Google Maps Launches Immersive View to Help You Plan Your Next Trip

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When you want to know how to get around, Google Maps may be your most important tool with satellite, Live View, and Street View. Last week, Google Maps announced a major update that gives a new view, beyond satellite, street, and live views.

Google Maps’ latest tool, immersive view, provides a new view that may be the most useful view to help you plan a trip.

About Google Maps Immersive View

Google Maps immersive view lets you see an area as if you were flying with a jetpack around a city. With immersive view, you can get a close-up aerial view of landmarks, neighborhoods, streets, and more. Immersive view can also show what a place looks like at different times of day, with a variety of weather conditions, and how busy a place traditionally is at that day and time.

Google first announced its vision for immersive view last year and now has made it a reality. In developing immersive view, Google combined billions (with a “b”) of Street View and aerial images to give you the feeling as if you’re flying over the world.

In its announcement, Google explained the technology involved in developing immersive view: “To create these true-to-life scenes, we use neural radiance fields (NeRF), an advanced AI technique, (that) transforms ordinary pictures into 3D representations. With NeRF, we can accurately recreate the full context of a place including its lighting, the texture of materials and what’s in the background.”

Immersive view could help you plan your next trip by showing you what you’ll see, and how a place looks at different times of day and in certain weather conditions. A busyness layer in immersive view can show you when a place is traditionally more or less crowded. And immersive view can even show you the inside of some stores and restaurants.

Don’t miss => How Google Maps Can Help You Avoid Crowds at Stores, Restaurants and More

How to Use Google Maps Immersive View

Google Maps immersive view could be very useful when you’re planning an outing. For example, you could use immersive view to plan a trip to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Open the Google Maps app and app, and search for “Rijksmuseum”. Tap the immersive view section below:

You’ll see the museum as if you were flying over it. Swipe around to see where the main entrance is.

Then use the weather layer to see what the museum will look like with rainy weather conditions predicted for the afternoon:

Next, you could open the busyness layer and scroll to see how crowded the museum typically is at different times of day:

Want to visit the museum at a less busy time? Plan to eat lunch first — you can virtually fly around the area to find a nearby restaurant:

You can even see inside the restaurant with immersive view to check out the decor and ambiance:

You could then use immersive view to find your way back to the museum.

Availability

Google is currently rolling out immersive view to the Google Maps app for Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad). According to The Verge, immersive view will come to the desktop version of Google Maps “over time.” See, The Verge, Google Maps’ Immersive View is now available across five cities

At launch, immersive view covers London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. With updates in the coming months, Google Maps will expand immersive view to more cities, including Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice.

Your Thoughts

Are you interested in using Google Maps immersive view to plan a future trip? Would seeing a combination of aerial and street views in immersive view be useful for you? Would you like to view places according to the weather conditions and busyness during the day?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!

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*Background photo in top image via Shutterstock and PicMonkey Pro