[modeless]

What should Google be doing with it?

[eob]

As a complete non-gamer, the ability to walk around the earth with a VR headset would justify buying one to me.

There are so many cities I've always wanted to walk down the streets of!

[modeless]

As the parent comments mentioned, Google Earth VR already exists and it's awesome (disclaimer: I had a hand in creating it). It's as close as you can get to "walking down the streets" with current data. All the available 3D and Street View data is there.

[trafficante]

First off, THANK YOU to you and the rest of the Earth VR team. You’ve brought literal joy to many people through your work.

I brought my Quest Pro and a gaming laptop with me to visit a nursing home a few months back and took some of the residents on guided Earth VR tours of their hometowns/places that they remember fondly. I’ll never forget all the tearful smiles I witnessed that day, and it’s all thanks to you and your team.

Quick question: are these new 3D Tiles the same as what’s in Earth VR, or are they higher resolution/newer imagery? The video demo linked upthread looks incredibly crisp, but I’m wondering if that’s just an artifact of seeing it in 2D (the upclose castle textures on flyby looked a lot more like what I’m used to from Earth VR).

[tonightstoast]

This is a great idea. It would be interesting if Google had historical view of towns so in 50+ years I could see what it looked like when I was a kid.

[modeless]

There is a time slider in Street View today https://blog.google/products/maps/go-back-in-time-with-stree...

I think in Google Earth desktop there is (was?) a time slider for aerial imagery as well.

[modeless]

Always great to hear that people enjoy it :) I believe that this API uses the same up-to-date tiles as Google Earth VR and the 3D view in Google Maps. I saw some complaints on Twitter saying that maybe the last and highest level of detail is not available in the API but I haven't verified that myself. I don't currently work at Google and have no insider information.

[TheRealPomax]

Team up with microsoft and asobo.

[modeless]

They seem to be doing fine on their own. I prefer to have some competition.

[TheRealPomax]

What's wrong with companies teaming up for specific individual products? In this case, Flight Simulator. You license the technology with friendly fees and collab for the life of a single product. Just like all licenses.

(Also, no, MS/Asobo are not doing fine, their photogrammetry is renowned for looking like a molten hellscape, and the bing maps look pretty terrible compared to even plain gmaps, but it's MS so "it has to use Bing" =D)

[fetzu]

I thought it was Blackshark.AI doing that specific part of Flight Simulator. AFAIK they are, or at least were looking for to, also selling that capability to other companies; and they are certainly not “vendor locked” with MS’s data..

[hackernewds]

but what about capitalism?

[TheRealPomax]

What about it? Google charges MS/ASobo a "friendly" license fee, and MS/Asobo get a feature they can use to attract more players. All parties stand to gain concrete dollar amounts, the very backbone of capitalism.