Google launches Concordia Street Views
The Concordia campus community was buzzing one year ago with talk of a pedal-driven, three-wheeled contraption touring the streets and training mysterious lenses on our buildings.
To set minds at ease, we reported at the time that the Google Trike was simply conducting an updated visual survey of both the campuses. We also reported that the images would be posted in a year or so on Google Street Views, which are available on Google Maps.
The year of waiting is over, and as of September 6, the Concordia community at home and abroad can take a virtual campus tour using their computers and other digital devices. It’s the most up-close and detailed view of the university.
“The updated Google Street Views offer prospective students and their families a great way to visit our campus virtually,” says Chief Communications Officer Philippe Beauregard. “Earlier Street Views, which Google captured in 2009, didn’t do our campuses full justice. Visitors saw holes in the ground and construction barricades because we were in the middle of renewal at the downtown campus. Now they’re getting a more accurate picture of the gleaming, modern new face of Concordia.”
Among the reasons Google set its Trikes loose on dozens of university campuses around the world is that these smaller machines are able to penetrate spaces inaccessible to Google cars, such as the quadrangle on the Loyola Campus.
If, for example, a proud family in Hong Kong wants to see where their daughter is studying this fall, they can tour the John Molson School of Business Building, where she’ll be taking most of her classes, check out the the J.W. McConnell Library Building, where she’ll be studying and buying books and supplies, and also see the Richard J. Renaud Science Complex, where she’ll be taking some electives.
Future Google Street Views will include 360-degree panoramas of some of these buildings’ impressive interiors, which were also captured last year.
Equipped with nine lenses pointing in every horizontal direction, the Google Street View Trike gathers a series of slightly overlapping images as its operator pedals along. These images are later digitally stitched together to produce a 360-degree panorama.
Google’s refreshed views of the Concordia campus are part of an international project to upgrade Street Views of campuses across Canada, the U.S., Brazil, Spain, France, the U.K., Netherlands, Israel, Japan and Taiwan.
Related links:
• Google Street Views of Concordia
• The Google Trike at Stonehenge (Video)