Google Streetview comes to Indy
For those of you familiar with Google Maps, you’ll be excited to hear that Google Streetview now has Indiana on its radar. It looks like Google has covered all of Indianapolis (and outlying suburbs), Terre Haute, West Lafayette, Bloomington, Kokomo, Marion, and others.
So how can you use Google Streetview? I thought of a great idea as I was planning for my road trips this summer, I took a “virtual drive” of my destinations so that I can become familiar with the area and find things easier. This really comes in handy with urban areas where skyscrapers dominate the landscape.
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How does it work? The car has a tripod mounted on the roof with a 360 degree camera mounted on the top. Basically, it’s a sphere with several lenses built-in to create a 360 degree view. The company then takes the several pictures from each shot and “stitches” them together to form a seamless picture.
It’s actually fun to see what kind of things the Streetview car catches, check out this blog posting of weird Google Streetview moments.
So how do you know if an area has streetview? In the top-right hand corner of the map there are some options, including streetview. When you click on that, areas that have been filmed will appear in blue. So have fun discovering!