An amazing little project by Teehan+Lax changes the way we use Street View by creating incredible “Hyper-Lapse” video from the images in google’s Street View database by stringing them all together. The end result is just plain awesome to look at.
Even better, you can make your own version, although it will be a slightly lower quality version. All you need is a browser that supports WebGL, like Goole Chrome, Safari, Opera, or Firefox and then you can simply head here to set a start and finish point and make your “Hyper-Lapse” video.
Hyper-lapse photography – a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements typically focused on a point-of-interest – has been a growing trend on video sites. It’s not hard to find stunning examples on Vimeo. Creating them requires precision and many hours stitching together photos taken from carefully mapped locations. We aimed at making the process simpler by using Google Street View as an aid, but quickly discovered that it could be used as the source material. It worked so well, we decided to design a very usable UI around our engine and release Google Street View Hyperlapse.”
To Enable WebGL in Safari on the Mac (Safari 5.1 and Up):
- In Safari, open the Safari menu and select Preferences.
- Click the Advanced tab in the Preferences window.
- At the bottom of the window, check the Show Develop menu in menu bar checkbox.
- Open the Develop menu in the menu bar and select Enable WebGL.
Firefox (4 and Up) WebGL is on by Default
For Internet Explorer you can use this plugin.
