Today's post is a response to the number of "ghosts" that have been spotted on Google Maps' street view. One of the more popular pictures being circulated right now is this one from Cardiff Wales.
A UK paper is reporting that the woman is wearing clothes not seen in today's fashion, basically she is dressed like Mary Poppins, hovering above the ground without legs and the odd effect on the bottom of the picture is actually ectoplasm.
This of course is not the case as you can see in this picture.
Google's street view is created by a camera mounted on a vehicle which takes 360 degree digital pictures and then put back together again by their street view program. Sometimes a picture may be missing or slightly different than the one before causing an overlap when put back together. This is exactly what happened here causing this poor woman to briefly lose her legs.
Another picture going around is this one from Toowoomba, Australia
The reported ghost is the odd shape in front of the left window. The homeowners themselves believe this to be a ghost and reported their findings to an Australian paper
This is a different but very common type of glitch caused by Google Maps. Due to privacy concerns Google added an automatic blur feature that would try to recognize things like faces and license plates. Since faces are very tricky to auto-detect sometimes it blurs out things that are not faces at all. This is what I believe is happening here, their program thought that this window should be blurred out and the part of the window that divides the panes(muntins) changes into oval shaped blurs.
I know these aren't the only cases and probably won't be the last, as more and more streets are covered by the street view program I'm sure we'll see many more reports.
-Rex
A UK paper is reporting that the woman is wearing clothes not seen in today's fashion, basically she is dressed like Mary Poppins, hovering above the ground without legs and the odd effect on the bottom of the picture is actually ectoplasm.
This of course is not the case as you can see in this picture.
Google's street view is created by a camera mounted on a vehicle which takes 360 degree digital pictures and then put back together again by their street view program. Sometimes a picture may be missing or slightly different than the one before causing an overlap when put back together. This is exactly what happened here causing this poor woman to briefly lose her legs.
Another picture going around is this one from Toowoomba, Australia
The reported ghost is the odd shape in front of the left window. The homeowners themselves believe this to be a ghost and reported their findings to an Australian paper
This is a different but very common type of glitch caused by Google Maps. Due to privacy concerns Google added an automatic blur feature that would try to recognize things like faces and license plates. Since faces are very tricky to auto-detect sometimes it blurs out things that are not faces at all. This is what I believe is happening here, their program thought that this window should be blurred out and the part of the window that divides the panes(muntins) changes into oval shaped blurs.
I know these aren't the only cases and probably won't be the last, as more and more streets are covered by the street view program I'm sure we'll see many more reports.
-Rex
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