When I am planning to visit a new destination, I try to feel one for that place before leaving – especially if I am going abroad. It is not that I am trying to reduce the shock of culture, but it is useful to know what the areas I am going to look really. I like to know how long the area around my hotel is and what kind of restaurants are near before time. Google Maps Of course I have my first choice for this task, and I spent hours tapping for hours.

But there is a better way. Nearly a decade ago, Google quietly released an app that lets you roam around the world and actually feel that you are standing in it. I am talking about Google Earth VR, which is an app designed for the first generation of PC headset, but still works on modern hardware. This Google may not be the most accessible version of the earth, but it is an experience that is stuck with me and still provides immersion in the perspective of the first person as if nothing else.

What makes Google Earth VR special? The app has not wasted any time to perform – the reception tour with you is high suspended over the Arkes National Park in Utah in the crack of Don. Press a button and the time intensifies until the sun rises completely and the bottom red rocks take a bath in a warm glow. You get a few seconds to stare at this endless vista of your nearby, but it’s not long ago when you are dropped between Tokyo and are surrounded by long buildings instead. Finally, it closes you through a series of remarkable sites around the world, in different times of each day.

By the end of the tour, you are familiar with control and left to find. This is the place where Google Earth VR shines – you can blow yourself to swim over the whole countries or shrink to the ground level and put your neck under stress to see the top of super long buildings. You have the option to rotate the world around your surroundings, change the approaches, or to flow through a city like a slow drone. All this is smooth movement and you always feel that you are under control.

Prithvi VR app also actually comes in itself when you are in a city where Google has collected a detailed 3D imagery like Tokyo, New York and Paris. Scale yourself down to the road level and it seems that you are physically there, just without the crowd or traffic around you. But even the best photogramatory looks like an AI-borne mess when you are within the spitting distance. The buildings smile, the cars look melting, and the correct expansion disappears.

Fortunately, the people of Google employ a talented solution – to take a controller to your head switchs you Street ViewApart from saying this, there is no better way to explain it that it is like standing in a street view photo. You are at human height, naturally free to look around with your head. Better yet, you can teleport for the next street view image at a distance of a few feet at a time or cross the road to see a different perspective. You can “walk” through an entire city in this way, irony that can simulate an open world game.

If you are unable to travel due to mobility boundaries, Google Earth VR may be the nearest option from there – and not in a gimmick manner. This provides a level of appearance that flat screen can simply do not match. From your home, you can stand on the base of the Eiffel Tower, hover over the Golden Gate Bridge, or flow over the Sydney Opera House.

The app includes an underlying list of famous sites that you can travel immediately. Even better, you were not stuck when you were occupied by the real world whatever was in light. With a shock of your wrist, you can rotate the sun position in the sky to change the day time, put a long shade from the buildings, or close the desolate look in a desert at midnight.

But even as a frequent passenger, Google Earth VR is incredibly easy. This is because it input you on your phone just like the Maps app, so you can quickly zero at a particular place.

If I want to see that the walk from my hotel to the metro takes on my upcoming journey, I can just fly to the ground level and enter the road scene. I did the same before leaving for Malaysia last year and wandering in the road scene helped me feel that the city was more car-focused than its Asian neighbors. It also helped me feel that one route of my hotel was much more accessible than the other. With this information, I chose a separate mode of transport, which required something else, but did not force me to cross the eight-lane road.

Of course, you cannot get a true experience of the neighborhood without live traffic or pedestrian activity – it is sad that there is no Microsoft flight simulator with its moving cars. But you can still shine a lot about a place in search of clues in the environment. Are shops open during the day? Is the pavement well maintained? The list continues.

Even for the basic principles of trip planning, Google Earth Vr defeats browsing maps passively on a phone. And even though the app has not received any major update in the last few years, it draws the latest street view image from Google’s server. Any business or storefront that you see in the app, you will probably still face in the real world.

I first tried Google Earth VR on an original Okulus rift years ago, when the true virtual reality was still a novelty and three infrared cameras were needed to drill in my wall. Nevertheless, this offering scale and feeling of freedom were impressive. But I forgot about it more or less – until I picked up Meta Quest 3 Last year and decided to re -look at my old Okulus game library.

Google Earth VR, although the search does not move basically. You will need a decent GPU and either USB-C cable or a VR-capable PC with decent routers for wireless streaming. The idea is that your PC presents the game and streams the output on the headset. This may look like a janky solution, but this is the only practical way for most people to experience this app in 2025.

Setup complexity and hardware cost on one side, Google Earth VR Never seen better than the current crop of headset. Better view loyalty makes it almost a real experience that I think everyone should experience. And yet, the app sits on the verge of abandonment today.

I was a little surprised that the app still draws live 3D and street view data from Google’s server, but this access could be closed at any moment. So if you are eager from a distance and still get your hands on hardware, look at the world while it is still online.