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

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 attempting to mitigate tradition shock, however it’s useful to know what the areas I’m visiting really seem 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 alternative for this job, and I’ve spent hours mindlessly tapping away.

However there’s a greater method. Almost a decade in the past, Google quietly launched an app that permits you to roam across the complete 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 trendy {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 morning time. Press a button and time accelerates till the solar rises absolutely and the pink 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 course of Tokyo and surrounded by tall buildings as a substitute. Lastly, it shuttles you thru a sequence of notable landmarks around the globe, every at totally different instances 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 possibly can fly your self as much as float above complete nations or shrink right down to floor stage and pressure your neck to see the highest of tremendous tall buildings. You’ve gotten the choice to rotate the world round you, change views, or steadily drift via 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 while you’re in a metropolis the place Google has collected detailed 3D imagery like Tokyo, New York, and Paris. Scale your self right 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 seems like an AI-generated mess while you’re inside spitting distance of it. Buildings flip mushy, automobiles look melted, and positive element disappears.

Fortunately then, the parents at Google employed a genius resolution — transferring a controller as much as your head switches you into Avenue View. There’s no higher option to clarify it than to say it’s like standing in a Avenue View picture. You’re at human top, free to go searching along with your head naturally. Higher but, you possibly can teleport just a few ft at a time to the following avenue view picture or cross the road to see a unique perspective. You may “stroll” via a whole metropolis this fashion, mockingly emulating an open world recreation.

For those who’re unable to journey resulting from mobility limitations, Google Earth VR could be the closest different on the market — and never in a gimmicky method. It gives a stage of presence that flat screens merely can’t match. From your individual residence, you possibly can 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 listing of well-known landmarks that you would be able to go to immediately. Even higher, you’re not caught with no matter lighting situations the true world had when the imagery was captured. With a flick of your wrist, you possibly can 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 is because it enables you to enter any deal with, identical to the Maps app in your telephone, so you possibly can shortly zero in on a selected location.

If I wish to see what the stroll from my resort to the subway seems like for my upcoming journey, I can merely fly right down to the bottom stage and enter Avenue View. I did precisely this earlier than leaving for Malaysia final yr and strolling round in Avenue View helped me understand that the town was much more car-centric than its Asian neighbors. It additionally helped me understand that one path to my resort was rather more accessible than one other. With this info, I picked a unique mode of transport that required some extra strolling however didn’t drive me to cross an eight-lane street.

After all, you possibly can’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 possibly can nonetheless glean rather a lot about a spot simply by searching for clues within the surroundings. Are retailers open through the day? Is the sidewalk properly maintained? The listing goes on.

For even the basics of journey planning, Google Earth VR beats passively looking maps on a telephone. And regardless that the app hasn’t obtained any main updates through the years, it pulls the newest Avenue 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 provided was spectacular. However I roughly forgot about it — till I picked up a Meta Quest 3 final yr and determined to revisit my outdated Oculus recreation 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 first rate router for wi-fi streaming. The thought is that your PC renders the sport and streams the output to the headset. It might seem to be a janky resolution, however it’s the one sensible method for most individuals to expertise this app in 2025.

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

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 may nonetheless get your palms on the {hardware}, go see the world whereas it’s nonetheless on-line.