Available today, with more cities coming later this year
Source: Google
Back in May, Google announced a slick new feature for Google Maps called Immersive View. It lets you virtually explore a city from a birds-eye, similar to Apple Maps’ Flyover. At its Search AI event in Paris today, Google announced that Immersive View is going live starting today in a handful of cities around the world.
Immersive View combines Street View and aerial imagery into something that looks sort of like Microsoft Flight Simulator with better detail. Google has said that Immersive View helps you “understand the vibe of a place before you go;” it shows a fancy rendering of the area as seen from above, plus information you’d expect from Google Maps like traffic conditions and restaurants in the area — you can even virtually go inside some businesses to take a peek around.
You’ll be able to check out Immersive Views of London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo in Google Maps starting today, and Google says Immersive View is coming to Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice “in the coming months.”
Google also gave a couple of updates about Maps’ Live View augmented reality feature. In the next few months, Maps users in Barcelona, Dublin, and Madrid will be able to use Live View to see information about nearby businesses with a feature called Search in Live View. Search in Live View came to London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo late last year.
Indoor Street View is also expanding in a big way. Google says it’s bringing indoor Live View guidance to “more than 1,000 new airports, train stations, and malls in Barcelona, Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Paris, Prague, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, and Taipei” in the next few months.
Finally, Google announced a Maps feature it’s calling “glanceable directions” that lets you see a simplified version of your trip information from Google Maps’ route overview screen (the one you see when you enter a destination and tap Directions) or your phone’s lock screen. These glanceable directions show your route progress, your estimated ETA in real time, and where you need to turn next. It’s also rolling out — you guessed it — “in the coming months.”
