Augmented Reality, Feature Spotlight, Google Street View, Landscape Architects, Planning, TrueViewVisuals

Quicker Visualisations with Google Street View


That’s going to save a huge amount of time generating our scoping reports

Landscape Architect, during recent demo

We are proud to announce that we have enabled a Street View integration for all current TrueViewVisuals customers and on all domains. This allows them to use Google Street View imagery as the background photo to their visualisation.

Animation showing the process of launching a StreetView based visualisation

The details

Street View is a feature of Google Maps that provides panoramic photographs for much of the world. We extract single frame images and use that instead of iPad or DSLR photography for our gallery images. This allows our users to generate a quick photomontage using Street View for any location without going on-site. This is very helpful at the design and assessment stage of a project.

There will now be banner shown across the top of the map saying Street View is available.


Tap on the map to show check if Street View is available.

Once you tap on the map, an orange pin will be added on the map with the view direction (the view direction is to the centre of the site). A pop-up panel is shown with the Street View preview along with left and right arrows to change view direction (plus or minus 10 degrees). Tap on the preview image to view full screen

The Results

Tapping on the full screen view open the gallery viewer with all the controls available in the TrueViewVisuals app. The calibration will come from the Street View information (and is approximately correct, but may need some fine tuning).

Full screen view of the StreetView photography for Glasgow Green

When not in Full Screen mode, there are next and previous buttons across the bottom of the view that allow the user to change view direction by plus or minus 10 degrees.

Limitations

There are a couple of important limitations to be aware of:

  • Image size – The full screen image is limited in resolution, so may look slightly pixelated on the iPad screen.
  • Microsighting – The location of the street view image may not be quite where the user tapped on the map. We jump to the nearest place where there is photography
  • Old photography – The photography could be anytime from the last 10 years depending on when google captured it.
  • Calibration – Additional calibration could be required (i.e. when the Street View car was going up a hill)
  • Coverage – Street View is only available where google have previously taken photography.

Roadmap

There are many features that we could add into our Street View, including loading panoramas, providing options to change Field of View and allowing the user to move forwards and backwards along roads.

Get in touch

If you would like to find out more about our Street View integration  and how our clients are using it to produce visualisations quicker, get in touch: hello@trueviewvisuals.com

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