Google Maps

Google Maps Immersive View finally appears to be rolling out

Damien Wilde | Mar 20 2023 - 8:05 am PT

After being announced almost a year ago back at I/O 2022, Google Maps “Immersive View” finally appears to be rolling out more widely.

Sold as a “whole new way to explore” with Google Maps, Immersive View expands upon the existing photorealistic aerial views of popular locations and landmarks with time and weather contextual flyovers of the specific mapped regions.

Google Maps Immersive View fuses picturesque views of a city and its landmarks, suggestions of places to learn about or visit, and views of the insides of some buildings. You can even see alternate views of certain areas, such as at night, in bad weather, or in busy conditions.

It appears that Immersive View is rolling out and appearing for some Google Maps users with one such report on /r/GoogleMaps indicating that they are able to use the function when viewing cities like London and Berlin. Google confirmed during the original unveil that Immersive View will first be available in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo.

The original demos showed live traffic and weather locations, but it seems that the latter is not yet appearing for those with the new navigation option. It could be that this will come as this rollout progresses, but it’s not clear at this stage. Other touted functionality includes the ability to see inside buildings such as restaurants and more.

As you can see from the preview images, when active, Google Maps Immersive View let you use a slider to adjust the time to see just what an area looks like as the day and weather progresses. Colored overlays show the busy and quiet periods much like the regular 2D view.

What’s interesting is that /u/Vegetable_Book_8493 suggests that approximately 30 minutes of playing around with Maps new function used around 2 Gigabytes of data – showcasing just how demanding this can be on your data allowance. Immersive View for Google Maps was supposed to rollout back in February, but it has taken almost a month to come to fruition. That said, at least it is rolling out now.