The controversial Google Street View now gets better. Last week, Google added some new improvements in the Street View’s navigation tool and called it the ‘Smart Navigation.’ According to Google, Smart Navigation allows a faster, closer navigation experience without any bounds.
Earlier, we had to navigate Street View by using the forward and backward arrows along the roads. Smart Navigation frees you from the road arrows and leads you through your way in just a few clicks. Now you could easily browse cities in Street View, jumping from one side of a river to another to see a faraway building. And if you wish to jump back to your earlier location, you can hit the return arrow shown in the Address Box.
Street View cursor or the “Pancake”
- Now the Street View cursor (or “pancake”) will have a lightly-shaded geometry attached to it.
- The “oval” would mean that your mouse is following a road
- The “rectangle” would mean that you are moving across the facades of buildings.
- When you double-click on the pancake, it will lead you to the best panorama in that direction.
- When the pancake shows a small magnifying glass in the bottom right, it means that you could zoom in on the image rather than transport to a closer location.
Google says:
“We have been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas using laser point clouds and differences between consecutive pictures.”
Street View provides 360-degree panoramic images of urban areas that the user can manipulate, as part of Google’s Internet mapping products.
Google Street View was launched in 2007 and since then it has reached out to more than 100 cities worldwide. At the same time it has faced complaints related to privacy from many people and institutions that have been photographed.
Roam around without getting lost!
Watch the video
(Source: Google LatLong)
2 Comments
Technology is getting smarter 😉