Great Barrier Reef underwater panoramas in Google Maps

Great Barrier Reef underwater panoramas in Google Maps (googleblog.blogspot.com)

183 points by mgdiaz 13 years ago | 44 comments

snogglethorpe 13 years ago |

haha, I can imagine the discussion in the google maps office.

"Well, we've finished with all the planet's landmasses...can you make this thing waterproof?"

mayneack 13 years ago | |

I'd personally vote for a tour of the trails in national parks.

dannyr 13 years ago | | |

Street View goes on a road trip through California's national parks

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/street-view-goes-on-r...

bartonfink 13 years ago | | |

That's actually not a bad idea - Google sponsored hikes.

davidw 13 years ago | |

I'm waiting for them to do Venice, which is an hour down the... 'road' from here. It ought to be an interesting challenge, and extremely popular.

skeletonjelly 13 years ago | |

Hopefully they didn't drive over the coral :P

jtreminio 13 years ago |

Just tried this on my android phone and it works beautifully.

Tsagadai 13 years ago |

All that coral bleaching makes me pretty sad. The reef was much more colourful but it has been declining for a long time now. I wonder how much will be left in another 10 years.

anonymous543 13 years ago |

I might be missing something, but why is everyone so excited about this? If you want a great experience of the oceans and reefs out there, you could load up an HD video on YouTube of the Great Barrier Reef, and view something much more immersive.

I'm a huge fan of street view, and I love being able to virtually drive to where I'm going, and find landmarks to help along the way, like for example, a large orange building next to the shop I'm planning to visit. How is ocean street view practical in anyway though? If it's for the user experiencing the ocean or planning their trip, they could upload a quick video of common snorkelling and diving points around coastlines and islands. It would give the user much more information. As of now, it's like flicking through a slideshow, and the navigation is brutal. I'm scratching my head here trying to come up with one thing this does well. As someone else said, I'd like to see more trails added to street view, or even more streets.

Google, since you have free time, here are a couple of ideas...

1. Street view for different seasons. In certain countries, towns and streets look completely different depending on the month. I frequently use street view to browse areas I'm looking to live, or travelling. It would be useful if I could switch the images to summer, winter, etc.

2. Video street view. Much more time consuming to create, since the camera would need to stay in a single spot for a minute at a time, and blurring sensitive information would be more challenging. However, imagine choosing a location on the map, and feeling like you're in that area of the city, or on that quiet road in the middle of the forest where you rotate the camera and follow a bird flying by.

gatordan 13 years ago | |

It's overly negative and hyperbolic comments like this on HN that make me think "They thought THAT was bad, I can't imagine posting my own work on here". This a high quality 360 degree view of a path along a coral reef - no it's not particularly practical but are you genuinely scratching your head trying to come up with ONE thing it does well? Do you really find the navigation to be "brutal"? I feel like you're being unnecessarily negative about something that is pretty well executed and at least in part meant to be fun.

I personally have never seen anything like this and thoroughly enjoyed it for a few minutes. As someone else pointed out I was blow away by how well it worked from the google maps app on my phone. And I'm not convinced something like Planet Earth on blu-ray or "HD video on youtube" gives you the same experience unless you could pause it at any point and look around in any direction.

reledi 13 years ago | |

you could load up an HD video on YouTube of the Great Barrier Reef

You can't control a video to see what you want to. You have some control with this underwater Street View. It's the same reason why I find Street View much more valuable than watching videos on YouTube of people driving.

anonymous543 13 years ago | | |

Sure you can, here's an example.

http://www.nimmobay.com/media/360-video/360-video-nimmo-bay-...

Attach one of those to a diver at popular destinations. On Google maps, show a little video icon. Click the icon, watch, and look around as they swim the location. It's now easier to navigate, and gives you a better representation of snorkelling or diving in that area.

stevenrace 13 years ago | |

I think it's important to map our (in the Global sense) undersea conditions over time. We hear a great deal about Global Warming - yet it's only the timelapse satellite imagery that concretes it for dismissive minds.

The same can be said for coral reefs, rivers, etc. 'Coral bleaching' is a real problem and reflective of global weather events.

Regarding #2 - In a more idealistic vision of 'Underwater Google Maps', the Voyager Project [1] made an interesting plea to Google to do something similar and provide HD video feeds from UAVs [2].

[1] http://www.underseavoyagerproject.org/

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4iDQsXIi3I

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Edit - Additionally, existing 'undersea documentaries' tend towards visual hyperbole (ooh a yellow fish, damn sharks are scary, etc) - rarely exploring the topography of the ecosystem they're covering. Being able to wander aimlessly underwater may prove more valuable to a student's imagination and provide a more lasting feel for far flung places and culture (or the life of a crab) - as apposed to from a TV, the deck of a cruise ship, or a car window.

draven 13 years ago | | |

For the dismissive minds, the State of Flux online exhibition ( http://climate.nasa.gov/sof/ ) can have a great impact.

Contero 13 years ago | |

Google maps allows you to find things you didn't know existed in the first place. I've often found myself spinning the globe and zooming down onto a remote island's beaches just to see what it looks like on another part of the world. Being able to zoom down even farther to actually see the coral reefs is a natural extension of that. It's about discovery.

It doesn't matter that information about X is available if you can't find out that X exists in the first place.

jsankey 13 years ago | |

I look at it as another step towards s/street/everything in street view. It needs work, sure, but it's good to see they're expanding.

mdonahoe 13 years ago | |

Being able to control where you go and what you look at has some appeal. This certainly isnt a replacement of a underwater documentary, but it offers an alternative way to experience the reef.

If they had denser panorama coverage it would be better. I agree that this isn't the most usable Street View.

dasil003 13 years ago |

They didn't blur the face of the turtle.

mahmud 13 years ago |

Most beautiful thing I have ever seen. We went diving there for our honeymoon. Spectacular.

mayneack 13 years ago |

How does apple expect to beat this now?

enraged_camel 13 years ago | |

Low Earth orbit panoramas.

cryptoz 13 years ago | | |

Apple's 2011 net income significantly exceeded NASA's budget (About $25 billion to $18 billion). Orbital panoramas shouldn't be out of their reach.

Magenta 13 years ago |

Finally, they added it. Well I can tick that off of my list of dream holiday destinations!

dmix 13 years ago | |

Living life through Google.

Magenta 13 years ago | | |

I am hoping they add the forest behind my house so I don't have to take walks any more

mcantelon 13 years ago |

You can't move around under the sea. It just seems like a geolocation-specific panorama integrated into Google Maps. I want to move around like a submarine!

oscilloscope 13 years ago | |

Zoom out, there are white arrows that appear in the middle-bottom of the screen. Click those to travel in that direction. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure.

artursapek 13 years ago | | |

Indeed. Wow. http://goo.gl/maps/uCnD2

notlion 13 years ago |

I can't wait til these are available via the API :)

jarajelissa 13 years ago |

Google added street view to the Great Barrier Reef. This is easily the coolest thing they've done since earth.

shreeshga 13 years ago |

i demand a narrative about the turtle by David Attenborough in the background.

bennyfreshness 13 years ago |

the world is becoming so small, its great I guess but takes away from the mystery

lclarkmichalek 13 years ago | |

And adds to it so much. At first glance, yes there is less of the world to explore, but there is suddenly so much more of the world to understand, and we've hardly touched the surface of that.

ilija139 13 years ago |

Game over, apple maps.