Google now lets photographers create own Street View tours
The new feature takes the 360-degree panoramic photo spheres taken with Android smartphones or digital SLRs and links them together to create a custom virtual tour.
Google has launched a new feature that puts you behind the wheel of Street View.
Well, Google doesn't literally give you the keys to one of its camera-rigged vehicles, but the Web giant is now letting photographers create personalized Street View experiences that can be shared with others. Google suggested in a company blog post Monday announcing the new feature that the tool could be used to share hiking trails or create virtual tours of a local shop.
The new feature, part of the Views community Google launched this summer, takes the 360-degree panoramic photo spheres taken with Android smartphones or digital SLRs and links them together to create a custom virtual tour. Once the connected photo spheres are published, users can navigate between them on Google Maps, just as they do in Street View.
"We are excited to see the different types of Street View experiences that everyone will contribute," Evan Rapoport, product manager for Google Maps & Photo Sphere, wrote in the post. "It...opens up a new tool for photographers to showcase diversity in a specific location -- by times of day, weather conditions or cultural events -- in a way that Street View currently doesn't cover."
Rapoport used the new feature to showcase a recent vacation he took to the UK:
[Via The Next Web]