Your friends have undoubtedly been clogging up your in-box with funny pictures from Google Maps Street View, but do you know how those pictures were taken? You do now. Google licensed shots from Immersive Media, a company that specializes in 360-degree videos, in order to fill out their coverage in cities like NYC.
As you can see, IM mounts a 11-camera contraption on top of their vehicle as they drive in order to capture the 360-degree view you get on Google Maps. One thing to note, however, is that Google’s San Francisco shots look a lot more detailed than their NYC shots. That’s because Google took their own van out to take the SF pics.
Google Maps zoom: here’s the device and vehicle behind it [Boing Boing]
Jared
June 1, 2007 at 10:08 AM
That is one Funky Co Medina Camera. Can you imagine if that geek squad employee charged with setting up his mobile phone to record that chick in the shower got his mitts on this??
“Hmm what angle shall i set this up to capture?? Oh what the hell, I want all angles”
Report PermalinkPenguinister
June 1, 2007 at 12:51 PM
yeah I have heard Microsoft have been doing the same thing with SUV”s with antenna arrays on the roof and a special camera, so expect the same from the Microsoft maps service soon too.
Report PermalinkBrett Gilbertson
January 10, 2008 at 12:22 AM
The Google Van is in Melbourne now… I snapped a pic of it this evening.
http://www.conversionrate.com.au/158/the-google-maps-van-is-in-town-and-i-snapped-it/
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