One of the neatest yet subtlest features in my experience is going back through time to see the streetview for a given position over time. It’s especially interesting in Boston’s Seaport or other areas that have seen a lot of development in the last ten years, where you can see the changes over time.
I’m not sure where the option is on mobile (or if it’s even available), but it’s a great feature on desktop.
If there's one product that showcases Google's strengths and Apple's weaknesses it's Street View.
Google has mapped/streetviewed the world twice over, producing useful photo's that help in navigation. And now is building a new camera so they can map the Amazon as well.
Meanwhile Apple is juuuuust about ready polishing and color grading their 20th run of 4K "Look Around" footage of 5th Avenue in New York, fingers crossed this time it will be production ready! You can expect footage of your medium-to-large city any decade now!
Bold of you to claim that Gmaps is actually updated just because they say it is.
Brisbane (the Australia one) has a 3D satellite map from 2010 despite the 2022 copyright date on it. And if you walk along the street view images, it tends to tell you you’re currently viewing the underground tunnel you’re over rather than the surface street you’re actually looking at, which is a funny bug.
Look Around is available on 20% of earth (area, not population) - most extreme example I can find is the middle of Australia: https://i.imgur.com/ZHYbh58.png
In the US, it's actually more limited than in other areas. It's certainly true that Google is ahead, sure - but Look Around isn't just 5th avenue of new york city.
One area lookaround does best is spatial navigation. You can click on bridges, lanes, etc. to jump to them and the animation is MUCH smoother than Google Maps.
Man, since when did you have to make an account to use this site? I've played it before and this definitely is a new addition. I just simply refuse to make accounts for every little game I spend 5 min playing on the internet.
I love Geoguessr but it has a distinct randomisation problem (certainly in the competitive pool) that it hasn't solved.
If you play regularly you'll begin to notice that around 1 in 10 cities are in fact Vienna.
I'm not sure how it chooses, I suspect it first picks a country, then picks a city.
Without weighting for population or other factors, you end up with a significant number of Taiwan, Singapore and Vienna, far more than their populations or areas should suggest.
...meanwhile, StreetView imagery for Germany has turned 14 - i.e. in much of Germany (major cities only), StreetView still shows the images from the original drive-through from 2008. After that (and a series of legal challenges which led to a ruling saying that buildings have to be blurred if one inhabitant objects to it being visible on StreetView), Google has apparently lost interest. The "3D buildings" feature, which is not affected by this ruling for some reason, gives a much better overview anyway...
It is interesting that there is a large number of consultants (I.e: low wage workers) working behind the scenes to support G Map [0]. Cognizant is their employer which is another surprise for me as I always thought it is an Indian company mainly employs people in India for outsourcing projects.
The gas price is so ridiculously high in WA now that they are asking to postpone the RTO full time plan in June. I have switched to Apple Map since 2018 and still don’t miss GMap.
I'd love if they improved navigation while in Street View.
It works okay when the geometry is simple - like on a long road/street with no junctions. But in more geometrically complex areas - for example, in urban settings around squares or on wide boulevards which have multiple paths - it's frustrating. Often I find the only way to move to where I want is by going back to the map view and clicking somewhere on a nearby blue line.
Same in areas there are no roads/paths but have lots of user submitted panoramic photos - common in historical areas - for example around Roman/Greek/Egyption ruins - you have to go back to the map.
Street view is almost required when booking Airbnbs now. It's incredible how often the Airbnb photos look great and then you pull up street view and realize why the place was 20% cheaper than similar stays...
Airbnb's don't have exact addresses and usually no exterior photos. How do you find them on street view? I'd be interested because it would help me as well.
Curious that no one else has mentioned what I find most addictive -- the unfiltered view of anthropology at street level spanning most of the world.
Local fashion and architectural styles, history preserved or not, public safety infrastructure, private wealth versus public wealth, rule of law or local strong men, trust in law enforcement ... Clues everywhere, if you take the time to look.
I remember in 2009 being part of an online community where I preferred to be anonymous and while reading a thread where people were sharing photos of sunsets, had the thought that eventually, there would be enough information out there that my precise location could automatically be determined based on me taking a picture looking out at the city from my balcony. That's a pretty creepy thought, and it seems that google is approaching it, given that they can have you point your camera "across the street" to determine your location from their glorgabytes of street view imagery.
