See your own neighborhood! Or someone else's! Or the Taj Mahal, if you want!
This uses a website called iStreetview. It should be noted that I am not affiliated with the makers of iStreetView or its downloader.
Warning: you will need a thumbnail! This will be a png or jpg file up to 1mb at 400x400. If I can find a free thumbnail generator, I'll post but they should be pretty "common". For now, just use any small png/jpg picture file. There's bunches of them at
Wincustomize.
First, navigate to
https://istreetview.com/. This will open a split window in your browser (I'm using Chrome for this). The location displayed is random. Note the "button" in the top of the right window that says "Download 360". This is actually a link to a popup download window for a program called "Street View Download 360". Press the green "Download Street View Download 360" to download the program. Go ahead and install it, it seems to have been around for a while, typos and all.
Once you've got the program installed, return your attention to the browser window pointed at istreetview. Hopefully you've closed the download popup, if not, then do so now. You should now be looking at the random Streetview that it loaded. I should point out that I found the browser code a little "flaky"'; just have some patience and play around with it and you should get what you want.
One way to start this is to search for the location that you want: look in the upper left of the left window and note the "Search" box. Start typing the location, it should autofill; press enter when happy. The left window will now move to the location. Use the mouse wheel to zoom, click and drag to navigate.
The other way is to zoom out, and click and drag your little man icon to the general area and zoom back in. Notice the highlighting that shows available Streetview locations. Play around: the window on the right will shift to different Streetviews when you are in colored areas. You can also "Toggle Streetview Coverage Area" by clicking the 4th button down in the lower right of the left window. Note the 7 buttons in the lower right of the left window. The top one is a marker pin (rest the mouse over them for descriptions), click that and note that your cursor changed. Fine tune your map position, then click at the desired location. Click in that little window that pops up and see the right window change to that location.
However you got it, the scene depicted in the right window is a 360 photo, so click and drag to see what you are about to get. When you are happy, you're going to need that little hashtag in the upper left of the right window, next to the paperclip: click it and it copies to your clipboard.
Now is when you need that little program that you downloaded. Open up "Street View Download 360" and note the box in the upper left labeled "Panorama ID". This is where you paste that hashtag that you copied. Above it, click the little file icon to the right of the "Location to save" line and browse to the location of your choice, put in a file name and click "Save". You can see the resolution that you will be using below; move further down and click "Download Panorama" and your new StreetView scene should show up where you chose!
Now to bring your new 360 Streetview into SteamVR Home! Start up SteamVR. Go to "Workshop" and click "Upload New Background". This will bring up the SteamVR Workshop Upload Tool. Leave the first line alone: we're loading a background. Next, add a name for it. I usually try to keep the file name and this name close to the same. Add a short description.
Show it where your thumbnail is, then the file. Set the visibility to Private (unless you have something good enough to share), give it a tag and click "Submit". At that point, you should see a window popup stating that it's uploading. When it's done, a Steam Workshop window will pop up; MAKE SURE THAT YOU CLICK SUBSCRIBE or you won't have access to it! Restart SteamVR and your new Streetview image should be available as a background in SteamVR!
Enjoy!
