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

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 depart — particularly if I’m going overseas. Not that I’m attempting to mitigate tradition shock, nevertheless it’s useful to know what the areas I’m visiting truly appear like. I favor figuring out how walkable the world round my lodge is and what sort of eating places are close by forward of time. Google Maps is after all my first alternative 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 allows 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 technology of PC headsets however nonetheless works on trendy {hardware}. It is probably not probably the most accessible model of Google Earth, nevertheless it’s a one-of-a-kind expertise that has caught with me and nonetheless provides first-person perspective immersion like nothing else on the market.

What makes Google Earth VR so particular? The app wastes no time to exhibit — the welcome tour opens with you suspended excessive above the Arches Nationwide Park in Utah on the daybreak. Press a button and time accelerates till the solar rises absolutely and the purple rocks beneath are bathed in a heat glow. You get a couple of seconds to stare upon this countless vista surrounding you, nevertheless it’s not lengthy earlier than you’re dropped in the midst of Tokyo and surrounded by tall buildings as a substitute. Lastly, it shuttles you thru a sequence of notable landmarks world wide, every at completely different occasions of day.

By the tip 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 international locations or shrink all the way down to floor degree and pressure your neck to see the highest of tremendous tall buildings. You have got 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 at all times 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 road degree and it feels such as you’re bodily there, simply with out the crowds or visitors round you. However even the most effective photogrammetry seems to be like an AI-generated mess whenever you’re inside spitting distance of it. Buildings flip mushy, vehicles look melted, and high-quality element disappears.

Fortunately then, the oldsters at Google employed a genius resolution — shifting a controller as much as your head switches you into Street View. There’s no higher strategy to clarify it than to say it’s like standing in a Road View photograph. You’re at human peak, free to go searching together with your head naturally. Higher but, you may teleport a couple of ft at a time to the following road view picture or cross the road to see a distinct perspective. You may “stroll” by way of a complete metropolis this manner, satirically emulating an open world sport.

If you happen to’re unable to journey attributable to mobility limitations, Google Earth VR could be the closest different on the market — and never in a gimmicky means. It provides a degree of presence that flat screens merely can’t match. From your individual residence, 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 record 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 alter 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 helpful. It is because it enables you to enter any handle, identical to the Maps app in your telephone, so you may shortly zero in on a selected location.

If I wish to see what the stroll from my lodge to the subway seems to be like for my upcoming journey, I can merely fly all the way down to the bottom degree and enter Road View. I did precisely this earlier than leaving for Malaysia final yr and strolling round in Road View helped me notice that town was way more car-centric than its Asian neighbors. It additionally helped me notice that one path to my lodge was way more accessible than one other. With this data, I picked a distinct mode of transport that required some extra strolling however didn’t drive me to cross an eight-lane highway.

In fact, you may’t get a real really feel of the neighborhood with out stay visitors or pedestrian exercise — this sadly isn’t Microsoft Flight Simulator with its shifting vehicles. However you may nonetheless glean lots about a spot simply by in search of clues within the atmosphere. Are retailers open throughout the day? Is the sidewalk effectively maintained? The record goes on.

For even the basics of journey planning, Google Earth VR beats passively searching maps on a telephone. And although the app hasn’t obtained any main updates through the years, it pulls the most recent Road View photos from Google’s servers. Any companies or storefronts you see within the app, you’ll doubtless 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 supplied was spectacular. However I roughly forgot about it — till I picked up a Meta Quest 3 final yr 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 resolution, nevertheless it’s the one sensible means for most individuals to expertise this app in 2025.

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

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