
Show HN: Random Street View - hanezz
http://randomstreetview.com
======
kirchhoff
I don't mean to gatecrash, but as I have been running a near identical site
for a few years I feel compelled to comment.

The street views generated on this site are not really random; they are picked
from a predefined list in a db. This is why duplicates appear after a number
of clicks.

I run [http://www.mapcrunch.com](http://www.mapcrunch.com) which also
generates random street views, but with more options - you can define a region
on a map (like a city) and generate street views from within it. You can also
restrict the generated views to those taken within buildings, or within urban
areas. The views generated are also totally random.

I don't have any objection to someone copying the concept of an existing site
/ service, but I feel that if you do so, you should at least try to
differentiate it in some way - most easily done by making improvements or
including superior functionality.

~~~
pachydermic
I don't know if it's fair to say he's copying - there's always the chance that
they came up with it on their own. Are you really saying that you're the first
person to come up with this idea?

Anyways, I think your site is much better... thanks for sharing. This is cool.

~~~
kirchhoff
I didn't say he copied my site directly (clearly the design is totally
different), and even if he did I don't mind at all.

My site wasn't the first,
[http://www.globegenie.com](http://www.globegenie.com) was. I liked the
concept and built an improved version.

My only point was that if you are going to take an existing idea, build
something better.

~~~
avalaunch
That presupposes that he realizes the idea was already executed.

In any case, even if he did, I can think of a number of very good reasons why
building something similar to another already executed idea is still a
worthwhile endeavor. For example, maybe he wanted a new portfolio piece or
maybe he wanted to learn some new technologies.

I like both. Yours is nicer though.

------
crazygringo
Nice! So interesting. This is the kind of thing that, 30 years ago, you could
only dream about. Stuff like this reminds me how much we take things like the
Internet and Google Street View for granted, and sometimes you need to step
back and think how amazing they are.

But stepping forwards to a minor detail... are there keyboard shortcuts? If
you click on the image, you can already use Google controls to pan/walk around
using the arrow keys and +/-..., so that all works...

But it would be awesome if there were another shortcut to move to the
next/previous location, so I could move around, and between images, solely
using the keyboard.

Anyways, great work!

[Edit: another thing, so many locations seem to have... not much going on.
Instead of picking a random spot by area, it might be interesting to pick a
random spot by population distribution... so that half the locations would
wind up being urban, and you'd see a _lot_ more people.]

~~~
JasonFruit
No, no! Don't do it by population distribution! The rural areas are what I
_want_ to see! Ahem . . . I mean, the random distribution ensures that
everyone gets to see things they weren't looking for, and that's good.

~~~
chrissnell
Lots of those, too. My random view put me on the North Slope Haul Road in
Alaska. Even more strange, there was a second Google car in the picture!

[http://randomstreetview.com/#13i9ir_-2hkyi5_-5r_a_-2](http://randomstreetview.com/#13i9ir_-2hkyi5_-5r_a_-2)

------
colinbartlett
I would love to know how much Google spends on StreetView.

When they first started sending those cars around, I think everyone
collectively mocked, "Haha. Well you're certainly not going to photograph
every street in the world."

~~~
ohwp
What about "Haha, Well you're certainly not going to create a 3D point cloud
of every street in the world"...

Google's self driving cars are just doing that.

EDIT: I can't find the post I once read, but this post also makes some clear:
[http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130502024505-99...](http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130502024505-9947747-google-
s-self-driving-car-gathers-nearly-1-gb-per-second)

EDIT 2: Here a video of the presentation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk)
@ 3:30 you can see the generated (and stored) point cloud.

~~~
DanBC
That bit blew my mind.

I'd love to see some of those point clouds. Maybe Google has an artist-in-
residence who could 3D print varies landmark locations?

~~~
3rd3
That was actually a little bit sobering for me. I thought the AI techniques
they use were much more general, autonomous and independent of map data. I
didn’t know that location information of traffic signs, pavement etc. are
taken from map data. But it makes sense to prefer data from most reliable
sources.

