Swedish coder Einar Öberg has hacked an impressive layer on top of Google Street View inspired by Lego building blocks. Open up Brick Street View in your browser and you can tour around any part of the world as if it was constructed in Lego, complete with toy cars and trees. It’s perfect if you’ve always wanted to see your city in Lego form but just never had the blocks or the time to do it yourself.
The software Öberg has put together creates a pixelated mosaic of blocks based on the colors of Google’s imagery — it doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s a cool bit of coding nevertheless. The addition of a Lego sky backdrop, complete with Lego sun, is a nice touch too. To see a location you simply drop your Lego character onto a street, just as you do in the original Google Street View.
If you’re interested in the software that powers Brick Street View, Öberg has provided an About page with a little bit more information. LDraw, BRIGL, GSVPano, GSVPanoDepth, ThreeJS, Google Places API, and Google App Engine are some of the technologies involved. The finished result depends on the quality of the depth data provided by Google, Öberg says.
It’s a fun way of spending a few minutes of your weekend, if nothing else. Also worth a look is an earlier project by Einar Öberg called Urban Jungle Street View — in this case the data pulled from Google’s database is covered with foliage, as if you’ve just stepped into a post-apocalyptic world abandoned by humanity. It has an eerie, The Last of Us-type feel about it, and it’s another impressive showcase for Öberg’s programming talents.
