With over a billion people using Google Maps to navigate, the tech giant is bringing an immersive view to the maps. With the new immersive view, users will be able to experience what a neighbourhood, landmark, restaurant or popular venue is like — and get accustomed before visiting the place. “So whether you’re traveling somewhere new or scoping out hidden local gems, immersive view will help you make the most informed decisions before you go,” says Miriam Daniel, VP, Google Maps.
Google will use advances in 3D mapping and machine learning, using which it will fuse billions of aerial and street-level images to create a new, high-fidelity representation of a place. These technologies will power the new immersive view. This immersive view will work on just about any phone and device. The immersive view will start rolling out for Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo later this year and more cities will be added soon.
Daniel explains in the blog post: “Say you’re planning a trip to London and want to figure out the best sights to see and places to eat. With a quick search, you can virtually soar over Westminster to see the neighbourhood and stunning architecture of places, like Big Ben, up close. With Google Maps’ information layered on top, you can use the time slider to check out what the area looks like at different times of day and in various weather conditions, and see where the busy spots are.”
Google Maps has been there for 15 years and is one of the most popular navigation apps across the world. In all these years, Google has mapped around 1.6 billion buildings and over 60 million kilometres of roads to date. Some remote and rural areas have previously been difficult to map, due to the scarcity of high-quality imagery and distinct building types and terrain. And to address this, Google is using computer vision and neural networks to detect buildings at scale from satellite images. As a result, Google has increased the number of buildings on Google Maps in Africa by 5X since July 2020, from 60 million to nearly 300 million.
Google has also doubled the number of buildings mapped in India and Indonesia this year. Globally, over 20 per cent of the buildings on Google Maps have been detected using these new techniques.
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