Google plans more updates to Google Maps later this year, including a near-photorealistic, immersive view of the environment. As if filmed by a drone, users can get a bird's-eye view of a city's details, landmarks, traffic and weather.
To make it happen, Google stitches billions of satellite and Street View images together and, through advances in 3D mapping and machine learning, generates a high-resolution image of a city that Google has dubbed “Immersive View.” Using the example of London, Google showed how the map view changes from a top view to a bird's eye view deep in the city, like a virtual drone flight. The example of Westminster in London showed that Google Maps will in future offer an area for the new view in the detailed view of a sight.
Watch traffic and weather “live”
In the immersive view, you can jump from one sight to another, such as Big Ben, and you can also see more details on the map, such as the current traffic situation or the weather can be called up. Using a timeline in the lower area of the screen, users can observe “live” how the weather will develop over the coming hours. Appropriately, Google Maps animates the sky and also renders expected rain showers.
Fly from the street to the restaurant
The change in buildings and restaurants is impressive. From the Street View view, the new Google Maps will be able to switch smoothly to the interior view of a restaurant, for example (in the video from 8:50 a.m.), as if Google had also flown over this place with a drone. As Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained in the keynote, the view is generated solely from photos using neural rendering. According to Google, the immersive view works on almost every smartphone and similar devices.
The immersive view is planned to be offered to the cities of Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo later this year. Other cities are being planned, however, explained Google.
Climate-friendly route planning for Europe
In addition, Google announced that the climate-friendly route planning in Google Maps, i.e. to bring navigation not to the quickest, but to the most fuel-efficient route, after it has already been introduced in the USA and Canada, to Europe as well. A screenshot from the Berlin region shows that this also means Germany.
< h2 class="text-width text-h2" id="section_live_view_fuer_developers">Live View for developers
Relevant for developers is the free provision of Live View via the ARCore Geospatial API so that third-party apps can also use the feature in the future. Live View is used in Google Maps to display helpful arrows and instructions directly on the display over the real image using augmented reality. The function can be helpful when navigating on foot on the street or in complex buildings such as airports, shopping malls or train stations. Live View can also be used to find the reserved seat or toilets in a stadium, or to offer AR-enabled games as an overlay of the real world.