Google 360° views: how to create & post

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I'm kinda new at this this, so kindly be patient. I have a Phantom 4 Pro, and I have used it to take 360° shots, and I have even got some software (Microsoft ICE: Image Composite Editor) to stitch those views into a flat .jpg picture that zooms very nicely.

What I would LIKE to be able to do is make the 360° views that are published on Google Street view, but I have not figured out how to do that yet. Eventually, I would put my 360° scenes on Google maps and let the world see them. Of course, it is easy to do if you download their app into your phone, and then use your phone to take the pictures. Unless I am mistaken, that isn't a method that will work with my drone as a source for the pictures.

A full solution would be knowing what software can stitch my flat photos into a 360° viewable file, and then learning how to upload said image to Google for publication. Right now, I am almost clueless. Everything I find on the internet seems to be telling me to use my phone.

Any advice?
 
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I'm kinda new at this this, so kindly be patient. I have a Phantom 4 Pro, and I have used it to take 360° shots, and I have even got some software (Microsoft ICE: Image Composite Editor) to stitch those views into a flat .jpg picture that zooms very nicely.

What I would LIKE to be able to do is make the 360° views that are published on Google Street view, but I have not figured out how to do that yet. Eventually, I would put my 360° scenes on Google maps and let the world see them. Of course, it is easy to do if you download their app into your phone, and then use your phone to take the pictures. Unless I am mistaken, that isn't a method that will work with my drone as a source for the pictures.

A full solution would be knowing what software can stitch my flat photos into a 360° viewable file, and then learning how to upload said image to Google for publication. Right now, I am almost clueless. Everything I find on the internet seems to be telling me to use my phone.

Any advice?
OK - no one else has chipped in so I'll do my best.

I use the Litchi program, Litchi for DJI Mavic / Phantom / Inspire / Spark which has a panorama function, to take the necessary pics with my P3P. Your P4 Pro may well have this function in the DJI app, but I'm not sure and perhaps others can advise.

I don't do 'true' 360 spheres' because I can't be bothered to mess around closing the open part at the top of the panorama. But I get a pretty good zoomable and navigable 360-degree spherical panorama for my trouble.. I use both ICE and PTGui but as you already have ICE and it's free, I''ll focus on that program only.

For a PC, ICE, Download Image Composite Editor (64 bit) from Official Microsoft Download Center will happily stitch your flat multiple photos from Litchi into a spherical panorama by warping the perspective of the stitched photos. But if you try to view it merely with a .jpg viewing program, then it'll look strange and it won't be a 360-degree spherical view.

To view on a PC, what you need is a special program designed for viewing 360-degree panoramas... I use this one... Download For me, it's always worked perfectly and the spherical panorama is navigable either by mouse or by arrow buttons...

As regards being able to upload them to Google Street View, that I have never done - but I guess if ICE produces a warped, stitched image for you, which you can view and navigate correctly with FSPviewer, then I guess that's probably a good start. :)

Here's how you do it, apparently... Publish and connect 360 photos with the Street View app - Google Maps Help
 
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Ok, thanks!

Now as to ICE, I knew it made "rectilinear" jpeg images, but how do you get it to close the two sides into a spherical picture?

With respect to warped image? I just crop the blue sky off. Since I've been doing only the rectilinear .jpg, I was cropping the bottom flat too.
 
Ok, thanks!

Now as to ICE, I knew it made "rectilinear" jpeg images, but how do you get it to close the two sides into a spherical picture?

With respect to warped image? I just crop the blue sky off. Since I've been doing only the rectilinear .jpg, I was cropping the bottom flat too.
You don't - the finished panorama is just a simple warped, jpg-type image. In the version of ICE that I currently have, I select 'spherical' at the 'stitch' stage - see pic attached. I had to check as I normally use PTGui. The prop images are in the pic because I had the '+30 degrees' setting enabled in Litchi.
Pic.jpg
The viewing as a seeming-360 image 'magic' is performed by the viewing program, one of which I linked to.

Yes, I crop too but I don't like to lose any of the image, so I always leave some black at the top when viewed - IMHO it's no problem.
 
I'll give that a try again. I think I missed that "spherical" option somewhere along the line.
 
I have made spherical photos with my M2Z many times, and posted them on Kuula.com for free to share with others, using the Kuula viewer in any browser. However, I have to change the photo metadata, camera mfg to Ricoh, and camera model to "Ricoh Theta S", using Windows Explorer to edit this metadata. Just right click the file, click properties at the bottom.

That said, I have unsuccessfully posted any of my spherical photos on Google Maps, even though I tried, and followed their directions. It's really hard to find directions using a PC, I'm not sure they exist. But with android phones I found directions to upload a .jpg file that's a spherical, which resides on the phone. But when I did that by transferring my PC spherical image to my phone, and uploaded it to Google Maps per their instructions, it didn't work. I'm not sure why, even though the same file works with Kuula.com, and it does adhere's to Google's requirement for the photo resolution to be 2:1 ratio, width to height.

1587597662762.png
 
Ahh. Thanks. Sort of...

I didn't really want to hear that it was impossible. Kudo's for your effort though! ;)
You saved me the time of trying the same stuff.

I'm speculating that Google only wants original pics from a phone they can trace, using only their phone app. Or something like that.
 

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