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Streetsview in 2000

Redoing urgent matters, I set about long delayed ones, dismantling the rubble in the basement. Throwing a couple of boxes of audio and video cassettes, I came across a box with microcontrollers and CD-ROM drives. I could not resist the temptation to see what is on them, good time allows. It turned out to be a project carried out jointly with the Institute of Physical Education. A device was developed consisting of an exercise bike or treadmill and a computer. As you move, photos taken on the paths of parks and the streets of Moscow are displayed on the screen.

Under the cut, a description and several nostalgic photos from Red Square and Kamergersky Lane. It was in 2000.

The microcontroller read the speed from the simulator and processed the pressing of additional buttons mounted on the handle or steering wheel. This information entered the computer through the joystick port, as the simplest standard device.

The project was a pilot, so the implementation was in the form of an HTML document, viewed in a browser, for the desktop version, and in the form of a MultimediaToolbook for the simulator itself. The photo display speed depended on the speed of movement. At every point or at every step, you could turn your head in all directions and see what was there. For this, 8 photos were taken at each point. True, as I recall, you could only turn your head in the desktop version, and on the simulator you could only look ahead. We did not make additional head position sensors. At the entrance to the fork, to turn, you had to press the buttons on the steering wheel. Buttons were also mounted on the handle of the treadmill. Very similar to the turn signals. In the pedestrian version, you could go to shops and cafes. We thought that these would be the entry points to online stores of offline establishments.The cursor changes shape if it points to an object containing additional information. So it was possible to “poke” into memorial tablets, houses and monuments and receive information about them.

Several routes were prepared - parks Kuskovo, Tsaritsyno, Ostankino, streets - Tverskaya, Kamergersky, Red Square, Manege. For the track, the most elaborate was the Kuskovo Park, and for walking the Kamergersky Lane. A patent was obtained for this device, but its further fate is unknown to me.

Kuskovo





Red Square





Kamergersky Lane



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