A New Way To Widow Shop

Three demensional programs such as Google Earth allow online viewer to see 3-D views of any destination they choose. Now a company that goes by the name of EveryScape is using this technolgy to bring online 3-D shopping to consumers in their homes. EveryScape is charging companies about $250 to $2,000, depending on the size of the space, to create an indoor tour of the business and to display it for a year. Many businesses in Cambridge and Lexington have signed up, including the Harvard Coop in Cambridge, the university’s main store for books and merchandise bearing the Harvard seal.
Visitors to the Cambridge Web site will be able walk down a virtual version of Harvard Square’s red brick walkways and, at the click of a mouse, inspect three floors of merchandise at the Coop, or, if they have a sweet tooth, repair to a nearby ice cream parlor and check out the flavors.

Rather than being an imaginary place like, the online virtual community Second Life, he said, “EveryScape is taking a real place, Harvard Square, and creating a virtual world that is modeled closely on it.”
To capture images of streetscapes for this virtual world, EveryScape has been dispatching cars with four standard digital single-lens reflex cameras mounted to the roof — pointing east, west, north and south — through the streets of Cambridge, Lexington, and other cities where they are mapping public spaces, Mr. Oh said. Every 50 feet or so, the driver presses a button to take a panoramic photograph that is the basis for a rendering that simulates three dimensions.