Six months ago now Google launched a VR version of its Google Earth software for the HTC Vive and to this day it remains one of the best experiences in the industry. There are some updates we’d love to see to the platform, though, and we might get some of them soon.
Google is teasing a “brand new” Google Earth experience that it’s set to unveil on April 18th, 8:30 AM ET at New York’s Whitney Museum of Art. No other details about the experience have been revealed, and it’s very likely that any update would mainly apply to the traditional version of the service that anyone can use rather than the VR version specifically. Still, any such tweaks could feasibly apply to both versions, so we’re still hoping to have at least some VR-relevant news from the event.
Earth currently allows you to visit various locations on the planet and view them in 3D. Tokyo springs to life like a model train set that you can explore in great detail, for example, or you could soar over Yosemite National Park like a bird. It’s an amazing piece of software, though it could definitely benefit from a few updates. We’d love to see more locations in 3D for example, as many non-American sites are simply the flat 2D pictures you’re used to seeing on a screen.
We also want to see it come to more headsets. Google’s Tilt Brush finally made the jump from Vive to the Oculus Rift earlier this year, and there’s no reason this shouldn’t do the same. It would also be great to get some version of the software on Google’s own mobile VR ecosystem, Daydream, which already has staple apps like StreetView and YouTube on it.
