Google Offer Virtual Tours Of Olympic Venues
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
With the start of the Vancouver Olympics only a few days away, Google has launched new 3D online tours of the nine main competition venues. Google users can also view the terrain in stunning 3D detail in Google Earth.
The technology, accessible to all via www.google.com/games10 allows users to place themselves at the top of the ski slopes and descend the Dave Murray Downhill (site of the men’s alpine skiing downhill this Saturday, Feb 13) and to get views of the resort from the 7th Heaven Chairlift on Blackcomb and from the peak of Whistler.
In order to film the slopes the company rigged up a snowmobile equipped with the Google 3D 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). We got in touch with the folks at Whistler Blackcomb Mountains and Whistler Resort Municipality to discuss our slightly crazy idea, and fortunately they were just as enthusiastic. In fact, they even suggested we also photograph the roads and paths of Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside, so we piled the snowmobile and a trike into a trailer and made our way up to Whistler.†said Dan Ratner, Google’s Senior Mechanical Engineer for Street View in an online blog.