Geoguessing has been going on for a while, and some people are very good at it.
One of the situations where it’s deployed for the good of all is real estate: it’s very common for brokers to hide the exact location for various reasons, but there are forums and individuals who from just a few pictures pointing outdoors and a rough location (e..g closest city) can very quickly find the exact location the picture was taken from.
Super useful so you don’t have to waste time visiting in order to find out that the house which looked good over the internet is sandwiched between a 6-lane highway and a pig farm, or is in a gated community, or can only be accessed through an easement.
> […] there would be enough information out there that my precise location could automatically be determined based on me taking a picture looking out at the city from my balcony.
In Japan someone doxed a singer by zooming in on the reflections that were in her eyes from a selfie she took:
> A Japanese man accused of stalking and sexually assaulting a young pop star told police he located her through the reflection in her eyes in a picture, according to local media reports.
>...there would be enough information out there that my precise location could automatically be determined based on me taking a picture looking out at the city from my balcony.
Not yet automatic, but the folk at Bellingcat are impressive at figuring out location from pictures and videos (manually, I assume).
There's a fascinating technolibertarian metaverse dynamic to Minecraft anarchy servers, where gameplay is driven by an arms race of normalized cheating. Players are careful about what screenshots they share online, as this concern is the reality there. There's kind of a similarity to a future real reality where the entire Earth has been autonomously scanned: the terrain of the entire map of a Minecraft server is known to all, since the seed for procedural world generation can be reversed from nearby terrain, and reverse engineering of the world generation has resulted in several methods of determining in in-game coordinates of a player taking a screenshot (terms to search: trees, texture rotation, bedrock).
Related are the impressive endeavours that determined the seed of the screenshot used in the game's splash screen and the seed of a 128px (tiny) screenshot used in the UI. The top comment of the first link explains it better than I could here:
It's interesting how the anarchy server hacking scene is sort of like science, except with the god-like abilities of reverse-engineering the game's binaries.
People have triangulated down to the exact apartment balcony from a picture taken from it, multiple times. Google maps helps in that it allows someone not from the area to do it, but it's always been possible if there's enough information available in the picture (building skyline is the main one).
Like Google search and maps, Street View quality seems focused on large towns, cities and areas of high population. I only live a few miles into a large rural area from one of UKs largest conurbations and our village is 13 years out of date for street view, and 9/10 years old for Satellite imagery. Google maps is missing most of the nearby small single track unpaved roads and about 75% of footpaths (all marked on definitive maps are public rights of way), its so bad there is a 2 mile long, 1 mile wide woods on the edge of our village that is completely missing (including the road and footpaths through it), there is just a big blank, yet Street View clearly shows the entrances and the woods behind.
So does this mean they are going back and updating old imagery? My neighborhood (in a small city) hasn't been updated since 2011, and quite a few areas have street views that don't match reality anymore
Does anyone actually use street view for anything but novel purposes? I've used it maybe 5 times when I couldn't find the place I was looking for using the standard map view; However in nearly all cases, resorting to StreetView meant the place I was looking for was gone anyway.
It was helpful in my truck driving days when going to customers I'd never been to before, and it was absolutely a daily tool in telecom construction/maintenance.
Example - random sheriff's office calls in a phone line ripped down when I've got one foot out the door for the day. I pulled up the address on Streetview while she was explaining the scene to me, and it sure looked like coax on that side of the street, our lines were on the other side. Sure enough, 45 minute drive later I called the sheriff and told them to call the cable company.
When you cover an area hundreds of square miles you can't go look at every job before sending a crew out. Pull it up on Streetview, even if the images are 10 years old it's probably still the same.
Yes, almost daily. When I'm going somewhere new, what does the front of the building look like? Where is there parking? How do I access the parking? What are the parking fees and restrictions? How visible is a landmark from the street? Which street is the entrance on? And that's just when I'm planning a trip, one of many use cases.
I recently used it and its 12 years of history to demonstrate to a commission of the City of Berkeley that the same handful of cars were perpetually parked in free, no-time-limit street parking spaces which local merchants incorrectly believed were useful to their customers. This is good data that can change outcomes for city planning and regulation.
