Many of us have had the chance, purely by chance, to come across one of these cars from Google Street View that travel practically the whole world photographing its corners to illustrate the service of the same name, Street View. If you go any further, one day when I left the house I had one parked right in my doorway. But aside from this coincidence, I have never come across one again. As it happens to ordinary mortals.
If you are excited to see one of the cars on Google Street View, it means even making a "bald" for posterity (if they don't censor your butt, of course), you should know that Google has a page where you can check the date on which one of these cars will pass through your city. Of course, do not get too illusions because it is going to cost you to be well attentive.
Where will the Street View car be?
Every day, the cars that take the photos of the Google Street View service travel hundreds, thousands of kilometers, obtaining images from all angles so that later we can enjoy a realistic virtual visit from the computer or smartphone.
These cars do not go unnoticed however, until now we did not know that we can know when they will be in the area where we live.
Google has a web page where it informs both of the places where these cars have been, as well as the places where they will be soon.
In the upper image of the page you will see a world map with the areas that have already been mapped by Google Street View in bluel. It's a Google Maps map, so you just have to zoom in to see the area where you live and see if they have passed through the front door.
Next, you have a dropdown. Choose the country and you will see the next destinations. The range of time is very wide (several months), but at least we will know if it is going to be in our city or not. I already told you that it would be your turn to be vigilant.
Writing this post I have discovered that we are in the last possible month for the Google Street View car to pass through Seville, where I now live, so I am very afraid that the opportunity to see it again will have passed.
But on this page, we can still discover much more interesting things.
Discover the Google Street View team
If you continue descending through this interesting Google page, you will discover aspects related to Google Street View that will surely catch your attention.
First we will see the distinction that Google makes between its own content (where it indicates that faces and license plates are automatically de-focused), and content contributed by contributors, which is "displayed with a clickable account name and, in some cases, with a profile photo."
Even more interesting is to take a look at Google's fleet of vehicles, the instruments used or the publication process:
- Google's own car that you have seen in the featured image of this post.
- El Street View Trekker, a backpack that "is equipped with a camera system on top, and its portability allows us to collect images while moving through narrow spaces or locations that can only be accessed on foot."
- El Street View Cart, specially designed to "map" all kinds of works of art in museums.
- La Snowmobile, for ski slopes, snowboard ...
- El Street View Tricycle, a three-wheeled velotaxi "to reach some of the narrow alleys of Europe, such as those in Barcelona and Paris."
Finally, the publishing process that Google summarizes in four phases: capture, align, convert and display.
I recommend you this Google Street View web page because it is exciting. Would we like to take one of those "trekkers"? Do I ask for the tricycle ?.