You can now use 360 videos for Google Street View. I haven’t tried it myself so I don’t know exactly how it works. But I got a popup message on Street View saying, “You can now take 360 videos while driving.” It says, “Connect a 360 camera, then tap the camera button and press ‘video’.
I tried this with a Ricoh Theta V and Yi 360 VR, and neither worked (the Yi 360 VR was able to connect but the only options I saw were photo and interval).
In any case, I speculate that Google may be developing technology to convert 360 videos into 3D models, similar to the demo by Institut Pascal. Again, that’s just speculation at this point! How about you? What do you make of this update?
Thank you very much to Jim Jensen of Google+ Photo Sphere community for sharing this info!
They’re actually pulling stills from the video. The results are terrible. An example was shared in the Google Street View Trusted Photographers facebook group.
Example: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5947819,-105.3096078,3a,75y,127.16h,73.18t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO0KAPABuge-I-ZixM7b7UsYnL8uUWS7y5GFLWR!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO0KAPABuge-I-ZixM7b7UsYnL8uUWS7y5GFLWR%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya43.117374-ro-0-fo100!7i3840!8i1920
Facebook group post (closed group): https://www.facebook.com/groups/GoogleTIPS/permalink/1658680854184557/
Thank you very much Steve. Wow that sounds like a waste of potential. Why not just use 360 photos? Hmmm i’m thinking they are going to do something more than just pull stills from a 360 video.
Best regards,
Mic
360 photos must be at least 4K (3,840 pixel by 2,160 pixel resolution or greater).
Thanks Michael!
Best regards,
Mic
Mean more job for 360 videographers like us and you will be busier making more reviews lol. Thank for the head up info!!
Lol thanks bro!
Best regards,
Mic
Thx for the info Mic.
Interesting point of view ! Or maybe Google is thinking about to replace Google cars with ours to update Streetview worldwide. It makes sense to use video instead of photo as it brings more latitude to extract POIs, lets say each 50 meters for example.
Hi Guillaume. It’s true that videos have more latitude to get different POIs but if that is the purpose, I think they could have just used video for the Google Street View cars. With video, they are getting a much large number of lower quality data from different perspectives, which I think is what they need to create 3D models.
Best regards,
Mic
Mic, all your questions about this feature are thoroughly explained by Google in this video. There’s a reason for everything 🙂
Thank you very much Anders! I didn’t watch everything but I watched starting around 35:10 of the video. I still think that using videos from many people just to extract some photos leads to a lot of very redundant data and seems inefficient. If 3d models were not their original plan, i still think they will eventually use it for that purpose. But that’s just my speculation.
Best regards,
Mic
New Video Mode worked with THETA V.
Hi Michael! Yes it works for Theta V!
Best regards,
Mic
seems it only work on Android and not on iPhone Google Street View App
Hi Eduardo. So far the video mode works only with Theta V, among the ones I tried.
Best regards,
Mic
I have been experimenting with the Theta V and shooting video to create Google Streetview mapping were the cars have not gone. They slice out the video 360 photos the advantage that I see is it a whole new dimension is being added and off road applications are going to be explored and shown. Here is a link to the video on how to shoot with the theta V for Streetview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyqdrcvQruQ&t=4s