Google Street View includes three different sources of imagery:
- Google Street View captured using Google’s special cameras mounted on cars / boats or the Trekker.
- Google Views, which consists of user submitted imagery, typically 360° panoramas. The easiest way to do this is with Google’s Photo Sphere app on a smart phone.
- Google Business View, which is Street-View-like imagery for businesses. This consists of professionally photographed 360° panoramas of business premises.
It appears that neither Google Views nor Business View is currently working in Google Earth. Thank you to GEB reader Steve for bringing this to our attention. According to this thread on Google Groups the issue may have been caused by the removal of Google Views and Business View from the classic version of Google Maps.
Street View is shown as blue lines. Blue dots indicate individual panoramas, typically user-submitted Google Views, and orange dots indicate indoor imagery, typically Business Views.
There are two other serious issues with Street View in Google Earth. The first is that in many locations, entering Street View, typically in cities with lots of tall buildings, causes Street View to crash. We first noticed this when New York and San Francisco received 3D updates, but it has since been reported that many other cities have a similar problem.
The second issue is that many locations that do have Street View do not show the blue lines that indicate the presence of Street View. Examples of this are the location of Street View on a zip line we looked at earlier this month, the Street View imagery in the Mount Everest region and even some indoor imagery, such as the White House. The imagery is accessible in Google Earth if you know where to drop the yellow man.
Google Earth also has access to two other sets of panoramic imagery not accessible via Google Maps. These are found via the Google Earth ‘Photos’ layer. They are Panoramio and 360 cities.
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
If Google Earth crashes along with Street View in an areas with 3D imagery, switch off ‘3D buildings’ in layers while browsing Street View. That should fix it, and it may be simply a case of data overload in the software and/or where broadband is slow when 3D and SV run concurrently.
The ‘secondary’, i.e. off road, SV coverage was at best difficult to find in the ‘blue line’ symbolisation, and better symbols are needed if it returns, but some missing blue lines may turn up as yellow lines on the road in SV mode. Gaps in the blue lines generally coincide with real gaps in SV coverage.
You can still see the business views in classic Google maps, you just can’t view them. So, all the clutter with none of the functionality.
Also, since it was released, you can’t save zoom level of a streetview image within Google Earth. You can do it in Google Maps, but not Google Earth.
How do you use the blue dots