Google Maps to Gain New 'Live View' AR Features

[MacRumors]

Live View in Google Maps uses your iPhone's camera and GPS to provide augmented reality directions when you're walking somewhere, and this week Google announced that it's enhancing the feature and making it available in additional transit scenarios.

In Live View, arrows, directions, and distance markers are placed right on top of your surroundings to visualize your destination in the real world, and Google will soon bring landmarks to this AR mode, too. From The Keyword blog:

Soon, you’ll also be able to see nearby landmarks so you can quickly and easily orient yourself and understand your surroundings. Live View will show you how far away certain landmarks are from you and what direction you need to go to get there. These landmarks can include iconic places, like the Empire State Building in New York and the Pantheon in Rome, and easily recognizable places, like local parks and tourist attractions.

Landmarks will start rolling out soon on iOS in nearly 25 cities, including Amsterdam, Bangkok, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Dubai, Florence, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Kyoto, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Milan, Munich, New York, Osaka, Paris, Prague, Rome, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, and Vienna.

Live View is accessed from the transit tab in Google Maps, but previously, it would be unavailable if your directions involved a combination of transport types like walking, driving, cycling, and transit.

Now though, as long as your transit directions include a walking portion in the journey, you can use Live View to find your way, which should be useful when you exit a transit station and don’t know which way to go, for example.

In addition, Google said it will soon expand Live View to Location Sharing, so that when a friend chooses to share their location with you, you can tap their icon and then on Live View to see where and how far away they are, with overlaid arrows and directions to help you know where to go.

Google says it has made improvements to global localization, the underlying technology that powers its Live View features on Google Maps, so it's now better able to take the elevation of a place into account, which enables it to more accurately display the location of the destination pin in Live View.

Google Maps can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Article Link: Google Maps to Gain New 'Live View' AR Features

 

[LFC2020]

Nice feature, can see battery life taking a massive hit while using it though.

 

[Morgenland]

Nice feature, can see battery life taking a massive hit while using it though.

Probably also the data volume. If Google wants to collect new image environments in this way.

 

[mazz0]

Apple Maps is getting Street View soon!

 

[LFC2020]

Apple Maps is getting Street View soon!

Don’t we already have that? Called look around.

 

[Baumi]

At least the gif in the article makes a very poor case for this feature. If you need help finding a restaurant or a world famous landmark when both are literally right in front of you, then you may have bigger issues than a maps app can solve.

Having said that, I can see genuinely useful applications for this. It’s just that I still think AR needs some kind of lightweight, inconspicuous glasses to become practical, because waving around your phone to view things gets old really fast.

 

[mazz0]

Don’t we already have that? Called look around.

I believe a very small portion of the world does.

 

[one more]

Visually, I prefer Apple Maps, but love seeing Google making significant advances and keeping Apple on their toes. ✌️

 

[rmoliv]

Light years ahead of Apple Maps and available in most places across Europe. I guess I’ll be dead before “look around” is widely available, and I’m in my 30s... Shame on Apple!

 

[GeoStructural]

Amazing. And to think someone here said tech companies would not do something unless Apple does it first.

Don’t we already have that? Called look around.

Yes, in a handful of cities.

 

[Corsig]

Make sure you have a battery back up if you’re using this out and about. I can see it draining the battery from 100 to 20% in no time

 

[scottishwildcat]

Light years ahead of Apple Maps and available in most places across Europe. I guess I’ll be dead before “look around” is widely available, and I’m in my 30s... Shame on Apple!

Hardly surprising though... Google had, what, a 10-year head start on Maps? That's a lot to catch up, however much money and talent you throw at it.

 

[page3]

And yet they still cannot get our roads the correct colours.

 

[FreekieGeekie]

I love this from Google!! I prefer the polished look of Maps, but, This feature from Google is great!!

 

[FreekieGeekie]

Light years ahead of Apple Maps and available in most places across Europe. I guess I’ll be dead before “look around” is widely available, and I’m in my 30s... Shame on Apple!

Yeah. I mean, Google Maps has been actively developing for 15 years, but, yeah. Then again, Maps have been in public development since 2012 and they have gotten far in that timespan, which is impressive. However, I love this from Google!! Yelp had a secret feature like this in their app some time ago. Like around 2008-2009 I think.

 

[gridlocked]

Google attained their lead in maps, navigation and traffic data by buying multiple map providers the same way they attained their lead in search.

If Apple is serious about these things they need to do the same. Right now I'd gander they are about 10 years behind in maps, don't have a search engine (yet) but on some fronts they are way ahead of Google and always will be certainly in user privacy. The customer to Apple is not the product.

They could start by buying TomTom and or maybe HERE and ending their relationship with Waze (if that in fact is still in place) which almost certainly gives Google access to some Apple Maps data for traffic.

 

[genovelle]

Light years ahead of Apple Maps and available in most places across Europe. I guess I’ll be dead before “look around” is widely available, and I’m in my 30s... Shame on Apple!

Well had Google not used Apple for 5 years to gather data from their users before locking them out of features like turn by turn to give their iOS copy Android an advantage in maps, Apple would have happily continued to pay them lots of money to let Google Maps remain the standard Map on Apple devices. Apple has caught up quickly in a very short time. They have only been Mapping for less than two years if I’m not mistaken, so they are progressing much faster that Google did and that’s from 0.

 

[DDMaKeeg]

Seems like this has been done before. Anyone remember the ‘monocle’ feature in Yelp years ago?

 

[MisterSavage]

Live View was incredibly helpful when I was traveling.

Seems like this has been done before. Anyone remember the ‘monocle’ feature in Yelp years ago?

I do but that just let you orient what direction restaurants were from you if I remember correctly.

 

[CarpalMac]

Amazing. And to think someone here said tech companies would not do something unless Apple does it first.

It's ok, they got that covered. The usual protestation when another company does something first is for them then to say that XYZ are merely rushing their solution out in order to beat Apple.

 

[pratikindia]

Yeah. I mean, Google Maps has been actively developing for 15 years, but, yeah. Then again, Maps have been in public development since 2012 and they have gotten far in that timespan, which is impressive. However, I love this from Google!! Yelp had a secret feature like this in their app some time ago. Like around 2008-2009 I think.

Apple should be ashamed of map development. Most of the features are available in handful of countries. Turn by turn navigation, latest map data, transit data are dream in most countries.