Navigate Through User Photos in Google Street View

Google Street View is great tool, which despite all the criticism and privacy concerns has plenty to offer users. But it's greatest asset is also its major drawback, the amount of photos Google has taken for the tool makes it very hard to expect any sort of 'artistic merit' to them. This is where user photos come in. That's not to say that user photos are by definition artistic, but there's the occasional gem to make up for the fodder. Street View has had user photos for a while now, but Google is introducing a great new way of exploring them, similar to the way you can navigate the original photos on Street View itself.

"User photos allow you to view locations from entirely new perspectives, whether through the eyes of a talented photographer with a knack for capturing architectural detail, or simply taken from locations we couldn't get to. Today, we're making it easier to navigate through these images in a way that should feel similar to how you're used to exploring within Street View," Daniel Filip and Daniel Cotting, Computer Vision Team, Google Zürich, wrote.

Navigating with Street View you can usually see the link to the user photos for the location in the upper right corner. Clicking on it will list a number of photos nearby from places like Picasa Web Albums, Panoramio and now Flickr. Note that even though it's not making a big deal about it, Google is acknowledging that Flickr photos are now part of Street View. Until now you could move from one photo to the other, choosing from the top thumbnail list and that was about it.

With the new navigational tools, you'll notice small silver 'orbs' in the photo. These orbs indicate the center point of other photos of the same location and hovering above them will display a polygon which shows the other photo's perspective relative to the current one. Clicking on the orbs will load up that photo instead. There are also 'navigational orbs' around the corners showing the directions for which user photos are available. Finally, you can move about just by dragging the photo and surrounding ones will begin to pan in as you do.