street view

Mongolia gets Street View

July 27, 2015

Google has recently added Mongolia to the list of countries with Street View. Read more about it on Google’s LatLong blog. There have also been some major additions in Malaysia on the Island of Borneo. Previous major additions this year were Madagascar and Canadian parks in May and Greenland in February.

Extent of Street View in Mongolia.

Extent of Street View in Malaysia

Street View changes between June 22nd, 2015 and July 25th, 2015 (new Street View in red). Larger version here.

Street View captured Lake Khuvsgul Ice Festival. Fly there in Google Earth with this KML file

Converting Google Maps Street View URLs to KML

July 20, 2015

Google Maps Classic has been discontinued, and with it old URLs that pointed to Street View are no-longer working, including some in old posts on GEB. So we decided to write a bit of JavaScript to convert between Google Maps URL formats to aid in updating the broken links to the newer version of Google Maps. This required figuring out the various Google Maps URL formats.

We thought this would be a good opportunity to create a converter from Google Maps URLs to KML. In Google Earth there is a ‘View in Google Maps’ button, but no corresponding button exists in Google Maps for the reverse process. We have mentioned in the past that it is often difficult to find underwater Street View or aerial Street View in Google Earth. Google’s new ‘Street View highlights’ layer has made it a lot easier to find some locations. But for a random Street View location, the only way to find it in Google Earth is to search for the latitude and longitude, enter Street View and then try and find the same view.

It is difficult to get from the above location in Google Maps Street View to the same location in Google Earth as seen below.

So here is our first attempt at a converter from Google Maps Street View, to Google Earth. The script takes into account which direction you are looking in the Street View, but currently ignores the zoom. There are a few short comings with the process. Firstly, Google Earth does not have historical Street View, so if you start with an historical Street View URL you will instead see the most current Street View at that location. Secondly, it only seems to work with true Street View. If you try a user contributed PhotoSphere Google Earth will not display it.

Find a location you are interested in using Google Maps Street View then copy and paste the URL into the field below then click ‘Download KML’.

Google Maps Street View URL:

Download KML

Street View goes vertical

June 25, 2015

Google are constantly looking for new places to capture Street View, often going a long way away from the nearest street. The Street View cameras have been on boats all over the world such as the Amazon River and Greenland, under the oceans and on zip-lines into the Amazon forest canopy.

Now the street view cameras have been carried up sheer rock walls to give us views of one of the most famous rock climbs in the world – the El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, California, USA. Read more about it on Google’s LatLong blog. It is not technically the first vertical Street View, as the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai gave us Street View going up to the 154 floor, but I am sure they took the lift.

The Yosemite area has the new 3D and looks excellent in Google Earth, but we were unable to view the Street View from within Google Earth. We had similar problems with underwater street view and the forest canopy Street View.

If you watch the intro to the above YouTube video, there is a nice ‘fly in’ to the location reminiscent of a Google Earth tour, but done using Google Maps. However, as far as I know, it is not something Google has made available to the public.

Click here to find the above location in Street View.

They have managed to erase all traces of the Street View camera’s mounts even better than the way they erase the Street View car. This seems like a job for a drone, but maybe the Street View camera is too heavy.

Interestingly, Apple has named its latest Operating System OS X El Capitan after the same location.

News roundup: Nessie, New Islands and Finding your Way Home

April 23, 2015

Loch Ness gets Street View

As part of the Catlin Seaview Survey Google have captured Street View from a boat that travelled the length of Loch Ness in Scotland and even stopped and took some photos in the water. We were not able to find the underwater footage from Google Earth, so we recommend sticking with Google Maps for this one. The water is very murky and the only monster to be found is the little green Nessie who replaces the Street View ‘yellow man’.

Glacier retreat creates new islands
As glaciers around the world retreat, new coastal islands are formed. Read more about it here. This would keep mapmakers busy, if it wasn’t for the fact that most of these islands are appearing in relatively uncharted territory. We noticed when looking at the Greenland Street View that Google Maps’ coastline of Greenland is quite inaccurate. Google Earth’s yellow coastlines are even less accurate globally, but they fade out as you zoom in so it is not normally noticeable.

Google Earth helps reunite a man with his family after 20 years.
Similar to the story of Saroo Brierley, a policeman in the Andaman Islands used Google Earth to help Ram Jeevan who ran away from his home in India at the age of 12 to find his way home. Find the full story here.

Greenland gets Street View

February 20, 2015

Google has released some Street View imagery in Greenland. Thank you to GEB reader Chris for bringing this to our attention. There is also significant expansion to the coverage of Bangladesh that we looked at earlier this month.

The new Greenland imagery includes sections captured by boat

This is the Greenland Street View car.

For more Greenland sights, see Maps Mania and Google Views.

A map of additions to Street View since we last looked