------
jader201
Some interesting non-street views in there:

[http://randomstreetview.com/#fnso2_17h6mm_b0_a_-8](http://randomstreetview.com/#fnso2_17h6mm_b0_a_-8)

[http://randomstreetview.com/#68vsh_19xpmm_100_a_-1](http://randomstreetview.com/#68vsh_19xpmm_100_a_-1)

[http://randomstreetview.com/#vbpgr_60bxi_b6_a_-1](http://randomstreetview.com/#vbpgr_60bxi_b6_a_-1)

[http://randomstreetview.com/#953ql_19j07c_1ix_a_-g](http://randomstreetview.com/#953ql_19j07c_1ix_a_-g)

~~~
RogerL
Here is one on a train, I'm using the arrow keys to ride it through town.

[http://randomstreetview.com/#rkof5_5zmfd_-
av_a_-a](http://randomstreetview.com/#rkof5_5zmfd_-av_a_-a)

~~~
shill
I ended up on the same train, not far from where you are.

[http://randomstreetview.com/#rklpm_5zotk_-
k_a_3](http://randomstreetview.com/#rklpm_5zotk_-k_a_3)

Maybe I got the cached results of a prior search?

~~~
ctdonath
Yup, same train for me. Came back to this thread just to post it, only to find
you two already had.

I recall some "random street view" site a while back having the same behavior.
Not sure if it was a different site, or same one is just making the news cycle
again.

------
ak217
[http://geoguessr.com/](http://geoguessr.com/)

~~~
patrickdavey
Had a play.. nice site. I did feel slightly cheated than in 15 guesses 80% or
so were in the US. A tiny bit less random and a bit more variety would be
great :)

~~~
pavel_lishin
I felt like a disproportionate amount of mine were in Australia.

------
RankingMember
There's definitely something intriguing about seeing random mundane scenes
(with occasional awesome exceptions) in far away locations.

~~~
JackFr
I found it weirdly compelling.

------
petercooper
There's a guy on Twitch who livestreams "playing" a game with something like
this, except there's no map. It's a similar site that shows you a random
location and he basically "walks" around and tries to drop a pin on a map as
close to the point as possible. Sounds kinda boring but I ended up watching an
hour of it and it's interesting the sort of visual clues and techniques you
can use to suss places out.

~~~
gtCameron
Not sure if its the same one as the video you are referring to but here is a
game that does exactly that.

[http://geoguessr.com/](http://geoguessr.com/)

~~~
dreen
Geoguessr is actually awesome for social gatherings and stuff, its amazing how
you can sometimes get pretty close just from the first glance

------
3rd3
It’s quite banal, but it always baffles me that everywhere something is
happening at the same time. A wast complexity which we can only make sense of
because it all works according the same principles. People build roads,
houses, raise families and eventually die. Isn’t there a word for this
feeling?

~~~
anvandare
Do you mean "sonder"?

[http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/s...](http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder)

~~~
3rd3
Yes! Thanks.

------
time0
What's your randomizer? Maybe it's just me or maybe a lot of France looks the
same but I swear I'm seeing a lot of repeats, perhaps as much as 1 in 20.

~~~
hanezz
Random street view locations are retrieved from a database (on-the-fly lookup
is too slow); France had not so much records; that has changed over the last 5
minutes though. Try again :)

~~~
djulius
Got the same issue with Peru, not that random. Regarding France, being french,
I can assure you that there is a lot of records ;)

Btw you could use city location from wiki/dbpedia to generate random lat/long.

~~~
hanezz
Peru just solved as well :)

------
DanBC
I'm getting lots of really pretty scenery in Bulgaria. So much that it's
making me think about moving. I love this!

People interested in mapping and computers may also like this BBC Radio 4
programme "mapping the void" which covers some of the open sourced volunteer
projects.
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03s6mf0](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03s6mf0)

~~~
RogerL
Hmm, I found one of the infamous ghost towns and thought the opposite (I don't
deny the beautiful places).

[http://randomstreetview.com/#p0sb5_f2nu7_p7_a_-f](http://randomstreetview.com/#p0sb5_f2nu7_p7_a_-f)

------
giarc
I might have found the most English looking location (also very beautiful)

[http://randomstreetview.com/#vmyhk_-2h1og_4l_a_-g](http://randomstreetview.com/#vmyhk_-2h1og_4l_a_-g)

~~~
olivernn
Who'd have thought the most English looking location would be in Wales ;)

~~~
giarc
Good catch - my UK/Great Britain/England geography is not great.

