The day I fell in love with Google Maps was the day I used for the first time the Google street view feature, I was already a Google earth and Google Maps fan, but I also used other online mapping softwares and applications like Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, Bing Maps, and Rand McNally every now and then. Even though I was using other web mapping applications, the amount of time spent at those site was very little, especially when compared with the amount of time I was spending at the G Maps website, the features that Google Maps has are so good that I was constantly drawn back to the site, and street view sealed the deal! I am now a dedicated Google Maps user.
What made me fall in love with this feature was the fact that now I could travel around the world right from my pc, forget about accurate turn by turn driving directions and routes, I can actually discover the world right from my living room, I can see how a place is and how to get around that place, I can virtually walk or drive around the streets of many cities across the world, I can visit historical landmarks like the eiffel tower or the statue of liberty, and I can do a lot more stuff!
Google street view provides full 360 degree panoramic views from many positions along thousands of streets around the world, not all countries have this feature enabled yet but i’m pretty sure that very soon every city in the world will! This service was originally applied to some cities in the USA, now the service has expanded to more countries, cities, and rural areas around the world, now you can walk around Paris or London for example.
Google street view displays images taken from cars or special vehicles that have been specially adapted take full 360 degree pictures, in the street they use cars, but on places that can’t be accessed by car like narrow streets and pedestrian roads they use Google trikes which are speacially adapted tricycles, other places sometimes require a snowmobile. Any of the vehicles used by Google to take the pictures displayed on street view use the same technology and equipment, they all have nine directional cameras for 360 degree views at a height of about 2.5 meters, they also have gps units for positioning and laser range scanners.
To access the google street view feature you have to go to Google Maps, you can access the feature by using the Pegman, pick him up and drag him to any street to enter street view imagery, if you are not using pegman and you don’t know where he is don’t worry he is very easy to find, he is always waiting for you at the top of your zoom toolbar on the on the left of the Google Maps window. You can also access street view by zooming in beyond the highest zooming level in maps and sattelite images.
Google street view is also available through Google Maps for mobile, so now you can get driving directions and routes, and you can also check out exactly where you are going and how you are going to get there in advance through the Google Maps app, this app comes out of the box with the Iphone and it has also been added to windows mobile and Blackberry, of course android has it too! If you haven’t used this feature I can honestly tell you to go right now and try it out, it will change your life the same way it changed mine, and the same way it has changed many peoples lives, this feature is just unreal and it really shows you the current advances in technology that we are experiencing.
If you want to use this feature and learn more about it, I recommend visiting Street view help, you should also read the behind the scenes which is pretty cool and explains this feature more thoroughly, if you want to use the feature immediately then go to google maps and just type in the name of the city you want to explore. That’s it, this is all you need to know about the google street view, I hope you love it!
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