You can now fly around Google Earth in virtual reality
But where Street View offers strings of photospheres collected by 360-degree cameras, users of Earth VR can virtually fly freely around a topographical reconstruction of the globe, or take guided tours of places like Manhattan and Monument Valley.
For now, Earth VR is Vive-only, although VR Apps product manager Mike Podwal says Google is “actively exploring support for other platforms.”
But it’s more exciting to think about what people could do with an open version of the app, or a tool like the non-VR Google Earth Tour Builder. You could embed your own stories into Google Earth, or link personal photo spheres to specific places. Businesses could offer a VR version of their neighborhood the way they might embed a Google Maps widget on their website. Even without this, it still feels like one of the biggest, most open-ended VR apps available right now.
See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/16/13643550/google-earth-vr-htc-vive-release