Wellingtonia 42

A drive-by capture on the A31 eastbound, just past the Ringwood branch of the In-Excess family of garden centres. Snap above lifted from Google, showing the distinctive crown looming up in front of us.

From closer up. The doubled up trunk may be due to a failure in Google's cunning splicing technology - something one does not come across very often.

Doubling up still present but not quite as marked. Which prompted me to wonder how exactly Google does it. So off to Bing who turns up reference 3 which says Street View images start out as high resolution video images. Some of the technology and some of the leg-work may come from the people at reference 4, Immersive Media. From where I get to reference 5 and the next snap.

I am clearly not the only one to have wondered about all this, as there is a huge amount of stuff out there about all this. I dare say even to the point of there being competitions to find the oddest mistake in the splicing programs. But to get to those programs is going to take more time than I ought to spend on this sort of thing, fascinating though it might be...

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/wellingtonia-41.html.

Reference 2: https://www.in-excess.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-tech-behind-googles-street-view/.

Reference 4: https://immersivemedia.net/.

Reference 5: https://www.trekview.org/blog/2019/history-of-google-street-view-cameras/.

Reference 6: https://friendsoflv50.org.uk/. The oldest, floating, wooden lightship in the UK. A serious bit of maritime heritage from up north. Apparently something that the Immersive people are really proud of. But it would take me a while to learn how to drive it. Maybe someone younger who knows all about computer games?

Group search key: wgc.