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December 1, 2009
StreetView inside buildings?
A company called urbanimmersive has developed a neat technology that would make a lot of sense if combined with Google's StreetView. They capture imagery inside of buildings, and allow you to walk around inside them using a similar technique to the way StreetView lets you walk around outside.
If Google was to add something like this onto their StreetView, the user interface could be pretty simple; an icon of some sort on buildings that support this, and you just fly inside! However, capturing the data would be much more difficult.
Not only would it be much more time-consuming to capture, but we're talking about private property and most buildings would be off-limits. That being said, this could be very useful for buildings that are trying to showcase their interior, such as homes for sale, or places where it'd be useful to see the inside of buildings before you go, such as churches, schools and stadiums.
If you want to try walking around one of their models, head to this page and just wait for it to load. You can use the mouse or your keyboard to navigate.
I expect we'll see something like this find its way into Google Earth eventually. It may end up being 3D models of interiors, or maybe it'll end up being StreetView style like this. Time will tell.
Posted by mickmel at December 1, 2009 8:27 AM
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Comments
Posted by: Bryan Irrera at December 1, 2009 11:05 AM
Wow. That would be interesting.
Something like this would feature that could really open up the advertising and marketing potential that already exists with Google Earth.
Posted by: Darian Robbins at December 1, 2009 11:17 AM
360 Cities have something like this and it's actually integrated as a layer in Google Earth - everybody can make their StreetView-style panoramas (even inside buildings) and add them. If one panorama is close enough to the other You can switch between them exactly the same method like in StreetView - http://www.360cities.net/
Posted by: PaSKud at December 2, 2009 10:17 AM
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I would absolutely love this for tourist attractions like the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. or Walt Disney World (I don't know if they'd want to do that for the ride queues, but it would be great to see the stores, restaurants and lobbies of the hotels (and perhaps a sample room of each hotel)).