[http://f.kulfoto.com/pic/0001/0039/GY22q38509.jpg](http://f.kulfoto.com/pic/0001/0039/GY22q38509.jpg)

------
henrik_w
Neat! There was a similar project here a few years ago:
[http://www.mapcrunch.com/](http://www.mapcrunch.com/) comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3215460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3215460)

------
james33
Does it actually pick a completely random spot? Because the first one it
showed me was a place I visited recently halfway around the world.

------
asd
I've been enjoying a similar site,
[http://www.mapcrunch.com/](http://www.mapcrunch.com/), for 2 or 3 years. It
is very well done. You can select one or many countries in the options menu.
It's a great way of enjoying the world from your couch.

------
willismichael
Denmark has separate paved bike streets out in the middle of the countryside!
I sure wish the road systems in the United States were more bike friendly.

[http://randomstreetview.com/#xqgi5_5um0z_64_d_-7](http://randomstreetview.com/#xqgi5_5um0z_64_d_-7)

------
Patrick_Devine
I ended up shrinking the map/location bar and then clicked on the "next"
button and tried seeing how long it would take me to figure out where I was.
There are a lot of immediate clues, like what side of the street people are
driving on, the ethnicity of people if they're at the side of the road, the
condition and type of the cars/buildings and a lot of geographical features
like mountains and red soil.

It reminded me of a thought exercise I used to do about what would I do if I
were kidnapped and then drugged/blindfolded/disorientated/whatever and then
dropped somewhere in the world. I'd come up with elaborate strategies to try
and find my way back home.

------
nader
Even though I mostly end up in the middle of nowhere this surely makes me want
to travel :)

------
jcutrell
Check out this sweet dragon.

[http://randomstreetview.com/#wrua5_dhcmy_2m_a_-3](http://randomstreetview.com/#wrua5_dhcmy_2m_a_-3)

Seriously, this is a fantastic thing you've made. I'm enjoying it immediately.

~~~
gk1
Amazing. This is literally the end of a small road in the middle of nowhere
(no offense), Lithuania. How few people ever see this person's home, and how
few outsiders does this person come across in their back yard? And all of a
sudden, here we are, all looking at this person's yard with more intrigue than
they'd ever guess.

------
mdisraeli
There's an interesting game one can play with such sites - get a random
location, and try to find your way back to an airport without looking at a map

...Of course, this was easier before google indexed so much countryside....

------
megalomanu
Wonderful ! The sites like yours remind me why I love Streetview, which is
like a gift for me. I take this opportunity to share one of my favorites
blogs, "Dreamlands - Virtual Tour". It's a photograph blog, like every
photograph blogs, except that all pictures are made with Streetview ! You
don't have to speak french to enjoy it. Some places are incredible.
[http://dreamlands-virtual-tour.blogspot.fr/](http://dreamlands-virtual-
tour.blogspot.fr/)

------
michelutti
Ok now I'll spend my entire day on this! However, my friend also visited the
website and guess what? The same sequence of streets was showed to him. How
this random works?

------
rlu
Yes!!! I sometimes do this manually by zooming out the map and then dropping
the Street View pin with my eyes only half open (can't drop him in the ocean).

------
acdanger
A non-random Street View project that has some very interesting images.

[http://9-eyes.com/](http://9-eyes.com/)

------
petern
If you want a true long tail street picture app, there is a new one -
Mapillary - with only phones and HTML5 no cars etc involved, e.g.
[http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/jvEX_s9fM7SwTDoMdeYDOw](http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/jvEX_s9fM7SwTDoMdeYDOw)
\- works everywhere where you can have a smartphone and GPS fix.

------
DigitalSea
This is fantastic. I've seen similar sites, but this kind of thing never gets
old no matter how many sites there are. I'm from Australia and I find it
highly comical that every street I was given was basically a dirt road in the
bush, haha. I wasted a good while on this, not the kind of thing I should be
doing when I've got work to do!

------
jader201
It's funny seeing the attention these vehicles draw coming out in some of the
photos. This is especially true on dirt streets in the middle of residential
areas.

Walk this one back down the street, you can see the pedestrians watching.

[http://randomstreetview.com/#-6p0t9_-nfxtl_qa_a_-2](http://randomstreetview.com/#-6p0t9_-nfxtl_qa_a_-2)

------
joelcollinsdc
been around longer and funner:
[http://www.geoguessr.com/](http://www.geoguessr.com/)

------
xixi77
Interesting! A few things:

\- Some locations repeat after a short while \- Not sure how the randomization
is done, but some countries like Botswana and Bulgaria seem over-represented
\- Address language seems random (often English, sometimes other, not much
relation to where location is -- e.g. some US locations had addresses shown in
Czech etc.)

