![]() They want you to feel and remember the journeys you take as you devour every corner of the places you are exploring. Podwal explained that his team didn’t feel that the standard locomotion systems of teleportation or joystick walking would work for this particular project. Google Earth VR’s primary locomotion system is flight. In a second I am miles above the city, and by pointing my Vive controller this way or that and clicking the pad with my thumb, I soar anywhere I choose in the bustling virtual metropolis. With the press of a button I pull up the menu and choose Manhattan from a list of notable places. I choose Africa and within minutes I am hovering a few hundred feet off the ground of a barren desert. From there you can rotate the globe and choose where to begin zooming in. There are around 175 cities with full, 3D data, and over 600 ‘urban cores’ as well.” Google Earth turns all of this data into completely explorable, scalable 3D immersive worlds for the HTC Vive VR headset.Īs an explorer, you begin your journey looking at the Earth from space. 54 percent of the Earth’s land mass is covered. Now, all of that information is being used to create a VR experience that can take you almost anywhere on Earth you want to go.Īccording to Mike Podwal, project manager for Google Earth VR, “ 94 percent of the world’s population is covered in this experience. ![]() The group has spent the better part of a decade collecting and cataloging an obscene amount of visual data from all over the planet. This is the team behind Google Maps and the original Google Earth. Google Earth VR is a surprise project from Google’s Geo team that is being both announced and released today. Turning slowly I can almost feel the wind in my hair but I know that couldn’t be possible. I aim for the lid of the famous mountain’s bowl-shaped depression and land smoothly on the craggy ground. In the blink of an eye the world around me dissolves and the restaurants of East Fourth Street are replaced by the brilliant purple face of Japan’s Mt. ![]() I haven’t seen my hometown in almost a year but even the pull of nostalgia isn’t enough to keep me entertained forever. I grin for a moment thinking how much a seat like this would cost me in the real world before turning away from one of my childhood haunts and flinging myself into the sky and soaring between the familiar grey and brown buildings of Cleveland. The first is concerning all of the terrible losses that have taken place in this stadium throughout a truly depressing season, and the second is how unbelievable it is to be standing on top of First Energy Field. Looking down on the brilliant orange seats, and crisp green grass below me, two thoughts fight for dominance in my skull. ![]()
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