Google Maps: Discover Cities In 3d With Immersive View

If you find that Google Maps lacks a bit of relief, you will love the Immersive View feature! This new feature that uses artificial intelligence allows you to view cities in 3D and fly over them as if you were a bird! We invite you to discover this amazing innovation and the places concerned by this 3D immersion.

What is Immersive View?

Immersive View is a recent feature of Google Maps that was unveiled by the American giant in May 2021.

As the name suggests, this feature allows total, 3D immersion in the locations involved.

Google, which had already used artificial intelligence to improve the quality of its translations, is now using AI to boost its mapping service.

What are the locations involved?

Of course, since the Immersive View feature is very new, it does not yet cover the whole world.

Initially limited to 250 monuments such as the Tokyo Tower or the Acropolis of Athens when it was launched, this novelty has just been extended to 5 major cities in the world.

The cities that are now fully available in 3D are:
- London
- New York
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco
- Tokyo

Moreover, Google announced that this option will be extended to other cities in Europe in the coming months. The American giant mentioned the names of Dublin, Amsterdam, Florence and Venice!

Immersive View, what does it change?

The new Immersive View feature will probably completely change the way we use Google Maps!

In covered areas, it is possible to fly over the streets like a bird or a drone and then swoop down to a location represented in 3D with photorealistic textures.

For now, this feature is only available on Google Maps apps for Android and iOS. It will then be expanded bit by bit on the browser version.

What is it for?

This innovation was not created just to look pretty, but rather to help users find their way around, even in cities that are completely unknown to them.

Thanks to the Immersive View option in 3D, it is possible to observe places from all angles with fluidity, which is very useful when preparing a trip for example...

This tool even has even more bluffing features such as real-time weather and a time slider allowing to display the same place at different times of the day. Thus, one can realize the evolution of traffic or the frequentation of a site depending on the time.

How is this possible?

To make this 3D immersion possible, Google combined billions of images from Street View with aerial views of the cities involved with the help of artificial intelligence.

The 3D rendering is also created by an AI that applies photographic textures to the images, reconstructs the effects of light on surfaces and the weather conditions of the place in real time.

If it's raining where you want to go, you'll be able to see drops of water falling under a sky darkened by clouds! And the local weather is not the only practical information the app will give you.

Google also announced that the Indoor Live View feature that allows you to navigate inside buildings in augmented reality is going to be rolled out to 1,000 new locations, airports, train stations and malls around the world.

Already available in London, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Tokyo, Indoor Live View will be expanded in the coming months to Barcelona, Dublin and Madrid!

Live View uses your smartphone's camera to display information in augmented reality thanks to artificial intelligence. Soon, all you have to do is hold your smartphone in the middle of a street to easily locate nearby services and restaurants.

As you can see, with its increasingly impressive features, Google Maps is more than ever the essential application for all globetrotters who want to explore the world!