Google's 3D city imagery hits Android, headed to iOS 'soon'
As promised, Google has rolled out its 3D imagery of various major cities as part of an update to its Google Earth software on Android.
Remember Google's snazzy demo of 3D views of various cities at a rather impromptu press conference earlier this month?
You can now play with that feature yourself. Google quietly released a new version of its Google Earth program for Android today that adds 3D maps of 14 regions, just about all of which are in the U.S.:
- Boston
- Boulder
- Charlotte
- Lawrence
- Los Angeles
- Long Beach
- Portland
- Rome
- San Antonio
- Santa Cruz
- San Diego
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Tampa
- Tucson
In a post announcing the feature, Google says it will add more cities "in the coming months" with enough to cover "a combined population of 300 million people," by year's end. Included in the new software is a tour feature that points users towards cities that have a third dimension.
The feature is still not on Apple's iOS platform, though Google says it's still working on it and will have a version with 3D maps "soon." As you might remember, Google demoed it for the first time on an iPad, running a pre-release version of Google Maps.
Google's newest 3D technology comes well ahead of Apple's own 3D mapping efforts, which is being released as part of the Maps app in iOS 6. A beta version of that software was delivered to developers at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference a few weeks ago, with a full release to come this fall.
Here's Google's new demo video of the feature: