Virtual views of city streets go eye-level

Armchair explorers can now see the streets of Hong Kong and Macau and feel like they are there in person with the launch of Google Maps' Street View feature for the city.

The feature, an add-on to Google Maps that is also accessible from Google Earth, covers Hong Kong and displays 360-degree ground-level images.

Users can zoom or expand pictures and even move forwards and backwards as if they were out on the streets, simply by moving their computer mouse.

Street View was launched in the United States in May 2007. It has since been introduced in other countries but only reached Hong Kong and Macau on Thursday.

The images used in the feature were captured by a car equipped with nine digital cameras mounted on a pole on top of it.

Since December 2008, the Street View Car has driven 7,912 kilometres up and down the streets of Hong Kong - the equivalent of crossing the Tsing Ma Bridge 3,663 times or the future cross-Pearl River Delta bridge 150 times.

'We covered all the places accessible by vehicles on public roads,' Ben Luk, technical lead manager for the Hong Kong Street View project, said at its official launch yesterday. Product manager Vince Wu said the team had faced numerous challenges in Hong Kong, including double decker buses that blocked views, air pollution and cloudy weather.