How it all started.
I was always fascinated and curious about “Blue Line”. I and my local guide buddy @Kasunaa always talk about blue lines and drawing them by ourselves. But we didn’t have a 360 camera. After seen Sri Lanka’s first blue line meet up hosted by @AnuradhaP , we got really excited about contributing blue lines to the street view.
We wanted to learn and experience about 360 photography and virtual tours so we got a “Mi Spire 360” cam and start shooting 360 photos, made little virtual tours for some time, yet something was missing, our 360 thirst was not satisfied. We felt something big big is missing. Yes, your guess is correct. it is magnificent Blue Lines. We wanted to make blue lines but “Mi Sphere 360” was not Street View compatible. Then we were determined to get a 360 camera that supports “Street View”. We pooled money again and guess what in this January 2020 we did get ourselves an “Insta 360 oneX”.
Beware “No Blue Line streets”, 360 Bros are coming for you and you won’t get to hide anymore. Ha ha ha ?
The Meetup
Kadawatha – Kerawalapitiya is the newest addition to the Sri Lankan Highway system. This section connects the Southern Highway to Colombo-Katunayaka(Airport) highway. It was a historical connection in Sri Lankan road history as this was the first-ever highway interconnection in Sri Lanka. From the first day of opening, this has been a very busy section in the highway. Even though It’s been several months passed from its opening, Google Street View was not available for this section. So it was high time for us to do the blue line honors to this important highway section.
The date was a sunny Sunday(26th Jan 2020). I was expecting 3 other participants @Oshi99, @Yukthi_Isuranga and @kasunaaa for the blue line meet up, @kasunaaa nad @Oshi99 came to the meetup starting location at 2 pm. Ykthi couldn’t make it due to unavoidable reasons (We missed you @Yukthi_Isuranga ).
During this meetup our Objectives were to add this Highway Section to Google Street View and Educate participants on 360 photography and How to use GSV app to update 360 photos to the map. @Oshi99 was pretty new to Street-View and 360 photos. So we first went through the basics of SV app and 360 photos. Then we explained about blue lines. We had a little demonstration session while testing the 360 cam before the start actual blue line recording.
Then it was time for the real thing. We are ready to draw a highway blue line. We all were excited. We fixed the “Insta 360 one X” camera to the car and make our way towards the Kadawatha highway entrance. I was behind the wheel and Kasunaaa was keeping a track on the camera and recording. @Ohi99 was learning with observation and she had lots and lots of questions.
We drove from Kadawatha to Kerawalpitiya and then continue our ride Peliyagoda. (When we analyze the map we observed that even though Peliyagoda to Katunayaka side blue line was available on the map, its opposite direction blue line is was not available. So we planned to cover that highway stretch too ) . We took the Peliyagoda exit and complete one section of our highway blue line. It was about 25min ride and 18 km of Blue Line(22.3 GB, 5.7k 360 video footage)
Then we entered back to the highways from Peliyagoda and drove to Katunayaka. Peliyagoda to Katunayaka direction blue line was already available on the map. So we gave our 360 cam a little break.
Then we made a U-turn from Katunayaka exit and got ready to enter back to the Highway to start our next blue line stretch from Katunayaka to Kadawatha. It was a bit longer stretch. We plugged the new battery, checked the memory status and we are all set again. We were back in the highway heading towards Kadawatha. We passed the Kerawalpitiya exchange and took our turn towards Kadawatha. By the time we exit from Kadawatha, the clock had marked more 35 min ride time.
It was 27.5km of Blue Line (27.2 GB 5.7k 360 video footage)
We were really happy. We wanted to start check on the recording and start processing them to upload to SV. We stopped at a café and ordered some tea and Egg Rotti. While waiting for tea we backed up the video footage we recorded. Then we start processing the video. We demonstrate the workflow for @Oshi99,
We were really excited to see the upload going on but understandably the progress was really slow due to the huge file sizes. As it was around 50GB of 360 videos, it would take overnight processing time. We couldn’t wait to see the results of our work on SV but we had to be patient. With the tea, we ended Sri Lanka Highway Blue Line meetup……….
I and @kasunaaa took one direction each and uploaded the footage to the SV overnight. Actually it took two overnights due to disturbances. But finally we did upload the footage to the SV successfully and yeahhhh after some processing time of its own SV app showed our blue lines. We couldn’t be happier.
Many thanks to @Oshi99 for your support to make this meet up an absolute success. @Kasunaa this proved 360 bros can go a long way. Thank you very much for the all the amazing support with logistics.
@KatyaL Thanks for the assistance in approving the meetup. We had lot of fun, learn a lot and we believe that we did a valuable contribution to the Goggle maps and street view. As you requested here is the RECAP and the video. Please tag anyone who would enjoy Blue lines.
@Anonymous , Salute to you for your first ever blueline. I read that post with a lot of interest.
@IlankovanT , @AnuradhaP We were inspired by your meetups. I hope you like this.
@InaS @PaulPavlinovich @eventhough this is different my Underwater meetup hope you would enjoy this RECAP too.
Cheers…
Shared Album is here
RECAP video
thank you for the kind words and happy that you like my meetups too.
Hi 5 from me as well
and you have a 360 image. If possible Go for a 360cam. There are few cams which are affordable and provide good quality images.