Fifteen years after its launch, a Google Maps feature that lets people explore faraway places as though standing right there is providing a glimpse of the “metaverse” being heralded as the future of the Internet.
There was not yet talk of online life moving to virtual worlds when a “far-fetched” musing by Google cofounder Larry Page prompted Street View, which lets users of the company’s free navigation service see imagery of map locations from the perspective of being there.
Now the metaverse is a tech-world buzz, with companies including Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc investing in creating online realms where people represented by video-game-like characters work, play, shop and more.
Photo: AFP
“Larry Page took a video camera and stuck it out the window of his car,” Google senior technical program manager Steven Silverman said, while showing the garage where the company builds cameras for cars, bikes, backpacks and even snowmobiles dispatched to capture 360° images worldwide.
“He was talking to some of his colleagues at the time, saying: ‘I bet we can do something with this.’ That was the start of Street View,” Silverman said.
Street View lets people click on locations in Google Maps to see what it might look like were they at that spot, and even look around.
Now, the Internet behemoth is introducing an “immersive view” that fuses Street View images with artificial intelligence to create “a rich, digital model of the world,” Google Maps experiences vice president Miriam Daniel wrote online.
“You’ll be able to experience what a neighborhood, landmark, restaurant or popular venue is like — and even feel like you’re right there before you ever set foot inside,” Daniel said.
“With a quick search, you can virtually soar over Westminster to see the neighborhood and stunning architecture of places, like Big Ben, up close,” she said.
Google is to start rolling out immersive view later this year, starting in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo.
Street View imagery has been gathered in more than 100 countries and territories, ranging from places such as Mount Fuji and Grand Canyon National Park to the Great Barrier Reef.
“If you want to see what it’s like to go down a ski slope, you can see where that snowmobile has gone,” Silverman said, nodding toward a maroon snowmobile in the garage in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California.
“That trike was really funny because it went around Stonehenge; and we put it on a barge and went down the Amazon River,” he said of another vehicle.
He pointed to a backpack camera system taken for a zip-line ride in the Amazon, to provide a bird’s-eye perspective.
Years spent capturing the real world in 360° imagery bodes well for Google when it comes to a future in which Internet life shifts to immersive digital worlds, said Creative Strategies tech analyst Carolina Milanesi.
“It absolutely plays into the metaverse,” Milanesi said. “The idea of a digital twin of the world is certainly one aspect of it that Google will solve.”
Silverman reasoned that, in a sense, Street View has been giving users a virtual experience for more than a decade, and the imagery naturally lends itself to depicting the real world in virtual settings.
“Ideally, that metaverse, that world that we move into, we’re going to be there,” Silverman said.
Scores of tech firms have been rushing to invest in building the metaverse, a loose term covering the growing ecosystem of interactive online worlds, games and 3D meeting places that are already attracting millions of users.
Facebook renamed its parent company to Meta last year to emphasize its virtual reality vision, and opened Horizon World virtual reality platform to the North American public.
Earlier this year, Japanese giant Sony Corp and Lego’s Danish parent firm announced a US$2 billion investment in US gaming powerhouse Epic Games for its work toward joining the metaverse vision for the Internet’s future.
What started as a “far-fetched idea” by Page is “critical to our mapping efforts — letting you see the most up-to-date information about the world, while laying the foundation for a more immersive, intuitive map,” Google Maps product director Ethan Russell wrote in a blog post.
Merida Industry Co (美利達) has seen signs of recovery in the US and European markets this year, as customers are gradually depleting their inventories, the bicycle maker told shareholders yesterday. Given robust growth in new orders at its Taiwanese factory, coupled with its subsidiaries’ improving performance, Merida said it remains confident about the bicycle market’s prospects and expects steady growth in its core business this year. CAUTION ON CHINA However, the company must handle the Chinese market with great caution, as sales of road bikes there have declined significantly, affecting its revenue and profitability, Merida said in a statement, adding that it would
i Gasoline and diesel prices at fuel stations are this week to rise NT$0.1 per liter, as tensions in the Middle East pushed crude oil prices higher last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices last week rose for the third consecutive week due to an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, as the market is concerned that the situation in the Middle East might affect crude oil supply, CPC and Formosa said in separate statements. Front-month Brent crude oil futures — the international oil benchmark — rose 3.75 percent to settle at US$77.01
RISING: Strong exports, and life insurance companies’ efforts to manage currency risks indicates the NT dollar would eventually pass the 29 level, an expert said The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rallied to its strongest in three years amid inflows to the nation’s stock market and broad-based weakness in the US dollar. Exporter sales of the US currency and a repatriation of funds from local asset managers also played a role, said two traders, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly. State-owned banks were seen buying the greenback yesterday, but only at a moderate scale, the traders said. The local currency gained 0.77 percent, outperforming almost all of its Asian peers, to close at NT$29.165 per US dollar in Taipei trading yesterday. The
RECORD LOW: Global firms’ increased inventories, tariff disputes not yet impacting Taiwan and new graduates not yet entering the market contributed to the decrease Taiwan’s unemployment rate last month dropped to 3.3 percent, the lowest for the month in 25 years, as strong exports and resilient domestic demand boosted hiring across various sectors, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate eased to 3.34 percent, the best performance in 24 years, suggesting a stable labor market, although a mild increase is expected with the graduation season from this month through August, the statistics agency said. “Potential shocks from tariff disputes between the US and China have yet to affect Taiwan’s job market,” Census Department Deputy Director Tan Wen-ling
RSS