This forgotten Google app turns the Earth into an open-world sport

Once I’m planning a visit to a brand new vacation spot, I attempt to get a really feel for the place earlier than I go away — particularly if I’m going overseas. Not that I’m making an attempt to mitigate tradition shock, however it’s useful to know what the areas I’m visiting really appear like. I want understanding how walkable the realm round my resort is and what sort of eating places are close by forward of time. Google Maps is after all my first selection for this process, and I’ve spent hours mindlessly tapping away.

However there’s a greater means. Practically a decade in the past, Google quietly launched an app that permits you to roam across the whole world and truly really feel such as you’re standing in it. I’m speaking about Google Earth VR, an app designed for the primary era of PC headsets however nonetheless works on fashionable {hardware}. It is probably not essentially the most accessible model of Google Earth, however it’s a one-of-a-kind expertise that has caught with me and nonetheless gives first-person perspective immersion like nothing else on the market.

What makes Google Earth VR so particular? The app wastes no time to display — the welcome tour opens with you suspended excessive above the Arches Nationwide Park in Utah on the first light. Press a button and time accelerates till the solar rises totally and the purple rocks beneath are bathed in a heat glow. You get just a few seconds to stare upon this limitless vista surrounding you, however it’s not lengthy earlier than you’re dropped in the midst of Tokyo and surrounded by tall buildings as an alternative. Lastly, it shuttles you thru a collection of notable landmarks around the globe, every at totally different occasions of day.

By the top of the tour, you’re familiarized with the controls and left to discover. That is the place Google Earth VR shines — you may fly your self as much as float above whole nations or shrink all the way down to floor stage and pressure your neck to see the highest of tremendous tall buildings. You will have the choice to rotate the world round you, change views, or step by step drift by way of a metropolis like a drone. It’s all easy motion and also you all the time really feel such as you’re in management.

The Earth VR app additionally actually comes into its personal whenever you’re in a metropolis the place Google has collected detailed 3D imagery like Tokyo, New York, and Paris. Scale your self all the way down to avenue stage and it feels such as you’re bodily there, simply with out the crowds or visitors round you. However even one of the best photogrammetry appears to be like like an AI-generated mess whenever you’re inside spitting distance of it. Buildings flip mushy, automobiles look melted, and fantastic element disappears.

Fortunately then, the parents at Google employed a genius answer — transferring a controller as much as your head switches you into Avenue View. There’s no higher strategy to clarify it than to say it’s like standing in a Avenue View picture. You’re at human peak, free to go searching along with your head naturally. Higher but, you may teleport just a few toes at a time to the subsequent avenue view picture or cross the road to see a special perspective. You possibly can “stroll” by way of a whole metropolis this manner, mockingly emulating an open world sport.

In the event you’re unable to journey because of mobility limitations, Google Earth VR is perhaps the closest various on the market — and never in a gimmicky means. It gives a stage of presence that flat screens merely can’t match. From your individual dwelling, you may stand on the base of the Eiffel Tower, hover over the Golden Gate Bridge, or drift above the Sydney Opera Home.

The app features a built-in checklist of well-known landmarks you could go to immediately. Even higher, you’re not caught with no matter lighting circumstances the true world had when the imagery was captured. With a flick of your wrist, you may rotate the solar’s place within the sky to vary the time of day, casting lengthy shadows from buildings or nailing the desolate look in a desert at midnight.

However whilst a frequent traveler, Google Earth VR is extremely useful. It’s because it helps you to enter any handle, similar to the Maps app in your cellphone, so you may shortly zero in on a selected location.

If I need to see what the stroll from my resort to the subway appears to be like like for my upcoming journey, I can merely fly all the way down to the bottom stage and enter Avenue View. I did precisely this earlier than leaving for Malaysia final 12 months and strolling round in Avenue View helped me understand that town was way more car-centric than its Asian neighbors. It additionally helped me understand that one path to my resort was far more accessible than one other. With this data, I picked a special mode of transport that required some extra strolling however didn’t pressure me to cross an eight-lane highway.

After all, you may’t get a real really feel of the neighborhood with out dwell visitors or pedestrian exercise — this sadly isn’t Microsoft Flight Simulator with its transferring automobiles. However you may nonetheless glean loads about a spot simply by searching for clues within the surroundings. Are retailers open throughout the day? Is the sidewalk properly maintained? The checklist goes on.

For even the basics of journey planning, Google Earth VR beats passively looking maps on a cellphone. And although the app hasn’t obtained any main updates through the years, it pulls the newest Avenue View pictures from Google’s servers. Any companies or storefronts you see within the app, you’ll possible nonetheless encounter in the true world.

I first tried Google Earth VR years in the past on an unique Oculus Rift, again when true digital actuality was nonetheless a novelty and required drilling three infrared cameras into my wall. Nonetheless, the sense of scale and freedom it provided was spectacular. However I roughly forgot about it — till I picked up a Meta Quest 3 final 12 months and determined to revisit my previous Oculus sport library.

Google Earth VR doesn’t run natively on the Quest, although. You’ll want a VR-capable PC with a good GPU and both a USB-C cable or respectable router for wi-fi streaming. The thought is that your PC renders the sport and streams the output to the headset. It could look like a janky answer, however it’s the one sensible means for most individuals to expertise this app in 2025.

Setup complexity and {hardware} price apart, Google Earth VR has by no means regarded higher than on the present crop of headsets. The improved visible constancy makes it an nearly surreal expertise that I believe everybody ought to expertise. And but, the app nearly sits on the verge of abandonment at the moment.

I used to be a bit stunned that the app nonetheless pulls in dwell 3D and Avenue View information from Google’s servers, however that entry might cease at any second. So if you happen to’re even remotely curious and might nonetheless get your fingers on the {hardware}, go see the world whereas it’s nonetheless on-line.