Google Earth VR

November 16, 2016 Gareth Griffiths

Free Google Fly anywhere on Earth PC VR • SteamVR • Rift

Released 16 November 2016 • Steam • 94% positive from 3,200+ reviews • Cannes Lions 2017 Bronze

Google Earth VR

Stand on the summit of Everest, fly down the Grand Canyon and hover over your own school, all in one lesson. Google Earth VR turns the whole planet into a 3D model you can fly through, scale up and walk around. It is free, it is breathtaking, and for geography it remains one of the most powerful things you can show students in a headset.

Developer: Google

Price: Free on Steam

Platform: PC VR via SteamVR or Oculus PC

Subject: Geography • History • Landmarks

8.4

/10

XR School Score

Highly Recommended

Free • The whole planet in 3D • Cinematic tours • Street View • Needs a gaming PC • No standalone Quest version

94% positive • Steam 3,205 English reviews
Very positive

Overview

Google Earth VR is Google’s virtual reality version of Google Earth, released free on Steam on 16 November 2016. It uses the same 3D imagery as Google Earth to let you fly over cities, stand on mountain peaks and soar out into space until the whole planet hangs in front of you. You steer by pointing a controller in the direction you want to go, grab the world to drag it around you and change your own size so you can look down on a continent or stand among the buildings of a city street.

Alongside free exploration there are cinematic tours and hand‑picked destinations, including the Amazon River, Manhattan, the Grand Canyon and the Swiss Alps. You can search for any place, and a 2017 update added Street View imagery so you can drop down from the 3D model to real panoramic photographs taken at ground level. The game won Best HTC Vive Experience at the 2016 Vivey awards and a Bronze Innovation Lion at Cannes in 2017.

Geography at a Scale You Can Feel On a map, the Grand Canyon is a brown line. In Google Earth VR it is a mile deep chasm you can fly into. Seeing the true scale of landforms, how rivers carve valleys, how cities sprawl and how close coastal towns sit to the sea gives students a sense of place that is very hard to build from photos and atlases alone. Many teachers start with a simple request: find our school, then fly to a place we are studying.

Lesson Ideas

🏔️

Landforms

Fly along a river from source to mouth, or compare glaciated valleys with river valleys.

🌊

Coasts and hazards

Visit eroding coastlines, volcanoes and fault lines to see how landscapes change.

🏙️

Urban geography

Compare the layout of a megacity with your own town, from the CBD to the suburbs.

🏛️

History and RE

Stand at the Colosseum, the pyramids of Giza or Jerusalem’s Old City to set the scene for a topic.

How to Run It on a Meta Quest There is no standalone Quest version of Google Earth VR. It runs on a Windows PC with a SteamVR or Oculus PC headset, and Quest owners can play it by connecting to a gaming PC with Quest Link, Air Link or Steam Link. It also needs a broadband connection, because the imagery streams from Google’s servers. If your school only has standalone Quest headsets, try our review of Wooorld, which brings Google’s 3D map data to the Quest without a PC.

Google Earth VR vs Wooorld

Feature

Google Earth VR

Wooorld

Price

Free

$9.99 plus optional extras

Hardware

Gaming PC and PC VR headset

Standalone Meta Quest

Map style

Fly through the full planet

Tabletop 3D map in your room

Extras

Cinematic tours, Street View

Map sits in your real room (mixed reality)

Best for

Awe and scale

Easy setup in class

Curriculum Value

Sense of place and scale

9.6

Geography curriculum fit

8.8

Value for money

Ease of use

8.0

Hardware accessibility

4.0

Strengths and Limitations

Strengths

Completely free
The whole planet in 3D, searchable
Real sense of height, depth and scale
Cinematic tours of famous places
Street View panoramas at ground level
Very positive reviews from thousands of players
Award winning design

Considerations

Needs a gaming PC (GTX 970 or better)
No standalone Quest version
Needs a good internet connection
No built‑in lesson tools or quizzes
3D detail varies between places
Fast flying can cause motion sickness
English only

For Teachers: Plan the Route, Then Let Them Fly Google Earth VR suits the KS3 and GCSE Geography topics on rivers, coasts, glaciation, tectonic hazards and urban change, and works well as a hook in history and RE. Give students a short route to follow and questions to answer at each stop, and use the comfort settings, which limit the field of view while moving, for anyone who feels unwell. Because it needs a PC, most schools run it as a single station with the headset view mirrored on the board so the whole class can follow along.

Free

Steam • SteamVR or Oculus PC • Quest via Link or Air Link

Get on Steam → More geography apps →

Quick Facts

Developer: Google
Released: 16 November 2016
Price: Free (Steam)
Platform: PC VR via SteamVR or Oculus PC • VR only
Steam reviews: Very positive: 94% of 3,205 (English)
Minimum PC: Intel i5‑6400 • 8 GB RAM • GTX 970 or R9 Fury
Storage: 4 GB (8 GB recommended)
Internet: Broadband required
Language: English
Awards: Vivey 2016 • Cannes Lions 2017 Bronze • Lumiere 2017

Verdict

Google Earth VR is still one of the most impressive free experiences in virtual reality, and one of the most useful for geography. Flying through real landscapes at true scale gives students a feel for rivers, mountains, coasts and cities that no map can match, and the cinematic tours and Street View add even more. Its weaknesses are practical: it needs a gaming PC and an internet connection, and there is no standalone Quest version. If you have the hardware, it belongs in every geography department.

The XR School

The XR School

Google Earth VR

Google Earth VR

Gareth Griffiths