Bangalore is all set to be the first city in India where Google will include actual street photographs in its Google Maps product.
The feature, called Street View, is now available only for advanced cities like those in the US and Europe.
With this feature, internet users can take a virtual walk in Bangalore’s streets from the comfort of their seat anywhere in the World. Google takes care to blur out the faces of people in the photographs.
Google mashes up large number of multi-angle photographs and directional data to create a 3-D image of any street in the city. Any user who zooms in to the street level on ‘Google Maps’ is then suddenly ‘immersed’ in this 3-D world created by mashing together of very high resolution photographs.
“Google cars and trikes will today begin driving and taking street level photographs of public locations around the city. The images will be made available at a later date in Street View on Google Maps,” Google said moments ago.
In addition to the cars, the Google Trike — a specially designed three-wheel pedi-cab with a camera system mounted on top — will start gathering images from select locations in the area such as the Nrityagram Dance Village over the next few weeks, it added.
The Trike has already collected imagery from dozens of famed places around the world, including Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, Pompei in Italy, Legoland in California, and Versailles in France.
“We decided to start driving in Bangalore because it is the IT capital of India and feel that the IT savvy users will be able to leverage the benefits of the product to the fullest,” pointed out Vinay Goel, the man in charge of all products-development in India.
The feature can be used by people to figure out whether a particular restaurant or shop is what they are looking for, without actually going to the place, Goel pointed out.
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