Remember the first time you used Google
Street View? Amazing, right? Thing is, traversing a busy urban street in a 360-degree photographic bubble can be disorienting, especially when searching for a specific address or business. So check this: Microsoft Research has developed a rather nifty solution it calls Street Slide. Zoom out of your panoramic bubble and the street is presented as a dynamic, multi-perspective "strip" giving you an instant visual summary of the surroundings -- similar to viewing the entire street from a distance. Fortunately, Microsoft took advantage of what would otherwise be the unused letterboxed screen above and below the strip to add navigational and informational aids like clickable business logos and building numbers. Pretty impressive, and Microsoft is already working on taking Street Slide mobile with an iPhone port, and no doubt a version for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series of devices. Unfortunately, don't expect this to be released anytime soon as the team has only processed about 2400 panoramas so far covering just 4 kilometers of streets. Check the video after the break, you'll be glad you did.
posted July 28th 2010 2:03AM
That's trippy and totally awesome looking.
@xtasi
Agreed. If they would only bring streetside to Canadian cities like Toronto.
@xtasi
could not keep my eyes off.
@xtasi they need to capture the images in 3D!
@xtasi Microsoft better have patent this or else Google will jump all over this like they did with Bing's Image Search
@xtasi Yeah definitely, that is super awesome and taking the google street view to the next level
@xtasi
I'm gonna go dress up as Waldo and wait on a street corner until the Street Slide mobile passes by ... and repeat until I'm seen in every city.
@liftedngifted1 How could they copyright it? Where do you think they got the pics from? Lol. Bing is the worst, unless you're only searching sponsored links.
@xtasi
Google Street View is about to demise!
@liftedngifted1
I know, i hate MSFT for not patenting the damn thing, hopefully they did so with this though.
This is completely awesome!!! But watch how ppl still say how google maps street view is better.
Either way, Bing maps is pretty damn good now, but I do come across locations at times when I only have partial addresses to and find them harder to find than on google maps.
PS. Both google and bing need to work on a way to just simply input latitude and longitude coordinates onto their search bar (in any format) and have it just go there.
@abedinthehouse You, sir, are a Microsoft fanboy. Not because you want Bing Maps to be better, but because you want other services to be worse.
@abedinthehouse This looks good for U.S. users where your streets are laid out in a block system with dead straight roads. Let's see how it works in the UK or France where the roads are ancient and bendy!?
@xtasi
Trippy & awesome?
Meh, it's just a real world version of Tir Nar Nog, with the flipping from side to side of the street and down adjoining streets (okay, it is waaay more advanced but it has been almost 30 years since it was released - times have moved on).
God I feel old now :-(
@abedinthehouse Good news for you. Both Bing and Google Maps can find coordinates in the format such as this: 26n, 80w or 26, -80
@xtasi
Agreed, I think it's very promising.
One, I would have the bottom-right map rotate the text to match upright view.
Second, I would ask that Google update their Street View bubble images to a higher resolution, as when viewing it from city to city, we get a blend of low resolution and high resolution pictures that make it hard to determine what's what in the distance (say a strip mall).
@xtasi It looks like it's based of Photosynth technology. Microsoft been working on this for quite a few years.
I like the innovation pace of Microsoft Bing. It's keeping a good pressure on Google and it's awesome for competition and ultimately awesome for the client.
If I was MS I would keep those nice eye candy features for WP7.
@liftedngifted1 Google will defintiely be all over this and I cant wait lmao!
I love this but dont want to have to launch another map app just to use it and I wont be dropping Google Maps (assuming they will even let Android devices access the mobile app)
Really good job M$
Before the Matrix went online, cataloging of the world ramped up into high gear in 2010....
@liftedngifted1 no doubt!!!!! i mean google even put background images up.. they seem to be a little scared of bing right now. bing maps are better and actually their search results are better IMO. im not going to even talk about image search which google just robbed.
i didnt think i would ever say this but Bing is ahead of google in a lot of areas right now.
the map design with the logos at the bottom is Brilliant!!!!!!
