A:
If voyeurism's your thing, sure, there are a few options for keeping an eye on us while you're out of town. There seem to be less of them than a few years ago and some of them aren't too reliable, frequently offline when we've checked them or, in the case of Boulder Station's at one point when we checked, having apparently fallen over and offering nothing more than a lopsided view of a satellite dish on the roof.
Many of them are best observed at night, when you get the full benefit of the illuminated cityscape, rather than a bunch of traffic, pedestrians, and construction, which typifies many views of the Strip by day. Here's what our extensive research into the topic has yielded:
- One of the better options is the Imperial Palace's webcam set-up, which, in fact, comprises four cameras, each with a different view (one of the hotel pool area, which is the least interesting/good quality, one extreme close-up of the Strip sidewalk immediately outside, and two different aerial wide shots of the Strip, one looking north and the other south, which are the cool ones). You can pick one camera or view all four simultaneously. The only drawback is that you do have to download some Activex software before you can access them and there's a username and password necessary in order to log on (ip and ip respectively when we tried, although we understand these are sometimes changed). Our IT department foresaw no problem downloading the software from this official casino site, however, and we've experienced no subsequent problems. The images aren't of the highest quality, but they're the closest to live action that we've seen, with virtually no time lag and pretty fluid real-time movement. Here's a link to get there: www.lasvegaswebcams.com
- Another good one is the Polo Towers cam or, more accurately, Polo Towers cams, since there are two of them. They offer some of the highest picture quality we've seen in a webcam, but they are subject to sporadic technical difficulties, so don't be surprised to get a blank/blurred screen or what looks like a snowstorm in the middle of August. On a good day, www.polotowers.com/centerstrip_cam.html offers views of the Project CityCenter construction site, while www.polotowers.com/strip_cam.html pans and zooms up and down the Strip, alternating wide and close-up views of New York-New York, Bellagio (including close-ups of the lake -- tune in at the right time and catch the fountain show), and Paris. It only refreshes each image every minute or so, from what we can tell, so it's more stilted than the IP's cameras, but it makes up for that in image quality.
- If you ever dreamed of being an "eye in the sky," here's your chance: The new Las Vegas Springs Preserve nature attraction features a real-time live video feed and is completely interactive, giving the user control over view and zoom. The images are extremely high quality and all in all it's a very nice set-up, just a shame that there's really nothing much to see! And remember not to pick your nose if you're visiting... Here's the link: www.springspreserve.org/cfml/webcam/index.cfml
- EarthCam offers three different live webcams at www.earthcam.com/usa/nevada/lasvegas/. All three refres
Update 20 July 2008
At the opening of this pool season the Hard Rock's webcam was noticeably absent. A note on their Web site said that it would be coming back, but so far there's been no sign of it and we suspect it's gone for good. For our current list of live webcams, which we try to keep as up to date as possible,
click here. And please drop us a line if you find a new one, or one that's no longer active.
08/08/2007 Thanks to the reader who wrote in with the following personal anecdote:
"Just a comment..not a question ... on the Live Cam question posted 8/8/07 ... when my kids missed mom (me) who was in Vegas on a girls' weekend away ... I went over to the IP and told the kids to log onto the IP web site ... I then stood by the entrance camera and waved to it ... they then got to "see" Mom REAL TIME! ... I then reminded them to clean their rooms ... and they decided they had enough of seeing Mom! LOL."
And, an LVA staffer's husband has put us onto another cool site that's worth checking out. It's not a web cam, but rather a series of aerial static cams that show views of nearly all the major Strip properties and allow you to pan, zoom, and even turn upside down! We've only just started playing with it ourselves, but it's kind fun (don't do the upside down thing if you have a hangover!) There are Java and Quicktime versions. Here's the link:
http://bigeyeinthesky.com/Default.asp?CID=Las_Vegas
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