March 23, 2012
Two days ago, on World’s Forest Day, Google Maps debuted “Street View” for the Amazon Basin, which compiles ground-level photography of forests, tributaries, and villages, giving users a front-row ticket to explore the Rio Negro reserve. The project began in August of last year, when Google team members, collaborating with the Foundation for a Sustainable Amazon, assembled a collection of 50,000 still images taken with two cameras, one tripod mounted atop a riverboat and another straddled over a bicycle (trike). The team traversed through the terrain surrounding the reserve, sailing down the river, trekking into the brushwood, and investigating the indigenous architecture to obtain the photographs which were later stitched together to create the panoramic views and simulate seamless “walk-through’s” that bring the Amazon to life.
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January 4, 2012
Spot the shortest building on the block! That’s the Architizer HQ.
City dwellers have a tendency to think that the whole world revolves around their respective cities. While New Yorkers are correct in the assumption (just kidding!), a new Google Maps hack allows you to access Streetview through a trippy panoramic fisheye lens, turning your favorite city street into a microcosmic earth or an immersive urban whirlpool. The hack uses data from Streetview to create stereographic images that either wrap a stretch of road into a planetary ball or conversely explode Streetview outwards, creating swirling vortexes of urban fabric. Prosthetic Knowledge gave an italicized warning about how this is “probably the best way to waste your day,” and boy were they right. Two hours after exploring planet Kyoto, I took my final screenshots of a spherical Las Vegas Strip. More images after the jump!
Kyoto, Japan
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July 25, 2011
As if Google hasn’t already invaded every aspect our physical space by projecting the manufactured tranquility and safety of our suburban home fronts and streets to the rest of the world, now it seems that Google Maps will move into buildings. Which, all cynicism aside, could be a good thing. Yes, mapping physical environments and passing them off as “virtual tours” is old hat by now. But what’s different here is, unlike those Quicktime tours of old which are divorced from context and limited in scope and perspective, this new walk-through of Junya Ishigami’s Kanagawa Institute of Technology (KAIT) workshop comes closer to authenticating a physical tour by allowing some kind of free movement.
Take a tour after the jump!
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