~~~
hanezz
A small bias towards more variety was introduced to prevent 80% of locations
being in the US. Repeating locations are possible but should be increasingly
rare.

I'll further tweak the randomization patterns for the better. And fix the
address language indeed.

Thanks for the feedback!

------
BenjaminN
Hey, did you get the idea after seeing [http://smwh.re](http://smwh.re) ?

------
tomatohs
I built something similar for university. Though it uses location from
Instagram, the photo, and description text to provide some context.
[http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/](http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/)

------
arianvanp
I recall something similar that would show random places on street view and
you had to guess where it was located on the map. The closer you were the more
points you would get. Does anybody remember how that was callled, because that
was way cool.

~~~
dbh937
[http://geoguessr.com/](http://geoguessr.com/)

------
lewispollard
I chose United Kingdom and on the second click it showed a street in my
childhood hometown!

------
iandanforth
This is really neat! The very first place it took me was overlooking a _sweet_
crater in Yosemite. Then there were a couple boring ones then a super awesome
church in the Czech republic. ... And now I'll forget about this forever.

------
sytelus
You can use this to answer questions like below:

1\. How much of the roads in the world passes through dessert?

2\. What is the chance that you would see a person if you had been driving all
over?

3\. How much of the streets are in urban areas?

And so on...

All you need to do is just press next few times and count!

~~~
shotwell
That's a great idea. It'd make for a great education app, perhaps walking the
user through the solution for their own town.

------
divinity
This was on mobile as a game a while ago [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/map-
mayhem/id608008620?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/map-
mayhem/id608008620?mt=8)

------
earlz
I didn't even know that Google had street view cars in rural Africa!
[http://randomstreetview.com/#-en562_fdoqw_-2i_a_-7](http://randomstreetview.com/#-en562_fdoqw_-2i_a_-7)

------
lelandbatey
Wow, it only took me two clicks to get a glitched out shot :
[http://randomstreetview.com/#p6d4o_-4vsu8_93_a_4](http://randomstreetview.com/#p6d4o_-4vsu8_93_a_4)

------
l-p
Well, is really does what it says, that _was_ random:
[http://randomstreetview.com/#phyzb_dnid7_-d_r_-5](http://randomstreetview.com/#phyzb_dnid7_-d_r_-5)

------
keammo1
Great! I am getting lots of beautiful scenery. An up vote/down vote or ratings
system would be great, and then you could start compiling a list of the most
beautiful (or interesting) views.

------
sushirain
I was surprised to see that most street-views in the world are rural.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Yes. Check Ukraine.

------
brak2718
This site does the same thing and has been around atleast a few years:
[http://www.globegenie.com/](http://www.globegenie.com/)

------
frogpelt
At first I thought, what is the point?

Then I clicked next a few times and visited random parts of France, Lithuania,
Norway, and Harju County, Estonia on the coast of the Baltic Sea.

This is really cool.

------
nathan_f77
My colleague just showed me [http://geoguessr.com/](http://geoguessr.com/),
which is a pretty fun twist on the same concept.

------
state
I used to love to just take a 'walk' using street view from time to time. This
is great. It really gives you a sense of how enormous the data set is.