I often use it with family members who lack the confidence to find a location that they need to get to, and the skill to read conventional maps. "Walking off" the route in StreetView beforehand is nearly 100% successful.
I use it all the time in civil engineering. There's always some question I have for which we didn't collect data or photos about and before I send someone out to look, I check streetview.
I also use it to preview a route when navigating from one place to another in unfamiliar locations. That way, I typically don't need any further instructions, the guidance ends up being review anyway and i don't need to worry soich about poorly timed or ambiguous instructions.
Not too long ago I had a leak that I suspected the previous owner had repaired. I was able to confirm with street view pictures that it's been repaired and patched over at least three separate times since 2008!
Sometimes I just load up google maps, drop the streetview pin in an arbitrary spot, and click around looking for something weird or interesting. I always wish they'd add more countries, especially in Asia and Africa but I'm sure the business case for "guy likes to idly click around and wants more countries" isn't very strong.
Google had a very productive 5 year period where every year they were releasing massive groundbreaking products that were 10x better than competitors: Gmail, Maps, Street View, G Suite, Google Earth, Translate.
Since then I'd struggle to count even 5 products that stand out: Android, Chrome and what else?
I’m continually jealous of the street view dataset and disappointed there’s no public/free alternative.
They provide API access but it’s very hamstrung and extremely expensive, making it essentially useless for anything except pulling up a single image of a location. It’s useless for any real mapping/localization/analysis project.
Incredible stuff. The various Google properties have performed an incredible objective of recording our history. One could imagine the ad supported empire as this personal consumption tax that funds human information recording. Glorious.
[+] [-] wodenokoto|3 years ago|reply
I wish I knew the strategic and business analysis that was behind thinking up the feature, green lighting and funding it.
I definitely did not have the foresight to see how street view could ever be worth the investment 15 years ago.
Today I am more inclined to see the tremendous value of google maps as a whole.
[+] [-] otras|3 years ago|reply
I’m not sure where the option is on mobile (or if it’s even available), but it’s a great feature on desktop.
[+] [-] leokennis|3 years ago|reply
Google has mapped/streetviewed the world twice over, producing useful photo's that help in navigation. And now is building a new camera so they can map the Amazon as well.
Meanwhile Apple is juuuuust about ready polishing and color grading their 20th run of 4K "Look Around" footage of 5th Avenue in New York, fingers crossed this time it will be production ready! You can expect footage of your medium-to-large city any decade now!
[+] [-] astrange|3 years ago|reply
Brisbane (the Australia one) has a 3D satellite map from 2010 despite the 2022 copyright date on it. And if you walk along the street view images, it tends to tell you you’re currently viewing the underground tunnel you’re over rather than the surface street you’re actually looking at, which is a funny bug.
[+] [-] ezfe|3 years ago|reply
In the US, it's actually more limited than in other areas. It's certainly true that Google is ahead, sure - but Look Around isn't just 5th avenue of new york city.
One area lookaround does best is spatial navigation. You can click on bridges, lanes, etc. to jump to them and the animation is MUCH smoother than Google Maps.
[+] [-] givinguflac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcellus23|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colourgarden|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uejfiweun|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xnorswap|3 years ago|reply
If you play regularly you'll begin to notice that around 1 in 10 cities are in fact Vienna.
I'm not sure how it chooses, I suspect it first picks a country, then picks a city.
Without weighting for population or other factors, you end up with a significant number of Taiwan, Singapore and Vienna, far more than their populations or areas should suggest.
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
GeoGuessr: Guess the location from Google street view - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5748923 - May 2013 (97 comments)
Geoguessr - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5682367 - May 2013 (2 comments)
GeoGuessr: Let's explore the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5572324 - April 2013 (2 comments)
[+] [-] LeonM|3 years ago|reply
It's the story about the team behind TerraVision, a predecessor of Google Maps.
Though the story is not depicted completely accurate, it gives a great hacker vibe from the early days of computing. Can recommend.
[+] [-] rob74|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbonner|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/technology/google-maps-wo...
