I played this for about 2 hours recently, and it’s so much fun!<p>Flying around like that really gives you a perspective of your home town that you don’t usually get. For instance, I have discovered that there’s actually train tracks underneath a bridge over which I drive fairly frequently — from inside the tram, I never saw them.<p>Notably, this is significantly better than the “liquid galaxy” installations one can find at Google offices. It’s smoother, more immersive, the controls are more appealing, and it looks better.<p>This app definitely goes into the list of things I show people who are new to VR :).
I've been dreaming of this for a long time now... holy crap. This is as close as we have to the Black & White (lionhead x EA) god feeling, except for beating up your cow/monkey/etc of course. Can't wait to try it out.
I am going to go with - "at last !"<p>It is nearly 25 years since I read Snow Crash, and read the description of the virtual earth - able to dive down form Space, and look round cities, seeing data feeds in real time, including your own position...<p>We are soooo close. Just don't trust the guy with the glass knives<p>[#] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash</a>
Why only on HTC Vive? Does this require huge computing power, or is it because of the controllers?
I hope it'll become available on the Google Daydream phones.
Just tried it on my Vive for ten minutes.<p>So, of course, it's essentially Google Earth ported to VR.<p>There's some obvious Snowcrash vibes to this. :)<p>The left hand touch pad is used to switch between perspectives (top or "being a 100 meter tall giant walking around on the land") while the right touch pad is used to zoom in/zoom out.<p>In places where they have 3d maps (like e.g. SF) it's amazing. I was also blown away by how fast the scenes loaded.. in Google Earth/Maps there is always a lengthy download process. This was almost instant. (I wonder why it was so slow before?)<p>Walking around in cities as a giant is pretty fascinating. I guess this is why they went with the Vive as their first platform - roomscale VR really kicks as in this particular usecase.
>Google Earth VR is first available on Steam for the HTC Vive<p>The lack of a common VR framework, and no expectation from consumers that a VR-enabled application will be cross-compatible between different systems is the main reason I have not yet bought a headset, and advise people asking me against buying. The VR landscape right now looks like it suffers from consolitis, and I will never support such business models.
Now just make it so you can destroy the buildings as you walk around and you have VR Rampage.<p>I'm honestly surprised no one has made a VR Rampage for the Vive. I tried to play around with the idea a little bit, but game development is just something I don't have any time for.
Is this based on 3D model or just 360 photo?<p>I looked at the online demo, it doesn't appear to be 3D model.<p>But if it is based on 360 photos, how does it perform the transition between different viewing locations?<p>Streetmap, for example, can't do very smooth transition.
> Available first on HTC Vive<p>I can't find if it'll have support for DayDream View, which I just got for free with my pixel. Does anyone have more info?
Was playing with it - it's great. I was flying around the towns I know, but I'm reminded of the places that I need to go when I get a chance:<p>Golden Gate Bridge<p>The Washington Monument<p>Disney World<p>Yosemite<p>Beijing<p>The Grand Canyon
One of the best potential uses for this (and many similar VR apps) is for senior citizens and immobile folks.<p>Imagine being able to travel back to your hometown or visit places you never got to on your bucket list.<p>Priceless.
I really think something like this will displace some tourism/sightseeing (at least at the margins). I have done a ton of traveling all over the world and would much prefer a VR experience like this instead of cramming onto an airplane like cattle for hours, getting accused of being a drug lord at every border crossing, dealing with foreigners who seem to hate Americans, etc. Most tourist cities are pretty much the same anyway; a few jam packed attractions, the strip of overpriced fancy tourist trap restaurants, those gift shops you can buy cheap crap with the city's name on it, luxury hotels, adventure charter companies, etc.<p>Anyway, sorry for the rant but I liken this to going to a football game in the stadium vs. watching at home and I'd much prefer the latter.
I wish Earth VR weren't written in so custom of an engine :(... it is severely missing some basic annotation and presentation tools (such as a 3D pencil) which would be comparatively easy to mix in if it used some off-the-shelf engine (such as Unity, which happens to be used by Tilt Brush). It kind of makes sense, though: it really just needs two cameras over the code they already have for Google Earth. It <i>is</i> written in OpenGL (as opposed to Direct3D), so maybe it won't be quite so annoying to throw together something minimal at the rendering layer?...
For those without controller (i.e. Using <a href="https://github.com/Shockfire/FakeVive" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Shockfire/FakeVive</a> to get it working on a Rift) - the tours are defined in text files inside \steamapps\common\EarthVR\assets\content\tours\ with the extension .textpb<p>Editing the lat/lngs should enable you to visit wherever you choose.
Awesome.<p>I'd love to use a VR headset to explore the visualizations at <a href="http://cosmicweb.barabasilab.com" rel="nofollow">http://cosmicweb.barabasilab.com</a>, and fly around through the superstructure of the universe!