Skip to main content

Google Earth VR now lets you explore Street View imagery from 85 countries

Google Earth VR - Street View
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Google has just enhanced its already impressive Earth VR experience, adding Street View imagery to make the virtual reality app even more immersive.

Up to now, you could fly around the planet like Superman, exploring locations from above using an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset. But now you can drop down to ground level to explore Street View imagery from 85 countries using the Google Earth VR app. The content comes from the Street View team as well as regular folks who’ve been contributing 360 photos to the online tool.

In a post outlining Earth VR’s new trick, Google’s Joanna Kim suggests a few choice spots where you might want to get started. They include AT&T Park in San Francisco, and Dubrovnik in Croatia, which Kim notes will be familiar to Game of Thrones fans.

Google Earth VR’s latest feature takes the app to a whole new level — in every sense of the expression — and looks set to make your sofa-based excursions even more real. Offering Street View imagery from so many locations around the world and embedding the functionality into the app should also prove useful for planning trips and checking out places before you go.

Besides the new Street View element, Google Earth VR lets you use the VR headsets’ hand controllers to pass high over countries, with the option to fly around and zoom in to landmarks and other places of interest for greater detail — check out Rome’s Colosseum, Switzerland’s Matterhorn, and Seattle’s Space Needle for some exciting Earth VR experiences. You can also drag the sun and sky around to quickly flip between day and night views.

Google launched Earth VR in 2016, breathing new life into the huge amount of Google Earth content it’s been gathering and creating in recent years. The app has been getting rave reviews, and several updates, like the one this week, are helping it to build on its initial success.

As we noted earlier, you’ll need either the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift headset to enjoy the new Google Earth VR feature. But if you have neither, you can still check out Street View in VR with a smartphone by downloading the Street View app for the Daydream and Cardboard viewers.

Also, if you’re interested to engage more deeply with Google Earth, check out our guide on how to get Google Earth Pro for free.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
9 best laptops of 2024: tested and reviewed
The MacBook Air on a white table.

To earn the crown as the best laptop in 2024, a device needs to have it all: gorgeous design, killer performance, a productive keyboard, long-lasting battery life, and much more.

Each of the laptops below has been vetted thoroughly by Digital Trends. Whether it's an affordable Chromebook or a top-of-the-line gaming laptop, they've all been subjected to real-world testing, as well as benchmark and battery tests, to collect enough data to objectively pit them against each other.

Read more
All the ways Intel Macs are still better than Apple Silicon Macs
cheap macbook deals

MacBooks are pretty amazing these days. Thanks to the efficiency of Apple Silicon, you get all-day battery life, as well as the ability to edit videos when unplugged from power. The new MacBook Air with the M3 chip is even good enough for gaming.

All of that is in contrast to the Intel Macs of the past.

Read more
This bundle deal saves you $1,000 on an Alienware PC and monitor
An Alienware Aurora R15 gaming desktop alongside a gaming monitor on a desk.

You don't have to go through gaming PC deals and monitor deals yourself because there are bundles like this one from Dell -- the Alienware Aurora R15 gaming desktop and the Alienware 34-inch curved QD-OLED gaming monitor for a package price of $2,900, which is $1,000 less the original price of $3,900. It's still not cheap, but you'll be getting a top-of-the-line gaming rig with just one purchase. You'll have to hurry with the transaction though, as we're not sure if the bundle will still cost cheaper than usual by tomorrow.

Why you should buy the Alienware Aurora R15 gaming PC and 34-inch curved QD-OLED gaming monitor
It's the Alienware Aurora R16 that sits on top of our list of the best gaming PCs, but its predecessor, the Alienware Aurora R15, remains a worthwhile purchase because of the power that it packs. It's equipped with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X processor, AMD Radeon RX 7900 graphics card, and 32GB of RAM that's the sweet spot for high-end gamers, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need. These specifications make it more than enough to run the best PC games without any issues. The gaming desktop also features a 1TB SSD for ample storage space, and it comes with Windows 11 Home pre-installed.

Read more