While it was much more fun to think of the little hover-droid flying around New York City waiting to snap pictures for you of the surrounding city-scape, the reality is a bit less interesting, although more realistic. The vehicle you see in the picture above is one of Immersive Media's camera wielding cars, a Volkswagen New Beetle to be exact. These are the cars that Google is using to populate their new Street View function with pictures of major cities, or as Immersive Media themselves refer to it: 360° georeferenced spherical video. Ummm... yeah.
Since I just ruined John's fantasy of the little hover-droid, I propose this stunning possibility: Maybe this is the real Bumblebee from Transformers! He's no Camaro, he was a Bug all along. He's come to earth in an attempt to map out possible... alright, nevermind. I'll just go back to thinking of the hover-droid.
[Source: Immersive Media via Engadget]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
iamhoff @ Jun 1st 2007 1:41PM
No no no, keep the Transformers idea going. It totally makes sense!
glitched @ Jun 1st 2007 2:38PM
THere were some links on the internets yesterday where people found the reflection of the camera vehicle in shop windows...
it was an astro van, not a beetle.
Claude @ Jun 1st 2007 2:46PM
They didn't use beetles for all the data collection. Dont remember where I saw it now, but saw a reflection of the vehicle taking the pic and it was a full size van. I imagine the same equipment was used though.
Claude @ Jun 1st 2007 2:47PM
looks like I need to type my reply faster and not spend the time trying to find the link of the van picture oh well.
Fred @ Jun 1st 2007 3:38PM
Check out the list of cool Google Street View Sightings here:
http://www.laudontech.com/StreetView/streetview.html
rob @ Jun 1st 2007 4:09PM
what a coinky-dink...i saw one of these just yesterday. dont think i recall seeing the big camera on top, though. does that mean they're probably getting ready to have street view available for my area?
Ronald @ Jun 1st 2007 7:17PM
big brother is alive and well...
Geotrotter @ Jun 3rd 2007 8:22AM
I added all the best "Google Street View" here : http://www.geo-trotter.com/cat-street-view.php.
Liters @ Jun 3rd 2007 5:48PM
Here's a reflection of [one of] the Beetle[s] they're using in one of the windows of Miami's "The Collection." You can't really see anything inside the windows unfortunately.
http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t198/69Liters/GoogleStreetView.jpg
YNot @ Jun 4th 2007 1:33PM
Here is another site that has a large selection of StreetView finds:
http://www.mapmole.com
PhilWil @ Jun 6th 2007 2:04AM
Look at the rims of ths car! For a company car, why did they decided to go for the upgrade when it came to the shoes? Not saying it was a bd idea, but usually you would end up with hub caps or something.
LOL
Cap'n J. @ Sep 15th 2008 4:18PM
From the background, that pic appears to be a photo shoot. I bet only that Beetle has the nice rims.
StreetView @ Aug 14th 2008 6:20AM
StreetView now seems to be a project run by Google-teams only, equiped with "home-made" material. No Immersive media anymore.
In Europe also StreetView has emerged. Google launched in july the bêta release for France. www.VirtualVisit.tv makes it in Switzerland too: http://www.streetview.ch