At Google I/O, Google previewed a whole new way to understand your Google Maps route before you head out.
Last year, Google announced Immersive View for places. The immersive view in Google Maps uses computer vision and AI to fuse together billions of Street View and aerial images to create a digital model of the world. Now with the new Immersive View for routes, you can visualize a route before you go for driving, walking or cycling.
With Immersive View for routes, you’ll get a multidimensional experience that lets you preview bike lanes, sidewalks, intersections and parking along your route. Google Maps will also have a time slider that will allow you to see air quality information and how the route looks as the weather changes throughout the day. Using AI and historical driving trends, Google Maps will also simulate how many cars might be on the road at a given time.
Google will start the roll out of Immersive View for routes in the coming months in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin, Florence, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Paris, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Tokyo, and Venice.
Google today also announced the new Aerial View API allowing developers to easily integrate a 3D birds-eye video of a point of interest into their apps. Google also announced an experimental release of Photorealistic 3D Tiles via its Map Tiles API.
Google is opening up the high-res, 3D imagery behind Google Earth so developers can easily access the imagery to create immersive experiences unique to their brand without having to build the 3D map from scratch.
