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GTA IV gets Google Street View

While you cool your jets waiting for Grand Theft Auto V, take a walking tour of GTA IV's Liberty City — in Google Street View.

Michelle Starr Science editor
Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming about bats.
Michelle Starr

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

While you cool your jets waiting for Grand Theft Auto V, take a walking tour of GTA IV's Liberty City — in Google Street View.

Fan site GTA4.net has had a map of Liberty City based on the Google Maps API since early 2009, and it has been a pretty fun — and useful — piece of software, showing users where they can find health, armour and weapons pickups, as well as pigeons, stunt jump locations and window-cleaning platforms — but now it has received the ultimate upgrade: Google Street View.

To create the map of Liberty City, which is pretty comprehensive — only missing a few uninteresting ramps — nearly 80,000 in-game screenshots were stitched together into around 3000 panoramic views. The final set of tiles is made up of over 1 million images.

It's not quite as smooth as the actual Google Maps, but if you're a GTA fan, it's a fun way to spend an hour or two looking for your favourite spots — and amusing moments captured in the screenshots.

Check it out on the GTA4.net web page. And while you're at it, go revisit Poonikins, the Magic Warrior Princess.