Point & Click Street View

The Point & Click Street View Browser is an interesting experiment in creating a new way to navigate Google Maps Street View. Inspired by the classic Myst computer games Point & Click Street View requires the user to click on the left-hand side of the Street View to look to the left, to click on the right-hand side of the Street View to look right and to click at the top of the Street View to move forward to the next Street View image.

I don't think this method of navigating Street View is going to replace the established Google Maps navigation system anytime soon. However I could see this method of navigation working very well in a Street View game. There are also some interesting things going on under the hood of the Point & Click Street View browser which might interest anyone interested in using Street View with the Google Maps API.

Point & Click works by using the PanoID of individual Street Views. The code includes a neat method for automatically grabbing the PanoID of the next Street View and the PanoID's which show the views to the left and right of the current Street View. The code also includes a neat method for creating a unique URL for each view by appending the PanoID of the current view to the URL.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World