Google Earth’s Tour Guide feature beefed up with 100,000 new tours

By Trevor Mogg January 30, 2013

Google has announced a major update to parts of its Google Earth application for desktop, iOS and Android users.

Outlined in a post on Earth’s Google+ page on Tuesday, the update involves the beefing up of its Tour Guide feature.

“Today’s update adds over 100,000 new tours of popular sites, cities and places across 200 countries, as well as enhancements to existing tours,” the Mountain View company said in the post.

Tour Guide runs along the bottom of the Google Earth interface, offering up thumbnails of places of interest linked to the general area you’re viewing at the time. Click on a thumbnail and you’ll be flown over and around the point of interest, with tidbits of information pulled from Wikipedia appearing on screen during the tour.

Google says it’s increased the number of 3D flyovers, a much-needed move as flyovers of landmarks not rendered in 3D tend to leave you feeling a little, ahem, flat. It’s no fun, after all, flying around one of the world’s tallest structures if it’s sitting there on screen as flat as a steam-rollered sausage.

To further enhance the Tour Guide experience, users can explore relevant images from over a million user-generated Panoramio contributions.

“Each tour ends with a selection of photo thumbnails which were selected from Panoramio as the best representation of a given place,” Google explains in the post. “Clicking on one of the thumbnails enables a full screen photo experience.”

The new content is available with version 7 of Google Earth, which was rolled out last year, so as long as you’ve already upgraded, no further downloads will be required.

You can find out more about the Tour Guide feature here.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Web
Google

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Mobile

Google supercharges Search with new features

Search is the biggest Google product and at the I/O, the company is pushing its service to new levels. Earlier, Google introduced Multisearch which allows you to, for example, take a photo of an object, and base a search query around that photo. Now, the company has announced that it will be rolling out Multisearch with the additional "near me" variable and Scene Exploration features later this year.

Multisearch's "near me" variable allows you to search for a plate of food, find out what it's called, and find out where to eat it near you. It's like Shazam but for Search queries.

Mobile

Google unwraps several new and festive holiday features for Android

google announces festive new holiday features for android family bell feature

Google is closing out 2021 with a variety of new features for Android fans that are aimed at helping people get more out of this holiday season. The search giant rounded up the new collection of Android features in a blog post, and they include some new Android Auto enhancements, updated widgets for its media apps, and more.

First off, Google is introducing a new Family Bell feature to encourage togetherness and help everyone stay on track. It’s basically a Google Assistant feature that can be set up from an Android phone, speaker, or smart display that alerts you and everyone else in your family when it’s time to do something important.

Mobile

Google is bringing new Pixel 6 features to older Pixel devices

Bezel comparison of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.

The Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro come with a slew of features that include new hardware, new cameras, a Google Tensor chip, and more. Some of these are based on the new Tensor chip and require the SoC to function, while the rest are based on the software. The latter set of software-based features can be ported to previous-gen Pixel devices. And Google is now working on introducing such features to the older Pixel smartphones.

"As with all Pixel features, we aim to bring as many features as possible to older Pixels where technically possible — though it might take some time to develop and offer a different experience," a Google representative told Android Authority. However, there is no firm date for rollout to older Pixels at this point in time.