Future of 3D Street View To Include Live Video

An anonymous reader writes "3D textured cityscapes are nothing new to Google Earth users: international cities such as New York have displayed this type of imagery for a while now. But now Google has made a critical change to Google Earth — adding high-resolution Street View imagery to existing city textures, effectively creating a semi photo-realistic 3D sim city you can fly through on your PC. As this article and videos show, it's only the tip of some very fancy features coming to online maps, with Microsoft demonstrating the ability to see Flickr images of your surroundings as you fly through cities (including the bizarre possibility of seeing horses and carriages on the streets), look up at the sky and see the stars through Worldwide Telescope, the ability to go inside buildings thanks to backpack cameras, and see live video streams from a friend's phone, turning the static map image into a live video."

Comments

this creates ...

[polar red]

the possibilities of VERY extensive maps for various games.

Re:this creates ...

[wealthychef]

the possibilities of VERY extensive maps

I think you mean "intensive" not "extensive." These more in-depth maps are only being made of large cities. I hope this is not a trend, where the big cities get every toilet bowl mapped in 3D, but smaller towns are still languishing with "mere" satellite overlays.

Surveillance cameras

[Bronster]

Now all we need is to hook this in to the camera networks that already exist in a lot of cities.

Seriously, it solves the "who watches the watchers" problem and adds heaps of interest. Real time public video feeds.