In the last days of July 2012, among the news from the world of computer technology, a message appeared about the next project, which is likely to interest fans of ASCII art. A new service called ASCII Street View allows you to convert street panoramas to the ASCII character set.
A form of visual art, called ASCII art, originated in the days of computers that did not have the ability to display graphics. Drawing in such conditions could be imitated using digital, alphabetic characters and punctuation marks of the ASCII table, which came into use in the sixties of the XX century. As the capabilities of computers expanded, programs appeared for converting images into pseudo-graphics.
Unlike programs like ASCII Pic, Warlock, FIGlet, or online services that convert custom graphics to ASCII interleaving, ASCii Street View applies this conversion exclusively to photos from Google Street View. ASCII art lovers have an opportunity to see what panoramic street views look like in pseudo-graphic mode thanks to Peter Nitch, one of the Teehan + Lax employees. This is not the first time a Canadian programmer turns to this kind of art. In 2010, he launched the ASCIImeo service, which converts clips uploaded to video hosting Vimeo into a set of colored blocks or ASCII characters.
As the developer of ASCii Street View emphasized, when creating a new service, the main focus was on the speed of converting panoramas into text. The resulting image can be panned in the same way as Google Street View views in a more familiar format. It is also possible to switch from the multicolor mode, in which the processed picture is displayed by default, to green, which makes you remember the movie "The Matrix". To work correctly with ASCii Street View, you need a browser that implements the CORS specification. These include Firefox 8.0 and older or Google Chrome 13.0.
