Google Maps Immersive View Starts Rolling Out, Gets Glanceable Directions Too

It’s a day for Google Maps it seems, with Google announcing several big updates or features to an app of theirs that I’m not sure the world could live without. Seriously, what would we do without Google Maps?

Anyways, the big changes announced today involve Immersive View, more Live View action, more EV features for those with Google built into their cars, and really neat glanceable directions.

For Immersive View, which was announced last year at Google I/O, Google has created immersive experiences in select cities built off of “billions of Street View and aerial images.” These images are fused together to let you use Google Maps to feel like you might be in one of those cities, In other words, you can float around a city to find a restaurant before zooming in on its front door and entering the establishment to see if it meets your needs.

To start, Immersive View is rolling out in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. In the coming months, Google will expand to more cities like Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice.

If you are into AR experiences, Google Maps has Live View that uses your phone’s camera to spot locations and then let you quickly see info about them. This could be helpful as you walk around a new city on a busy street and need somewhere to stop off. Live View has been around for a bit, but Google today announced that it’ll hit a bunch of Euro cities in the coming months.

In the EV department, for those with an EV with Google built-in, Google announced the following new features arriving in the coming months:

• Very fast charging stations: Helps you easily find stations that have chargers of 150 kilowatts or higher.
• Charging stations in search results: More easily shows you when places like a supermarket have charging stations on-site.
• Adding charging stops to shorter trips: On any trip that’ll require a charging stop, Maps will suggest the best stop based on key factors, like current traffic, your charge level, and expected energy consumption.

And finally, glanceable directions are here for those times where you want Google Maps to follow your movement, but you don’t want to dive fully into a navigation session. These glanceable directions show you the route overview screen and then follow as you take a path, with live updates happening as you move, including updated ETAs. It looks awesome.

Like everything else above, this is a “coming months” feature for both Android and iOS.

// Google