Google Earth Street View

P

PoorOldSpike

Guest
1- Open Google Earth normally, and if the sidebar is not showing, click View>Sidebar.
Then click 'Street view' at bott left. Note the camera icons all over the place. (not all countries of the world are covered yet)-

Goo-sel.gif







2- Zoom in on any camera and notice how more cams sprout up-

Goo-selB.gif
 
3- Continue zooming and cams will appear in many streets-

Goo-selC.gif







4- Click any cam to get a real-world view, it's fully 360 degrees pannable by dragging the pic with your mouse, and you can click the sidebar 'off' to get smacked in the eye with a fullscreen display-

Goo-selD.jpg
 
1120 is the nearest on streetview mate, is it this one or on the other side of the street?
PS- the resolution is not so hot, they must have been using cheap cameras..

CedA.jpg
 
@POS
I have noticed that many of your images are GIFs. Why is that, when that allows you only 256 colors (and bigger file)?
 
zaraza said:
@POS
I have noticed that many of your images are GIFs. Why is that, when that allows you only 256 colors (and bigger file)?
Click to expand...

I don't understand mate, do you recommend JPG, GIF or PNG?
 
Definitely JPG, with 16 millions of colors and small file it defintelly beats GIF.
You can notice how GIF is trying to simulate larger color space than 256 colors on that car in front of Landrover (Ford?) on your Eagles Nest picture. It's called dithering and it is essentially creating illusion that there are more colors.
 
zaraza said:
Definitely JPG, with 16 millions of colors and small file it defintelly beats GIF.
You can notice how GIF is trying to simulate larger color space than 256 colors on that car in front of Landrover (Ford?) on your Eagles Nest picture. It's called dithering and it is essentially creating illusion that there are more colors.
Click to expand...

If you mean the blurred car number plates in the Eagles Nest GIF pic, Google always do that to protect drivers privacy! They also did it in the Arc de Triomphe JPG pic..:)
(sometimes they blur peoples faces for privacy too, it's got nothing to do with whether a pic is JPG or GIF.)

My policy is to use JPG for photos because of its small file size (processors display it quicker).
But for CM screenshots I have to use GIF, because screenshots don't like JPG, some colours become blurry.
GIF requires slightly more processor power to display quickly but it can't be helped.

And if I draw coloured arrows and stuff on a photo (like in the Eagles Nest) I MUST use GIF, because if I used JPG the drawn-on colours would blur badly.

There's a third format-PNG- which is VERY processor-heavy but gives pin-sharp images, I usually only use it for small pics such as avatars.
 
PoorOldSpike said:
If you mean the blurred car number plates in the Eagles Nest GIF pic, Google always do that to protect drivers privacy!
Click to expand...

No, check color of cars hood. But that effect is noticable on license plates too :)


PoorOldSpike said:
My policy is to use JPG for photos because of its small file size (processors display it quicker).
But for CM screenshots I have to use GIF, because screenshots don't like JPG, some colours become blurry.
GIF requires slightly more processor power to display quickly but it can't be helped.
Click to expand...

I really don't think you should be worried about processor speed today :)
Unless you are making 150MP image :)

PoorOldSpike said:
And if I draw coloured arrows and stuff on a photo (like in the Eagles Nest) I MUST use GIF, because if I used JPG the drawn-on colours would blur badly.
Click to expand...

That depends on software , and how they compress JPEG. JPEG is lossy compression, which means that some of the image data are lost forever and that makes artifacts like you mentioned.
Personally, i don't mind blurry arrows, but it's your choice :)

PoorOldSpike said:
There's a third format-PNG- which is VERY processor-heavy but gives pin-sharp images, I usually only use it for small pics such as avatars.
Click to expand...

You can say that PNG is modern GIF, with milions of colors, transparency channel but no animations.
 
Yes white is a stable colour, but some others blur like crazy. There are many ways to do images, I use a combination of Windows Paint, Irfanview and flexible format to get the best results, but even then people might see things differently on different monitors.

