Google’s annual I/O company event in Mountain View, California is one of the biggest tech events of the year as the internet giant announces all of its biggest and latest updates. Yesterday kicked off this year’s event with a slew of announcements so today we here at Softonic are going to focus on some of the best updates to apps that Google announced. We are starting with Google Maps.
Over the years, Google Maps has grown into a massive app that often stands in for regular Google Search itself. At its heart though it is still about the exploration of the real world and this latest Immersive View update, announced at I/O yesterday, offers some incredible features to help you do just that.
Google is calling Immersive View “a new way to explore on Maps”, with the feature designed to give users a way to actually experience areas, neighborhoods, and cities from their mobiles. This means that if you are ever planning a trip to a city that has Immersive View enabled you will be able to fly over a virtual reproduction of the city to get an idea of all the architecture, learn about opening times and weather conditions, and see where the busiest places are and when they will be busiest. The feature even allows you to go inside some buildings!
This is all possible thanks to all the Google Maps updates that have come before it. While making the Immersive View announcement, Google said it was “thanks to advances in computer vision and AI that allow us to fuse together billions of Street View and aerial images to create a rich, digital model of the world.”
Google also claims that the new feature will be able to run on just about any device, which means you won’t have to worry if you haven’t got the latest iPhone, Google Pixel, or Samsung device. That’s great news as too often newer features push us towards newer devices. The feature will start in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo later this year with Google promising more cities will get Immersive View soon.
If you are a big Google Maps fan, why not check out our 26 Google Maps tricks and Tips to see if you are getting the most out of the versatile navigation app.
