I was wondering why there isn't or if there is, an Open Source (Free, or not) Street View like Google Maps. I like geography as a hobby, like my other hobbies, and found GeoHub which sparked my interest in being a free geoguessr alternative. I just don't understand why Google is the only Mapping service people go to, is Google the only one that has street view? is this a hard business model to achieve?

Please, I'd love too know :)

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 41 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Well, if you want to do it properly you'll have to mount a 360° camera on a car and drive a car through every street of the whole world. Takes a while. And then you'll have to obey the countries privacy laws and at least blur all faces and licence plates.

There are other mapping services that do it but Google were the first who got really popular and did it on a massive scale.

[–] illi@lemm.ee 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And once you are finished you can probably start over to stay up to date

[–] jeffreyosborne@lemm.ee 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Google doesn't do that either, so we wouldn't have to either. I could name a few places that use photos from 10+ years ago, which look drastically different from the present

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago

They definitely update the photos, just faster in some areas than others, visibly.

[–] illi@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Depends on the place I guess. I'm pretty sure some are updated

[–] jeffreyosborne@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah they are

[–] smeeps@lemmy.mtate.me.uk 1 points 3 months ago

Google absolutely update most roads every year or so. Busy roads multiple times a year. Even my cul de sac in a minor town has photos every 5 years

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 1 points 3 months ago

I'm sure doing that wouldn't lead to insanity