Here are 4 screenshot test shots which I've added comments to, depending on how they look to me on my monitor-

BMP- Absolutely appalling quality, I never use it and it's so bad that our software will sometimes automatically convert it to JPG.
It's also a big slow filesize at 3.1Mb-
BMP.jpg






JPG- This is better than BMP but some colours still tend to blur so I never use it for screenshots even though its size is only a quick-displaying 225kb-
JPG.jpg






GIF- Good, there's no colour blurring so I use it for all my screenshots, and it's a fast-displaying small 554 kb size-
GIF.gif






PNG- Excellent, it's slightly crisper than GIF but is very processor-heavy at 1.7Mb and slow to display so I rarely use it because GIF is quite good enough-
PNG.png



Summary- I use GIF for screenshots, and JPG for photos.
(But if I've added arrows or text to photos, I use GIF to stop any blurring)
 
There is no bluring in JPEG, you are using wrong tools, or you are using ok tools on wrong way. For example, compression level on your picture is too high.
72f38b3e.jpg


This is why GIF is bad:
99216591.jpg

Number of colors: 256.

GIF is old and outdated format. It had 8bit palette and it was good for displaying 256 color graphics in games and for displaying cartoons and clip art. So, if one wants to display true color image (both games and photos) with GIF , that's perfectly ok with me, but GIF remains bad, and there is no test that can prove that it's better than JPEG in anyway.

One more thing, again - processor load is NOT important at all. It is important if we are talking about pictured 100000x100000 big....but we are not...
 
zaraza said:
..There is no bluring in JPEG, you are using wrong tools, there is no test that can prove that it's better than JPEG in anyway.
Processor load is NOT important at all. It is important if we are talking about pictured 100000x100000 big....but we are not...
Click to expand...

1- Can you see in my test pics how JPG is worse than GIF? (incidentally JPG and JPEG are the same thing)
2- Processor load is VERY important if we post a lot of big stunning screenshots in one thread like I do in my sensational tourneys. I once posted a lot of PNG's at Blitz and the display lag was terrible so I had to replace them with GIFs, so now I only use GIF which is easier for processors to handle.
3- Everybody uses different imaging tools, so we must use the best methods to suit our own personal tools..:)

PS- I've researched the subject in PC Help forums in the past, here are a bunch of their posts I saved, see nobody agrees with each other, ha ha-

You should only use JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) and GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) images.
Your image should be as small (in bytes) as possible. The smaller the file, the faster it loads.
The resolution of your images should be 72 dpi (dots per inch).
Follow these simple rules and you shouldn't have any problems with download and pageload times.
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Sorry but those rules are changing with the times. PNG is the best option, if you want to maintain quality, sure it may load 1 second longer than JPG. But in these times, all the new browsers are now capable of utilizing PNG files. And 80% of internet users are using some form of high speed internet.

The best thing about PNG is it can replace GIF

GIF is great due to the transparency abilities, but lacks quality big time. PNG can be used transparent or with a BG color, and has the best quality available

JPG is ok too, but quality is still pretty low, and lacks transparency capabilities.

PNG is the all-around file format
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I agree. PNG is the best image format. The only issue with it is that IE does not support PNG24 well.

it's completely wrong to think GIF and PNG are the only correct formats.
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PoorOldSpike said:
1- Can you see in my test pics how JPG is worse than GIF? (incidentally JPG and JPEG are the same thing)
Click to expand...
Yes, that's because you used high compression/low quality.

PoorOldSpike said:
2- Processor load is VERY important if we post a lot of big stunning screenshots in one thread like I do in my sensational tourneys. I once posted a lot of PNG's at Blitz and the display lag was terrible so I had to replace them with GIFs, so now I only use GIF which is easier for processors to handle.
Click to expand...
Things like that are more likely software related - browsers and servers.

PoorOldSpike said:
3- Everybody uses different imaging tools, so we must use the best methods to suit our own personal tools..:)
Click to expand...

That's what i'm saying...
 
Heres the HQ for Wigam in New Zealand using street view.

WigamsHQ.jpg


This is a local website from our district council showing our top view, and BBQ.

WigamsHQ1.jpg
 
Ha ha BBQ drones eye view, it'll certainly give off a big heat signature when it's in action..:)

PS-Hey Airborne Bob, your pic a few posts ago has vanished and has been replaced by a "moved or deleted" image.
That's because you must have deleted it at Photobucket.
Remember everybody, if you delete your pics at Photobucket (or Imageshack etc), it breaks the links and the "moved or deleted" message will come up in every forum where you posted it.
So if you want your pics to stay permanently in forums, don't delete them at Pbucket/Ishack, you have to leave them in there forever.
For examp, my Photobucket account has got literally thousands of pics and screenshots in there which i've built up over the years and i'm leaving them be, there's no reason to delete them anyway.
PS- i've also got them all saved on disk too as insurance..;)
 
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