By now, just about everyone is familiar with Google Street View. The interesting (and sometimes creepy) technology allows you to get right down to street level, panning around and moving up and down streets to see things, just as you would when walking around on those streets. It can really be a handy tool to look around an area from a closer perspective than just a map or satellite view. This evening, though, I stumbled across a fascinating video for a developing Microsoft technology called Street Slide. Given time, I think this technology could surpass Street View.

I highly recommend watching the whole video; though it can get a little overly-technical at times, it is a very interesting demonstration of Street Slide’s technical merits. If the final product is as smooth as this demonstration, it definitely looks like it would be much easier to navigate than Street View. As the video points out, you are limited to individual “bubbles” with Street View, while the slick execution of Street Slide allows you to zoom out to the streetscape and move around quickly and easily.

As Engadget points out, this does have a long way to go before anything will be ready for release:

Unfortunately, don’t expect this to be released anytime soon as the team has only processed about 2400 panoramas so far covering just 4 kilometers of streets.

Obviously, putting this sort of technology together on a nationwide (or even city-wide) scale is going to take some time. That being said, this is one product I will certainly be keeping an eye on. Furthermore, I’m sure this sort of a challenge will push Google to innovate further with their mapping products. Isn’t competition great?