Since it launched in 2007 as a Google Maps feature, Google Street View has expanded to include most of Europe, North and South America and Oceania. Its panoramic images have become a favourite digital destination for anyone interested in a virtual perspective on the world. Today, Street View travels well beyond the limits of camera cars to visit an incredible array of remote and notable locations - you can even ‘dive’ to see the Great Barrier Reef in 360° glory.
Expanding Street View to new and exciting places has recently added Tahiti to the list of beautiful locations it brings to life. Known as the ‘Queen of the Pacific’, Tahiti is the largest island in French Polynesia. The island is famed for its climate, beautiful beaches and hospitality, making it one of the world’s top travel and tourism destinations.
At the recent Google Maps Street View Summit in London, Christophe Courcaud from our French reseller partner, Tahiti360, told the fascinating story of their work to map and store the data needed for Tahiti for Street View. Founded in 2019, Tahiti360 is a Google Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) Partner and has ‘Street View Trusted’ status. Mapping Tahiti is part of a wider project that will cover all French Polynesia by the end of 2019.
Using 360° cameras mounted on the top cars, boats, jet skis, bikes and even golf carts, Christophe’s team set about collecting images from around the island for use on Street View, their own Tahiti portal site, as well as by a variety of third-party sponsors such as Avis.
To achieve the reliable ‘datacenter in a box’ infrastructure needed to support this complex and ambitious project, Tahiti360 implemented Scale Computing’s HC3 Virtualization Platform. For successful operation, they need to secure images and photos taken in 8K quality in order to be able to reuse them in the future. That requirement currently represents 12 TB of data that is replicated to a backup site 15kms away.
Christophe Courcaud from Tahiti360 told us, “the Scale Computing servers allow us to store and access our images and videos quickly. Plus, we are reassured in the knowledge that these are safe thanks to redundancy and weekly replication on our backup site.” You can view the work of Tahiti360 in all its panoramic beauty here.