This works in browsers on a PC, I assume that it would also work in a browser on a Mac. Click on the Google Maps man to show blue lines and spheres.
If you hover your mouse over a sphere it will display a small view icon. This view is the view you will get if you then click on the sphere. I have shown examples below. It clearly won’t work on mobile devices unless perhaps you are using a stylus or a mouse.
Whilst I think this is a fun feature, I wish they had actually given the person submitting the tours the ability to control the default direction that is seen. The sphere outside the shop defaults to a view of the road and not the shopfront!
“Normally with the Street View App (not longer available) it was possible to select the initial view and the orientation of every single image.”
It’s almost like Google don’t want anyone to update blue lines or post spheres/virtual tours anymore. The latest issue is that the process used to blur faces is getting worse which impacts on what you can publish without fear of someone potentially sueing you. I’m trying to fix a blue line around a hotel swimming pool and the only program I have found that can attempt to edit and output 6K spheres is Adobe Premiere Pro - the tracking is not great and so you end up having edit to frame-by-frame. Really, really, not great.
I used 3DVista to upload the virtual tour. It’s a comprehensive package with a one off payment, which you only have to pay again if new features that you want appear after 12 months.
I’m happy to see that your images are shown not only directly on top of the pin but closer to where you took the images.
I don’t think you will be able to control the direction inside the sphere shown when Maps users open them. I have seen such round icons several times before, so I doubt they are a new feature. But my Japanese friend, @potaro67 will be able to explain the details that I missed or if I have misunderstood something.
I didn’t think that it was a new feature, just one that isn’t very obvious and doesn’t seem to have any real, practical application. In the time it takes to to find the right view on the sphere it would be quicker to open the sphere and move around manually .
I am intending to increase the number of tours and blue lines that I do and I am trying not to be disillusioned by the decreasing feature set and lack of support for the processes I need to use.
As @MortenCopenhagen also mentioned this is not a new feature and it has been available for years.
Indeed this is not the initial view necessarily. If you move the mouse cursor around that tiny circle of each 360 photo, the start view will change.
It is easily possible to change the initial view of the photosphere if you’re using a third-party tool and also just a bit harder to define it in EXIF of the photo.
PS: Sorry, I saw your reply late, that you told you don’t think it is new
I just can say a general guidance in this case and maybe not a good one for training. When it comes to 360 photography tips it is better to get detailed guidance from @potaro67 . So let’s wait for his response.
I primarily work on my PC. So I don’t know much about the specs of the Google Maps mobile app.
Therefore, I will only describe the functions when viewing the web version of Google Maps using Chrome on a Windows PC.
If you click on the thumbnail of the photo tab in the POI, it seems that a specific direction is selected from four types: true north, true east, true south, and true west. But I still don’t understand the meaning of that rule.
About “The sphere outside the shop defaults to a view of the road and not the shopfront!”
I can show you that picture in the initial orientation as I intended.
Watch the video below. https://youtu.be/i4chhQlOnVU?si=gHj0T8Ny73jYx-jk
In this way, the initial orientation of your photo is determined by the viewing user’s mouse movements. You (the photo owner) cannot decide that.
But I don’t know if this spec will stay that way tomorrow.
I may be required to answer more questions.
If you’d like, feel free to explore my articles.
There’s a small chance I’ve already run various experiments, perhaps for the same reasons as you.
The first image on the second row defaults to a view of the street and not the shopfront. I have taken no action to influence this presentation. It can’t be the direction in which most people would click if they were in the tour because the first and second images would always show the walls if that was the case.
Thanks for taking the time to consider this.
Nigel
p.s. I usually review my submissions on PC (Windows 11 Opera) & IOS (Tablet and phone). I do jave access to MAC and android devices.
I misread your intent in the top article.
You and I have already discussed the same phenomenon.
I will show you my opinion about thumbnail images.
I believe that the thumbnail image displayed when viewing a Street View photo displayed as a blue dot on the Google Maps app on an Android smartphone displays the central part of the uploaded equirectangular.
For the POI below, I compared the thumbnail displayed there with the equirectangular saved on the PC.
POI: https://goo.gl/maps/ky6JWVJkcgd6BA9j6
Screen capture: https://youtu.be/RF5dxfID2po?si=oAlqZWsPZ__mKbhS
In this way, the thumbnail shows the central part of the equirectangular.
So I think you can control what the thumbnail shows by rotating the Equirectangular the way you want it and then uploading it.
There are many ways to upload Street View photos.
There are a wide variety of viewing environments.
The Street View system behaves differently in each of those combinations.
I have tried to investigate all of these cases, but as you can see from the link above, the investigation is still not complete.
Hi @potaro67 ,
Thanks for sharing the information about the presentation of images and featured images. Some of the information I couldn’t access because there were no translation options (The first two links).
I will take time to reread your post to make sure I get what I can from it but there were several things that stood out immediately:
The use of AI versus random presentation - I find myself becoming less impressed by Google’s ability to manage the things they have already built. They seem to be easily distracted and I often feel that I am walking through a building site full of houses that have obvious things missing - one has no front door, the next no toilets, the next the odd window missing. There are so many things that make absolutely no sense. I don’t anticipate things getting significantly better. Realistically I think this is because Google does not make any significant direct income from Google Maps. It is more of a support to their brand which the general public never gets to see behind the cutains, so they sort of get away with it.
The idea that you might get punished for questioning how things work
The fact that things are done differently in different countries - this, of course, makes some sense related to the individual cultural sensitivities between different countries.
The 12 photos in this POI all use the central portion of the equirectangular as the thumbnail, as I intended.
The distortion of those images seems to be in line with @Yotaroh 's thoughts.
These are currently 8 hours old since they were uploaded.
Thumbnail images may change over time.
I can only show you what is happening in my environment.
We also take it for granted that different situations may occur in other environments.
I hope that by studying more cases, we will be able to infer causality between cause and effect.
And @nigelfreeney , it’s my hobby to find glitches and tricks in this system where there are a lot of “things missing”.
