.. but is slow rolling out
Today I jumped up in joy as I could see some house where I used to live in The Netherlands on Google Streetview. I saw the Pier at Holwerd and the house of my sister. All great.
But the house where I live is not there (yet)
Uhm?
Somehow there seem to be some large squares of Streetview missing from the maps. Must be some data issue, I guess. Maybe some more files need to be synced between servers or what.
But why just my area that is missing? Have to wait I guess.
Means more wear and tear for my F5 key.
Looking beyond
Looking a bit beyond the borders of my small nation I see even more interesting things.
- The coverage in Spain is quite extensive and probably on the same level as in The Netherlands. (Once these holes get plugged.)
- Switzerland had some fuss about faces that were still recognizable, but still has some fair amount of Streetview.
- The United Kingdom has Streetview splattered here and there over the map.
- The coverage of France seems to be mainly limited to the Tour de France route that was covered last year.
- Scandinavia is too ... cold? or reluctant? for Streetview
- Italy has the same type of coverage as the United Kingdom
- And the Czech Republic is the only country in Eastern Europe with Streetview
Looking even further beyond
Outside Europe only the The United States in Northern America and Australia, New Zealand and Japan have Streetview presence.
There are still a lot of miles to travel for the Streetview cars and tricycles.
I just wonder if it wouldn't be possible to somehow let the crowd fill the cloud? When enough people take enough pictures that are geolocated accurately enough than that could accumulate to a nice extra input for Google Streetview.
Not sure about the (same quality) of the crowd sourced cloud: I suspect the Google vehicles take more than just images. Because to get the "zoom onto sides of buildings" cursor in StreetView (and possibly handy for 3D buildings info as well, which seems related) something like 3D radar points need to get captured too, right?
ReplyDeleteYes, you could be right about that. On the other hand there's the wonderful stuff that Microsoft Photosynth can produce in relation to 3D modelling from a stack of 2D pictures.
ReplyDeleteAnything is possible with enough processing power and the imagination to turn it on. I think Google has both.
And Microsoft as well.