse is moved, the small white circle or quadrilateral seems to touch the objects in the image?
The Street View cars have LIDAR which which gives them distance data. They must be constructing a 3D model from this data.
Are you sure? How do you know it is not an image processing/edge detection algorithm running? If they were indeed constructing a 3d-model, I'd be interested in seeing it, even if it is a low-poly approximation...
Re: Show HN: Instant Google Street View
#100This is the first time I wished I can have a fat pipe like Kansas residents can.