Google Street View is one of the best ways to take a virtual tour of a potential vacation destination, a place you want to know more about or even your own hometown, but it’s only part of the experience. With Sounds of Street View, the hearing solution professionals at Amplifon are bringing ambient noise to Google Maps.
Using Amplifon’s Web Audio API platform, developers can designate ordinary Google Maps markers to emit 3-dimensional sounds that will change in volume and direction depending on where the user is “standing” in Street View. The company has put together three separate experiences to demonstrate how the software works.
In France, you can approach a church and hear the bells begin to toll, walk past a man playing an organ and then through a busy eatery as the locals and tourists chat among themselves, forks and knives clattering against dinnerware. At Hapuna Beach in Hawaii, the waves gently lap against the shore while children splash playfully in the water.
At face value, it doesn’t seem like much, but as an open source tool that could potentially be implemented throughout every corner of Google Maps, it’s an incredible experiment. Click the source link to check out the convincing demo on Amplifon’s website, but first, watch the video below.
