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Google Maps’ Immersive Immersive View feature, which lets you virtually explore landmarks, is finally getting a major upgrade in five major cities around the world, making it easier to find your way around.
When the feature was announced at Google I/O 2022, Immersive View enabled people to virtually explore hundreds of landmarks, from the Tokyo Tower to the Acropolis of Athens. Using a mix of aerial and street views – along with some AI assistance – Immersive View can show you an accurate 3D model of the tourist destination, giving you an idea of the location’s layout and size. It can also provide you with data from Google Maps, including visitor ratings, times when the location is usually busier and quieter, and what the weather is like.
While Immersive View was pretty neat, it was admittedly limited in scope. That’s why we’re excited to hear that Google is expanding the feature to five major cities around the world: London, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Tokyo – ironically, the capital of France is missing from this list, despite the announcement during the Google’s “Live from Paris” event.
Instead of taking a virtual tour of just a few sights in these locations, you can virtually explore the entire city. Along the way you can collect useful information about the main attractions, as well as about parks, restaurants and other destinations you might want to visit.
It is annoying that Immersive View is still very limited even after this launch. The world reportedly has 10,000 cities (opens in new tab) in it – so immersive viewing currently covers 0.05% of them. Google plans to roll out the feature to four more cities in the coming months — Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice — but it’ll probably be a few years before we can rely on it for every trip.
In addition to Immersive View, Google has also announced that the similar Live View feature will be rolling out to indoor spaces in Barcelona, Frankfurt, London, New York, Paris, Sydney, Taipei and other cities in the coming months.
Live View uses your Android or iOS phone’s camera to help you explore a city with a handy AR overlay. You can rely on floating arrows to point you in the direction of your destination and see details about locations you pass along the way if you want to take a break for a bite to eat or run errands.
With Indoor Live View, you can do the same for museums, malls, and airports while navigating them from the inside. Google promises it will help you find stairs and elevators, restrooms and taxi ranks.
If you want to take advantage of the useful tools Google Maps has available today, check out these five Google Maps features you may not know about.