Google Launches ‘Street View Ready’ Certification for 360° Cameras

Google announced this week that they are releasing a new certification standard that they are calling “Street View Ready”. This certification will be used for 360° cameras that are able to publish to Street View, and are guaranteed to support the level of quality required for Google’s 360-degree mapping service.

Google are launching ‘Street View Ready’ with 20 cameras from 18 manufacturers (including GoPro, Samsung, HumanEyes, Sphericam and others) already bearing the certification.

There are 4 categories of certification, based on what standards the camera in question is able to meet. Street View mobile ready is designed for cameras that can publish to Street View directly from a mobile app with no desktop needed; Auto ready is for cameras tailored for vehicle-based capture; VR ready cameras must collect geometry data as well as generating sets of connected 360 photos; and Workflow ready cameras just need to support the ability to upload to Street View accounts from their publishing tools.

In his announcement on the Google blog, Street View’s product manager Charles Armstrong claims that through the Street View app, they enable anybody to “recreate a place or space and invite others in”. Their software is intended to simplify the process of uploading 360° imagery.

“Whether you’re sharing your experience at a local market or on your recent vacation, publishing high-quality, interactive imagery no longer requires significant time and effort—all you have to do is get one of the cameras, download the Street View app and start creating,” Armstrong writes.

The 20 cameras that have been certified are coming to market in 2017, according to Google. Many of them debuted at Google’s Street View Summit in Tokyo, Japan on May 10.