Addu City, Maldives – Maldivian surveying company and environmental consultant, Water Solutions Pvt Ltd has revealed on Facebook that the roads of Addu City can now be viewed in 360 mode after the team added high quality images of the Link Road in Addu City onto Google Street View.
In an interview , Technology Officer at Water Solutions, Ahmed Zahy Zuhair said that on the 9th of October, they took their Nctech iStar Pulsar+, capable of 11K 360° imaging, for a drive starting from Gan Airport terminal to the end of Hithadhoo, then from Elhe Dhidhi Magu (main road) around Addu Equatorial Hospital (AEH).
The main road of Feydhoo, Maradhoo-Feydhoo, and Maradhoo are to be imaged later as the roads are damaged and dusty due to previous work done on the roads. There are currently no plans to map smaller roads as uneven roads are detrimental to image quality. With this project, they hope to attract more tourists to Addu City.
He said that while the images have been uploaded, stitching work which allows for movement when clicking roads in google street view has been done up to Feydhoo as of now, and that when all the images from the project in Addu are stitched, it will allow for seamless movement through mapped roads. Zahy further said that stitching and processing work for over 1.5 Terabytes of images from the project are ongoing.
Take a look at their efforts below :
Zahy said that their venture into 360 imaging began after a colleague’s low quality 360° image of Maldivian resort got over 2million views. Now, after a huge investment going into the purchase of Google approved hardware, software and training, they have begun their first large scale imaging project. While this was done free of charge for the people of Addu, Water Solutions aims to do business with Resort Islands with their imaging technology .
Zahy explained that they can take 360 images of both outdoors and indoors, which can be used to make virtual tours of resorts and guesthouses that could prove to be great marketing tools. He hopes to see all of Maldives mapped and available on Google Street View in the future.
