Google Street View is obviously a fantastic tool to get directions or familiarize yourself with a neighborhood, but wouldn't it be great if you could hear the sounds of the scene, too? It could help you figure out if the area your hotel is in will be too noisy while you're on vacation or just give you a better sense of a neighborhood you're planning on moving to. The less guessing you have to do, the better.
Now we're one step closer to having Google Street View become an auditory experience in addition to a visual one. Well, sort of.
Amplifon, a company that makes products to help with hearing loss based in the U.K., has created a new web experience called "Sounds of Street View" that adds ambient sound to scenes from around the world on Google Street View.
When you first open up "Sounds of Street View," you are transported to Place du Palais in Avignon, France. Facing the cathedral, you hear the chiming bells. Birds chirp as a street performer plays the accordion. As you move away from the cathedral, the sound of the bells gets fainter, and you instead hear the chatter and clinking dishes from the outdoor cafe behind you. Move even further away from the scene, and you'll soon hear the running engine of a car, dogs barking or the music of a carousel.
When you're finished visiting France, there are two other locations for you to experience. One is Hapuna Beach in Hawaii, where you'll hear the waves crashing on the beach, people laughing on the sand and tourists snapping photos. Finally, you can hop over to Balboa Park in San Diego where you can listen to a band playing in the park, the center fountain flowing and near silence in front of the Natural History Museum.
The program is experimental, so it isn't perfect, of course. The sounds jarringly repeat if you stay in one spot in the scene for too long, and just like Google Street View, it's sometimes difficult to navigate. However, the three-dimensional soundscapes created in "Sounds of Street View" and hearing sounds that come from the left in your left ear and so on, really does add a strong sense of realism to Google Street View.
Amplifon has made the code behind "Sounds of Street View" open source on GitHub, in case you're interested in creating your own audiovisual experience. The Internet is so great at making things that already exist in the real world come to life virtually, isn't it?
