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Filed under: Internet, Features, Search

EveryScape beta launches: not quite a Google Street View Killer (yet)


This summer we got our first look at EveryScape, a new startup that makes Google Street View look like child's play. But now that the company has launched a public beta, we have to say, we're not convinced Google has anything to worry about. Yet.

EveryScape certainly looks beautiful. 3D panoramas of real-life street views are stitched together from special photos taken atop EveryScape vehicles. Users can also submit their own photos to help flesh out details. At launch EveryScape has scenes from 4 cities: New York, Boston, Miami Beach, and Aspen.

You can click an Auto Drive button to take a guided tour of a city, or select "You Drive" to take control of the "wheel" yourself. There is also a nice directory of popular locations, including sightseeing spots, shopping, food and night life. In some locations, you can even click on an icon within the EveryScape interface to get a pop up button with more information.

But there's one big problem with EveryScape. It's slow. Really, really slow. Periodically during our test drive, a message would pop up telling us that the site was experiencing heavy traffic, which was affecting performance. So hopefully EveryScape is just experiencing growing pains. But while EveryScape provides much more detailed imagery and information than Google Street View (for selected locations), Google has a huge server farm which is capable of handling high traffic volumes.

Filed under: Internet, Web services

EveryScape: Google Street View killer?

If you were impressed with Google Street View, you ain't seen nothing yet. EveryScape is a new service set to launch this fall that presents a realistic 3D view of streetscapes and public places by putting together information from 2D photos.

You can navigate through the streetscape by clicking on green arrow buttons. Where information is available, you can also click on icons to find out what buildings you're looking at, which is a nice feature. There's a sample streetscape of the area around San Francisco's Union Square up on EveryScape's website. Here's a little screengrab we did (the graphics are actually a bit more fluid than the video suggests, but our video capture software prefers low framerates.



Based on the sample, the images appear to be more detailed than Google Street View, with no visible gaps between images.

EveryScape plans to add more cities, starting with Boston, New York and Seattle. While the streetscapes will be photographed by EveryScape photographers, the site also plans to use photos submitted by users to flesh out their offering

[via O'Reilly radar]

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