The Sounds of Street View

Jumper is a collection of some of the best Street View images that can be found on Google Maps. Jumper actually has only a very small collection of eleven selected Street Views. Therefore Jumper isn't going to compete with the many other Street View collecting websites based on its size.

However Jumper does have its own unique selling point - sound. Each Street View on Jumper is accompanied by an appropriate audio backing track. View Times Square on Jumper and you'll hear traffic and people walking. A visit to the White House on Jumper is accompanied by the sound of the American national anthem. Dive down to look at the Great Barrier Reef on Street View and you can hear the sound of air bubbles escaping from your breathing apparatus.


Jumper isn't the only website to have the idea of combining Google Maps Street View with sound. Amplifon's Sounds of Street View, is a development platform which allows you to add sound to Google Maps Street View. If you visit Sounds of Street View's Create Your Own platform you can download the Sounds of Street View framework and read a detailed guide explaining how to create your own Street View sound experience.

Zombie Sound Experienz has used the Sounds of Street View with the Business Photos Street View tour from the Zombie Manor in Drayton to create a creepy virtual tour, with full 3d sound. As you progress through this zombie filled virtual Street View tour you can actually hear the zombies pursuing you.

As you visit the different rooms in the Zombie Manor you will hear a variety of creepy sounds. Different zombies and rooms have different sounds attached to them, which get louder or quieter as you approach or travel away from the waiting walking dead. 

The combination of 360 degree panoramas with recorded sound really does help to create a more immersive experience providing an experience of both the audio and visual ambiance of locations around the world.

The Sound City Project has created a very impressive visual & aural experience using their own interactive panoramas and combining these with high quality 3D sound recordings. Using the application you can explore locations, such as Times Square in New York and the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, with custom Street View imagery while listening to the sounds recorded at the same locations.

A styled Google Map allows you to navigate between the different locations featured in the project, including a number of locations in New York, San Francisco and also in Sweden & Norway.

Pregoneros de Medellín is a wonderfully immersive virtual journey around the colorful streets of Medellín in Colombia. The experience is vaguely similar to exploring locations with Google Maps Street View - only with sound, smoother transitions and lots more interactivity.

Pregoneros de Medellín was not created with panoramic images but with video. However this isn't video as you normally know it. To progress through the video you need to scroll down on the web page. As you scroll you move through the stills of the video.

While you stroll around Medellin you can listen to the sounds of the streets and the street vendors. You can also interact with some of the characters you find on your journey. The interactive characters are indicated on screen with map markers positioned above their heads. Click on the markers and you can view short documentary type videos about the selected individual's lives.

Another truly amazing documentary type tour of an individual city has been created by Google themselves,  Google Night Walk is an amazing narrated Street View tour of Marseilles at night.

 Google Night Walk takes you on an immersive journey through the lively Cours Julien neighbourhood of Marseille. The tour includes an audio narrated guide by Julie and Christophe, two urban storytellers, who help explain the living history of the city. 

Many of the custom Street View panoramas in the tour are also enhanced by sound experiences recorded at the same time as the panoramas.