More specifically, how does a navigation system using Google maps get all of the pictures of each inch of road i’m driving on?
I set my navigation system to show me the way home from an unfamiliar spot last week, and I pulled into my driveway, the picture on my GPS monitor showed me pulling into my driveway, with both of my cars right in front of me! It was surreal.
How in the world does that program take pictures that look like they are taken at eye level? I assume pictures are taken by satellites, but that would provide a birds eye view, not a human eye view.
This was both cool and frightening. One of these days, i’m going to be in one of these pictures, and. Ill drive into my driveway and see me standing there. That’s a Foghorn Leghorn moment in real life! (“No, i’d better not look… I just might be in there.”)
ETA:
And people do sometimes pose for the google maps car, hoping that their image will show up online. Some of these poses are a bit more rude than others, too.
I meant to comment on the surreal aspect of Street View to add that the Street View image of my previous residence (a condo neighborhood) shows my car and only my car parked in front of the building I live in. Which means almost certainly that they came through on a day I was off or home sick and coincidentally everyone else who lives in our adjoined quadriplex of condos was away doing other things. It creeped me out a bit when I first discovered it.
Yeah, on Google Street View my house has my parents-in-law’s car parked out front and my truck is NOT parked in front of the house- that narrows down the date and time considerably.
I remember seeing an article somewhere about cheating spouses who were outed by Google Street view. Lesson: if you’re going where you shouldn’t be, take a taxi. Assuming you’re not planning a crime, of course.
Not necessarily. Unlike with street view, Google mostly doesn’t collect that imagery themselves but is instead presenting data from government or other private sources. In some places the most zoomed-in overhead imagery is aerial and in others it’s satellite. It just depends on what data sources are available. Although these days they’ve been adding the even more zoomed-in 45 degree tilted imagery, which is obviously aerial.
I had no idea this is what they are doing, but now the camera shot/view makes sense.
Which means they turned into my driveway. That is a bit disturbing, if you ask me. First, i don’t need help navigating into my driveway from the road, so why on earth would they feel a need to turn into the driveway? It’ the only way you can see the cars parked there.
I honestly don’t know. It’s on my cell phone. It’s an htc phone, if that helps. I don’t know anything about the phone and hate it, but the navigation is excellent.
Google maps on my Android phone typically shows the street view image of your destination when you get there. I assume that is what you saw, not the streetview images along the way.
BTW there is a great game which gives you a street view image, lets you “drive” to the next of previous images, and asks you to guess where you are in the world.
I drove alongside a Google Street View Car for a good mile on my commute into work this spring. I’m still looking forward to my eventual Internet debut!
I don’t think so, unless the image could only have been taken from the driveway itself. I believe they just shoot from the public thoroughfare and zoom in as appropriate to simulate going down your driveway.
There’s a “Report a Problem” link in Street View, you can ask them to delete the image of your driveway if you are really concerned by this. I’ve noticed the coverage sometime turning off a road and into gas stations and up to a gas pump before.