@Dirtball Rotten Bing maps really lack alot compared to Google maps. I went to plan a trip to NYC and pulled the two up side by side. Bing turned out to be completely worthless. Google without me even doing anything already showed all of the attractions near my hotel. They were built right into the map. Bing did't show me anything. I was able to navigate the map by searching. It always did the search in the context of my hotel since thats the point I had up on the map. Bing would find just anything that kinda matched the search and it may be no where near the hotel. I'd have to work the search terms to make it find what I was looking for. Google just did it like....common sense...I'm probably talking about whats near my hotel. When I got there Google provided all of my transportation info for the subways. Bing doesn't have that yet.Sorry but Bing has a LOOOOONG way to go before its competing with Google Maps. Right now its more like a refresh of MapQuest.
I cant believe that just 5 years ago- this was unimaginable. Ill pour a Scotch the Western world.
@andyroo77 Plenty of U.S. city streets are laid out all bendy as well...go look at the map of downtown Boston Massachusetts.
@phreshprinz at least in the demo it got shown on android :)
@xtasi Wow, score one for Redmond.
@xtasi
Awesome looking, efficient and the next level for street view! Microsoft will kill it with this. And those who say Bing is behind google in efficiency you better go back and check. Microsoft is upping the ante and Google better watch it.
Windows 7 is looking better by the day
@Lethallax How does this have anything to do with Windows 7?
@Lethallax fanboyism fail, LOL
@StareClipscom After the Vista disaster you need to give Windows some image, so please accept that :)
@Androidsugly Vista was a hardware failure with the OEMs involved, on custom rigs there was nothing wrong with it. Hmm, hardware problems on a good OS, reminds me of a certain Apple product. Happens to the best of them.
@Androidsugly >> stupid mac fanboy
I do not why you silly guys start insulting before knowing the facts.
I am actually a Windows developer, using two PCs (Windows 7 and XP) at work and two PCs (Vista and XP) at home (the Vista PC is new and the plan is to upgrade to Windows 7).
At least for both the Windows 7 and Vista I use them without the UAC, the file copy is still slower than my 4-year XP running Pentium 4, you want more?
good job microsoft A+ for effort!
@Kelso
c++
@Spawal I wouldn't be surprised if it was C# actually...
@loocas
It is, all of bing runs on Asp.Net MVC as far as I am aware. (I know bing search does, at least).
This will die like the Courier.
@DrDr
Not exactly. Microsoft already has Bing maps.... with aerial views and that awesome "Bird's Eye" 3/4 view. This is just the next step.
In contrast... Courier was new hardware, software and a bunch of other stuff they would have to create from scratch.
I bet we'll see this soon. Courier was just a CGI render of a concept... this video looks like it's actually working.
Microsoft want a slice of Google empire. I think they are pretty close.
@travisonfire They're not "pretty close" if they've only got 4km of road photographed. This is just a tech preview.
@RincewindWiz
They are already porting it to the iPhone as the presenter said. That means it is not a tech demo anymore and now is a product. Did you watch it at all?
@RincewindWiz that doesn't mean much. although I do have to hand it to MS.... this has great promise (as opposed to courier, which I still don't understand why anyone even THOUGHT that would be produced)
@RincewindWiz They already have the images they need. google did for them.
@travisonfire
Google will smash this into the ground with an update of street view.
Nice try, Microsoft. I almost feel sad for you.
@RincewindWiz they have more than 4km of regular street view style images but they've only processed that much into the new street slide view. This probably has to be processed by humans to get an accurate view though since the computer generated ones tend to be fairly off in terms of street numbers.
@travisonfire
I'm not sure why Google can't do this and roll it out long before Microsoft. They have the Street View images. Based on Microsoft's video, it seems that Google would only have to come up with an algorithm that would slice the images together to give the appearance of a horizontal street, and we all know how good Google is with algorithms.
@tekdemon Plus all the street view stuff they have is running their photosynth so simple street view is already better on Bing than on Google.
They still need some of the added features Google has but in visual street view aspect they're way ahead of google.
I like it.
Didn't the French (maybe European) yellow pages have something like this 10 years ago?
@205guy
I don't know.
@Bud92 lol