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A Look at ImmersiveMedia's TechPopular Mechanics has a great article on ImmersiveMedia, Google's Streetview (Radar post) content partner at launch. They dive into the technology, the process, and their future plans.
At the heart of Immersive’s services for Google and a number of other contractors is the Dodeca 2360, a softball-size camera that records from nearly a dozen different angles at 30 frames per second. Later, photos can be extracted and stitched together to form pictures with a resolution of 2400 by 1200 pixel—a frame “bigger than any high-definition image,” says its inventor and chief technology officer, David McCutchen. My only problem with the article is that ImmersiveMedia recently announced the end of its partnership with Google effective December 27, 2007 (pdf). Popular Mechanics never mentions this and includes a quote from a Google spokesperson. I've sent a mail into ImmersiveMedia to get clarification on their partnership. Apparently Google will have exclusive access to the currently licensed ImmersiveMedia content for a period of time. My money is that Google is building out its own fleet of mapping vehicles. At launch Google captured San Francisco footage on its own and they are now ready to map more cities. Besides getting data for Streetview, what other types of data are they captuing?
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Comments: 2
John A Arkansawyer [20 November 2007 02:24 PM]
Aaron Swartz has some thoughts on that. Go ten paragraphs down to get to (or past, depending on your tastes) the good stuff.
judielaine [20 November 2007 03:14 PM]
My work office used to be out off Shoreline drive (now LinkedIn offices) and we were slowly surrounded by Google. And, yes, this past summer there was a fleet of vehicles being assembled with camera rigs on top.