Google StreetView is a feature of Google Maps which provides a panoramic view of numerous places in the world. StreetView Explorer is a portable desktopsoftware which enables you to walk around Google Street View images instead of just viewing them. This open source program grabs image and detailed data automatically from Google StreetView and provides settings to refine the look of the image that your are walking in. StreetView Explorer is a cross platform application and has versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.
To get started, add a URL link from Google StreetView from the Edit destinations button. StreetView Explorer by default comes with street view links from London, Amsterdam, New York, Paris and Las Vegas. After a destination link is added, select it from the drop down menu (e.g. De Dam Amsterdam) and start walking through the panoramic image.
Once you click on the Edit Destination button, the URL for the Google StreetView image can be added from the Add Location button.
Once you enter an image, you can walk around by moving the mouse. To toggle visibility, use the mouse wheel. To release your mouse from the image, hit ESC button from your keyboard.
You can further refine visibility by going to options from File -> Preferences. From here, you can change vertical texture, horizontal mode accuracy, and detail level. Increasing the detail level removes extra items like people, cars, etc from the image, whereas, the vertical accuracy and horizontal mode can be increased or reduced for refining horizontal and vertical visibility.
StreetView Explorer works on the following operating systems:
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Mac OSX
- Linux based operating systems
