Google Maps’ new ‘Immersive View’ combines Street View with satellites

A new mode for Maps was launched on Wednesday to give users a more real-life look at the places they are going before they even go. The new Immersive View is like a Street View in the sky, where you can look over a location from above to get a sense of the neighborhood and then drop to street level to see the specific spots you might want to hit up. You get a quasi-augmented reality look at a park, street corner or beach spot when you look at Maps.

The images behind Immersive View are all computer-generated. It looks like you are playing a video game in a real world. How can we combine that with Street View? How do we make it feel like you were there?

The feature was described as offering the magic of the giant zoom of the Earth. She said that they had demos years ago and it was like, "Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, The technology has come a long way in making it feel natural.

Immersive View only works in a few neighborhoods in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. Soon, more will be coming.

Image: Google

As it pushes on making Maps a more live, 3D experience, it is also opening some of that experience up to the app community. Third-party developers can now use the Live View augmented reality feature of Maps, which gives them super precise location tracking in the real world and an augmented reality layer on top. There are apps that help you find a place to park your scooter, or help you navigate stadiums, or just let you play augmented reality games with dragons in the real world.

The app for getting from place to place is no longer just for that. It is becoming a digitalized version of the real world, which could have huge implications as augmented reality gets bigger. With Immersive View, it is starting to be obvious how much data the company has.