Since the 2007 launch of
its Street View project to catalog 360-degree panoramic
images from locations around the world, the team at Google
has driven more than seven million miles, visited 66
countries and traveled to both Antarctica and the Arctic.
And now with the help of Tauck River Cruising, the company
has recently added the lower Danube River – and images
captured inside Tauck’s ms Treasures riverboat – to the
portfolio of global locations it has digitally chronicled.
Tauck and Google Maps joined forces last summer, when Google
technicians worked with Tauck and its maritime partner
Scylla AG to mount one of Google’s “Trekker” cameras to the
forward deck of Tauck’s ms Treasures riverboat.
Over the following days, the Trekker captured imagery of the
river across Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria
and Romania. The Trekker creates a 360-degree panoramic view
with the help of 15 lenses, each pointed in a different
direction.
The views captured by the different lenses are then
digitally “stitched” together, resulting in the full
panorama. Viewers can change their viewpoint, looking up,
down, left and right, by moving their computer mouse.