Google Streetview

MikeHiow · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:17

If you were going to take pictures of almost every street in the world, wouldn't you use higher resolution camera?

I'm just looking through http://9-eyes.com/ (fantastic collection of awesome SV pictures), but there are so many pictures ruined by lack of quality. (I do appreciate some are zoomed, though).

It does look like the cameras were improved at some point (or perhaps better in some countries/cars than others), but most are crap.

Thoughts?

Lydzor · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:19

I'm not sure, maybe it was to do with storage limits or it may be so that the images load quickly on Google Maps.

stopper · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:25

If I was to create such a site, I would use acceptable resolution picture so it would appeal to a wider audience, I wouldn't think anyone would use the site if it took about a minute for a pic of their house to load.

MikeHiow · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:26

The final resolution is irrelevant in terms of higher resolutions taking longer to load - it could just as easily be an option, or automatic based on connection speed.

Dirk · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:28

Every time i've used street view the pictures have been crystal clear. That's good enough for me.

Participant · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:34

MikeHiow said:
If you were going to take pictures of almost every street in the world, wouldn't you use higher resolution camera?

"Hi Everyone,

I am happy to see that you are all using Street View on Google Earth! It's true that some of our Street View images are in higher resolution than others. This is because we're continuously updating our image capture technology, so depending on the date the imagery was captured, the resolution can be different between different areas. Images taken earlier may have lower resolution imagery than those captured more recently with the newer cameras. Google has already began to update several areas like cities across the US with more high resolution imagery. We are continuing to work on this and hope to have high quality images more widespread in the future.

Thanks!

Carolyn"

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/earth/thread?tid=134bf23cf2c866f4&hl=en

So as the technology improves, so they revisit places and take images in higher resolutions.

GreatAuk · 26 Jan 2011 at 18:01

MikeHiow said:
If you were going to take pictures of almost every street in the world, wouldn't you use higher resolution camera?

I'm just looking through http://9-eyes.com/ (fantastic collection of awesome SV pictures), but there are so many pictures ruined by lack of quality. (I do appreciate some are zoomed, though).

It does look like the cameras were improved at some point (or perhaps better in some countries/cars than others), but most are crap.

Thoughts?

I think most are reasonable quality.. It would be nice if there were really high quality ones, but I imagine there are good reasons (data storage, bandwidth etc) that there aren't. That's a good collection of pictures though!

I think the thing that spoils it for me is people having their faces blurred out. It just takes away some of the 'realism', and it might be interesting to see their faces. However, some people make a fuss about their 'privacy' and spoil it, so blurring them out is probably the only way they can make streetview possible.