Vancouver — If you considered the Google Street View trike was weird, now get ready to take a run on the bobsleigh course, the official Street View snowmobile. Google’s new Street View micro-site for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver has taken to the slopes with the launch of Google Snow View, taking viewers on a virtual tour of Whistler-Blackcomb and the Olympic runs.
Google used a snowmobile, kitted out with the latest GPS and camera technology, to take Street View style photos of Whistler Mountain Photo: Google
Google wanted to take some shots of the locations of the events in the Vancouver Winter Olympics. But skiing with cars do not really seemed to be a good idea on ski slopes and, somehow, cycling the trike, which Google normally uses in remote locations, through the snow also did not really sound like a great idea. So the engineers came up with a novel creation of jamming all the Street View camera equipment on the back of a snowmobile, no small feat in itself, the trike alone weighs in at around 200 – 250 pounds (100 – 125 kg), and sent the contraption up the mountains.
“Yes, you are indeed looking at a snowmobile equipped with our full Street View camera system. In typical scrappy Google fashion, we were able to put this together over the course of a few weekends using extra pieces for our Street View cars, some 2x4s, some duct tape, and a lot of extra hard drives (keeping them running properly in the freezing conditions was one of our major concerns),” master innovator, Dan Ratner, senior mechanical engineer at Street View, wrote.
With the Google Street View camera strapped on the back of a snowmobile, photographers toured the runs of the ski resort, capturing images that are being shown on Google’s newly launched website for the 2010 Olympic Games, google.com/games10.
The search giant has also mapped parts of Whistler Mountain, where some of the events, including the men’s alpine skiing, are taking place. The virtual tour was part of a lineup of online tools and website features for the Olympics showcased by Google at an event last Tuesday at Vancouver’s B.C. International Media Centre, which was attended by Premier Gordon Campbell and Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed.
“Games fans, skiers and snowboarders around the world can now pan across several Whistler runs as if they were there,” said Google. Venues will also be rendered in 3D on Google Earth, and on the official Winter Games website.
Google’s microsite, which is available in 40 languages, will harness Google’s relationship with Twitter to bring real-time search results for the Games, including tweets, blogs and articles, directly on to the page.
Google’s tool kit for Olympic fans also includes special Games-time search results and its website for the 2010 Games has a transit trip planner for Vancouver/Whistler, including a timetable of events. Users will also be able to share these informations through Facebook and Twitter, and add their own pictures from the event to Google’s official Picasa photo stream.
The 21st Winter Olympiad starts on Feb 12, and runs until the end of the month. Great Britain has been set a target of three medals by UK Sport, which funds Olympic sport in Britain. Team GB’s most successful ever Games came at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936, when it won gold in ice hockey, silver in figure skating and bronze in the bobsleigh. At the last Winter Games in Turin, Britain won a single medal, a silver, awarded to Shelley Rudman in the bob skeleton.
Several British athletes are tipped to do well at this year’s event, with the men’s curling team, the women’s bobsleigh team, and both skeleton teams expected to be in medal contention.