Hacking Historic Street View

Yesterday Google Maps began to roll-out to users the alternative to sentiment historic Street View images. These are the Street View images which conduct keep been updated yesteryear to a greater extent than recent imagery.

My showtime idea on hearing the annunciation was 'I wonder how slow that volition endure to hack'. Well a duad of hours agone the historic Street View alternative appeared on my version of Google Maps as well as it turns out to endure real slow to hack.


All yous require to create to instruct the historic Street View imagery is accept the panoID as well as piece of employment yesteryear into a Street View element. I've created a quick demo which automatically rotates through 7 of the occasions when Google has driven yesteryear the Freedom Tower inwards New York. Using the Historic Street View demo yous tin sentiment the structure of the Freedom Tower, equally captured yesteryear Google Maps Street View over 4 years.

To laissez passer on the user unopen to command over the engagement of the Street View ikon shown I should likely conduct keep used a slide command rather than animate through the Street View images. However an animated slideshow was quicker to throw together.

Historic Street View imagery has non notwithstanding been added to the Google Maps API as well as hence it is likely non possible notwithstanding to access historic Street View images programatically. This agency that for at 1 time if yous desire to hack the imagery yous volition require to catch the panoID of each form Street View image, equally I did for this demo.