I must be using Streetview differently than everyone else here. What I do is just click on Pegman and it puts blue lines on all the roads the Streetview car has travelled on. Then I click on the line where I want to view. No dragging of the icon.
As for which way you’re pointing when you get into Streetview, that may depend on exactly where you click in relation to the line. Or more specifically, where you click (drag the icon to) in relation to the exact points that the images were taken. I base this on the preview images you get by hovering the cursor over the line. If you hover directly on the line, you usually get an image down the road, one way or the other. Hover it to one side of the line and the preview image is of that side of the road. Click on any point and the initial Streetview image is the exact same thing, except bigger, of course.
As far as which way you’re pointing if you hover directly over the line, there are specific points that the Streeview images were taken at. What it probably shows in the preview is one from the nearest such point and pointing in that direction.
Note that sometimes the image you get is not from the most recent trip the car made down that road. If it isn’t, you may get a more recent image if you move to nearby points. You can see where the nearby points are by moving the cursor around the image; they show up as faint Xs on the image. Click on one to move to that point.
Most people may not realize this, but you can also get to any lat/long by typing (or pasting) two comma-separated numbers in the Search field. Well, the numbers have to be in the lat/long ranges, of course. Or the lat/long could be in the more traditional DDD MM SS (direction) format. This also works in Bing maps and most likely other mapping software (I don’t use them, so I don’t know for sure).
This feature is useful if you find the lat/long in one mapping software and want to find the exact same spot in another. Most people probably don’t have a need for that, but a hobby I have makes this feature very useful. But it’s also useful if you see a need to get back to the exact spot some time in the future. Just save the lat/long and copy/paste it when you need it.
You win my personal prize for most useful post of the day. I’ve been using google maps for years and never even tried that.
For the OP: To rotate the view, I move the cursor up away from the street and onto the buildings, grab the current view at the left, and drag it to the right. It seems to usually take 1.5 of those grab and drag motions to turn 180 degrees, if that’s what’s necessary.
Finding the right address can be difficult. The address at the top is no help at all, that’s just the address that you requested, at least until you move the view, and it’s usually wrong. I usually click on the photo that shows up under the address bar; for my house, this photo was taken three houses up for some reason.
I do this kind of search a lot, as every week I go to a neighborhood and prune street trees, and I like to see where I’m going in advance. First I look for a house number and, if necessary, zoom in on it. This tells me if I am on the correct side of the street, and how close I am to the house I want. Then I use a combination of rotate and move up or down the street (the arrows that appear on the street when the cursor is on it), and repeat until I find the right house. Sometimes I have to assume based on numbers on adjacent houses, because there is no visible number on street view for that house.
There is animation when it switches from the map to Street View. It’s not too hard to see the rotation from north as it zooms in - you can then grab it with the mouse and swivel back to north or whatever direction you really wanted.
I sometimes do that, but I usually find the left-right arrow keys to be much more convenient.
Also useful is expanding the view with the plus (actually equals) key. Say you need to read a sign but the letters aren’t clear. Center the sign in the image and hit the plus and it expands the view. This works up to three times, or at least I never need to do it more than three times. The minus (hyphen) key reverses this, of course.
I use Google Maps nearly every day. You don’t have to us pegman at all. I never do. Just lick directly on the part of the road you are interested in. If you are zoomed in enough to see the buildings then you click on the building you want. A thumbnail of the building appears in the left side menu.
Yes, I saw where you said that before, but I couldn’t figure out which arrow keys you are talking about. The ones on my keyboard don’t do anything. There’s a “rotate the view” tool on the lower right, above the +/* buttons, but I find that too fussy and unpredictable.
Actually someone else said that earlier. I have laptop that only has one set of arrow keys, and they work just fine without having to do anything special. But if you have a full-sized keyboard, try using the ones on the number pad, but hit the num-lock key first. Just guessing there; have no idea why your arrow keys don’t work.
That’s weird. Any cursor arrow keys ought to rotate the streetview direction on any platform. They will work even if [Shift] is depressed. But not if [Ctrl] is depressed. Do you have something stuck or are you holding that down by mistake when trying to rotate? To rotate the streetview via mouse you must use [Ctrl]. To rotate via cursor keys you must not use [Ctrl].
The first part of this is not true for me. I grab and move the view with my mouse all the time and never use Ctrl. The second part I can’t get to work.
My browser is Opera, but I’m sure the first part always worked for me when I was using Chrome.
edited to add: I just tried using the arrow keys with Ctrl. The right arrow key with Ctrl does nothing; the left arrow key with Ctrl takes me out of streetview and back to the default map view.
To the OP: per @dtilque’s suggestion about clicking the Pegman to get the lines and then clicking on the line itself to get into streetview (instead of dragging Pegman) – I just did some tests, and if I click very slightly to one side or the other of the line, that’s the side of the street it will show me on streetview. If you zoom in close enough on the map to see the house numbers, that can help you get the correct side of the street the first time.
I did this one time and then couldn’t make it happen again: if you’re in Satellite mode, you can click on, say, one corner of a property, then hold and drag a white dotted line to, say, another corner and get the accurate length. Repeat until you have the dimensions of the lot. Or, how far to Walmart as the crow flies.
Right-click your desired starting point and select “measure distance” from the pop-up menu. Then click the next point you want to measure to. You can keep clicking multiple places and you’ll get a cumulative total as well as each segment’s distance.
That’s another thing I learned today. But you can also do that (with less precision) with the Directions utility. If you select walking as the means of locomotion, it will account for things like crossing at crosswalks and things like that, rather than showing a straight line. I did it both ways from my house to the nearest BART station; the precise way gave me 0.67 miles, the Directions utility gave me 0.7 miles, which would just be the same distance but rounded.