------
beefsack
Reminds me of the fantastic game based around random street view:
[http://geoguessr.com/](http://geoguessr.com/)

------
plaguuuuuu
This was pretty cool

[http://randomstreetview.com/#m19t2_-1xxgr6_-o_a_-7](http://randomstreetview.com/#m19t2_-1xxgr6_-o_a_-7)

------
samolang
This would make an awesome wallpaper/screen saver.

~~~
hanezz
[http://randomstreetview.com/#slideshow](http://randomstreetview.com/#slideshow)

~~~
gourneau
Hey Y'all on OS X. Just compile this little tool
[https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver](https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver)

Then add the url
[http://randomstreetview.com/#slideshow](http://randomstreetview.com/#slideshow)
to the url playlist of the screen saver.

Or get the binary here:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/c03r77x5vm1wirp/WebViewScreenSaver...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/c03r77x5vm1wirp/WebViewScreenSaver.saver.zip)

One neat feature/bug is that if you have multiple monitors the screens seem
like they are pointed to different angles of the same exact place. I suspect
the randomness algo is based on JS timestamps.

------
cek
Cool.

Within a few minutes of clicking NEXT I started getting duplicates.

------
finishingmove
Or not so random. I keep getting USA, Taiwan, Estonia and Sweden far more
often than any other countries. Do they have the most streets? :P

------
sz4kerto
Wow, the second random street is in my hometown.

~~~
nyrina
You've gotta get a tinfoil hat, or a lottery ticket. Perhaps both.

------
hawkharris
I'm curious: has Google used any of its autonomous vehicles to perform mapping
for Street View?

------
andys627
Would be cool if it gave you a slow 360 view instead of just a random side of
the road. Good job!

------
SonicSoul
reminds me of a manager i worked for in 2000. he wrote a random lat/lang algo
and actually used it for his vacation trips.

[http://www.abulsme.com/trip/spottool.html](http://www.abulsme.com/trip/spottool.html)

this is a clear upgrade :)

------
rokhayakebe
Can we go by city? PLEASE. I think you could charge something for this. Maybe
a one-time fee.

------
gamerDude
I would love to see a like feature here to aggregate the most amazing pics
around the world.

------
frozenport
You should weight the streets by population, as that is what people
"experience".

------
sdegutis
It's really awesome to see how much of the world looks almost exactly like my
street.

------
aabalkan
I guess I hit the API limit very quickly after 20-30 tries. Map does not
refresh anymore.

------
pwenzel
Simple. Enjoyable. I just found several dozen places I want to travel to.

------
0x0
Strangely hypnotizing! Fun!

------
shangxiao
Love it. Could be the source for some interesting social activities.

------
PedroBatista
Great, i landed in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma.

Story of my life...

------
callesgg
Amazing :) An auto turner and a timmer would be nice.

------
MichaelTieso
This would be pretty awesome as a screensaver.

~~~
hanezz
Try
[http://randomstreetview.com/#slideshow](http://randomstreetview.com/#slideshow)
, and switch your browser to fullscreen modus.

~~~
ericgoldberg
That's great and all, but a real screensaver provides a cheap way to lock a
computer, and is functional and can be beautiful as well. This is beautiful,
would love a screensaver of this to lock my computer when I step away from it.

------
n_coats
Really enjoying this! Thanks for building!

------
ishener
kudos for the mobile support that's what i'm going to do on my ride home today

------
jonheller
This is really awesome, thanks!

------
van_hn
Not random.

------
ivanbrussik
I don't see North Korea?

------
dextimilus
good idea!

------
lhgaghl
How does it work without flash?? I was never able to use street view because
in google maps when you zoom in it just says in a popup:

    
    
      To use street view, you need Adobe Flash Player version 10 or newer.
      Get the latest Flash Player.

~~~
timdorr
It's a canvas element that they render to now. It's very similar to the
previous Flash implementation, in that it's an area of the screen they can
draw on. It just happens to be in Javascript instead of Actionscript now.

~~~
lhgaghl
But if i go to maps.google.com and zoom in, it apparently is using flash and
doesn't work. The linked site does work. I'm guessing there's some API you can
use for google maps, and it uses the non-flash version. But is there a way to
use the non flash version on maps.google.com?

~~~
Raphmedia
I think that the map without flash is still gradually rolling out, but you can
apply to have it.

------
kitsched
I don't know if others suggested this but it might be interesting to define a
rectangular region and it would only return views from inside that rectangle.
Let's see how well I actually know my hometown.

~~~
kirchhoff
You can do this on www.mapcrunch.com