[+] [-] derriz|3 years ago|reply
It works okay when the geometry is simple - like on a long road/street with no junctions. But in more geometrically complex areas - for example, in urban settings around squares or on wide boulevards which have multiple paths - it's frustrating. Often I find the only way to move to where I want is by going back to the map view and clicking somewhere on a nearby blue line.
Same in areas there are no roads/paths but have lots of user submitted panoramic photos - common in historical areas - for example around Roman/Greek/Egyption ruins - you have to go back to the map.
[+] [-] ehsankia|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lGMCAzBzOQ
[+] [-] seydor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llampx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ge96|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if somewhere out there like a supercomputer they have a 1:1 mesh/depth map of the world ha as they've mapped it.
On a side note I also applaud/miss their 360 photosphere app that tied in with the g cardboard.
[+] [-] everybodyknows|3 years ago|reply
Local fashion and architectural styles, history preserved or not, public safety infrastructure, private wealth versus public wealth, rule of law or local strong men, trust in law enforcement ... Clues everywhere, if you take the time to look.
[+] [-] irthomasthomas|3 years ago|reply
https://instagram.com/noplacetosit
I stopped using insta because the format was wrong for this project. One day I'll make a dedicated website for it... one day.
[+] [-] heleninboodler|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|3 years ago|reply
One of the situations where it’s deployed for the good of all is real estate: it’s very common for brokers to hide the exact location for various reasons, but there are forums and individuals who from just a few pictures pointing outdoors and a rough location (e..g closest city) can very quickly find the exact location the picture was taken from.
Super useful so you don’t have to waste time visiting in order to find out that the house which looked good over the internet is sandwiched between a 6-lane highway and a pig farm, or is in a gated community, or can only be accessed through an easement.
[+] [-] throw0101a|3 years ago|reply
In Japan someone doxed a singer by zooming in on the reflections that were in her eyes from a selfie she took:
> A Japanese man accused of stalking and sexually assaulting a young pop star told police he located her through the reflection in her eyes in a picture, according to local media reports.
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50000234
* https://petapixel.com/2019/10/14/attacker-used-eye-reflectio...
I'm curious to know what became of the case.
[+] [-] sangnoir|3 years ago|reply
Not yet automatic, but the folk at Bellingcat are impressive at figuring out location from pictures and videos (manually, I assume).
[+] [-] mgdlbp|3 years ago|reply
Related are the impressive endeavours that determined the seed of the screenshot used in the game's splash screen and the seed of a 128px (tiny) screenshot used in the UI. The top comment of the first link explains it better than I could here:
Minecraft's “Pack.png” Seed Reversal Methodology https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24621303 – 2020-09 (97 comments)
Minecraft@Home https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23895789 – 2020-07 (75 comments)
There've also been few server exploits for locating other logged-on players:
Nocom – 2b2t Minecraft server exploit using Monte-Carlo localization https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615428 – 2021-12 (80 comments)
It's interesting how the anarchy server hacking scene is sort of like science, except with the god-like abilities of reverse-engineering the game's binaries.
edit: fix cut off sentence
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fomine3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NGRhodes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ollifi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JamesAdir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lionkor|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bamboozled|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LancerSykera|3 years ago|reply
Example - random sheriff's office calls in a phone line ripped down when I've got one foot out the door for the day. I pulled up the address on Streetview while she was explaining the scene to me, and it sure looked like coax on that side of the street, our lines were on the other side. Sure enough, 45 minute drive later I called the sheriff and told them to call the cable company.
When you cover an area hundreds of square miles you can't go look at every job before sending a crew out. Pull it up on Streetview, even if the images are 10 years old it's probably still the same.
[+] [-] dwater|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtherion|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Enginerrrd|3 years ago|reply
I also use it to preview a route when navigating from one place to another in unfamiliar locations. That way, I typically don't need any further instructions, the guidance ends up being review anyway and i don't need to worry soich about poorly timed or ambiguous instructions.
[+] [-] maccard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dankwizard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] upbeat_general|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Imnimo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omega3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] upbeat_general|3 years ago|reply
They provide API access but it’s very hamstrung and extremely expensive, making it essentially useless for anything except pulling up a single image of a location. It’s useless for any real mapping/localization/analysis project.
[+] [-] renewiltord|3 years ago|reply