Google has expanded its Street View app in Sydney with ferry cool photos of the city’s harbour.
If you’re unaware, Street View is a feature of Google Maps that allows you to see locations at the street level, as photographed by Google’s own cameras. You can see some pretty wild things with it, but it is genuinely useful.
Last year, Google announced that it was partnering with Transport New South Wales and Transdev to take some snaps of Sydney’s ferry network, so that people could “experience the iconic Sydney Ferries via Google Street View”, as per the blog post.
I’d imagine this update is monotonous for some, especially those that catch the ferries potentially every day so that they can get to and from work and home. But keep in mind that this is open to the entire world, giving users of Maps a 360-degree view of Sydney Harbour they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get.
All aboard! With @TransportforNSW and @TransdevAustNZ, we’ve launched the Sydney Ferries on Street View. You can now take a virtual tour of the iconic ferries, and take a trip across Sydney Harbour → https://t.co/i7A4ebXbTM pic.twitter.com/eUR5hptiwW
— googledownunder (@googledownunder) January 17, 2023
It joins a bunch of other experiences the Google Street View team has focused on in Australia, including the depths of the Ningaloo Reef, Christmas Island, Kakadu National Park and the Sydney Opera House.
“To produce this unique collection, we combined nautical and engineering expertise to troubleshoot and find creative solutions. Together, we navigated tumultuous weather conditions, sea motion and experimented to find the right vantage points to install the cameras,” the post reads.
Let’s go through some of the photos that Google, Transport New South Wales and Transdev have snapped on ferries for Street View.
This set of images appear to follow a ferry pulling out of Circular Quay. Out of shot in this image are the flocks of seagulls and ginormous crowds.
This set of images appears to explore the insides of a Sydney ferry. Neat, I guess. Let’s see one more.
This set of images follows a ferry as it pulls into Manly Cove. Neat!
These experiences are accessible on all versions of Google Street View, letting you warp around and explore with 360 images across the harbour.