The Google Earth team has always aimed to help the world see the world. Virtual reality presented a new opportunity to let people actually feel like they were somewhere else.

The idea started with a prototype for Google Cardboard. While successful, to deliver on the promise, the project had to move to desktop PC-based VR systems that allowed the user to walk while in

One insight in this process occurred when the lead engineer accidentally made the user about 200-times human size. This allowed for traversal of huge areas as a giant.

Another insight, was that the planet is full of sights AND sounds. Custom soundtracks were added to places to make them come alive. In cities you can hear traffic, on mountain tops you can hear the wind.

Along the way, huge technical challenges had to be solved primarily around performance and maintaining user comfort.

Earth VR is a virtual reality app for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. It allows the user to travel to anywhere on the planet and feel like they are actually there. The app is publicly available for free on Windows through Steam or Oculus Store.

To enable create Earth VR, the team had to solve many technical challenges. 3D assets needed to be adaptive (i.e. created by code, not artists) but integrated in such a way that performance did not suffer and subsequently give users motion sickness. The team also had to work to carefully balance feedback from three different senses: touch, sight, and sound.

Critical and user reception has been very positive, with many news outlets and VR enthusiasts calling it VR’s Killer app (Ars Technica: "VR’s killer app has arrived, and it’s Google Earth"; Voices of VR (@kentbye): "@googlevr's Earth VR is one of the most mind-blowing VR apps I've done so far. It's the first killer app for VR & amazing engineering feat.") Earth VR recently won a Lumiere award, specifically the Century award (only given once previously to Avatar) for raising environmental awareness.

Earth VR maintains an "Overwhelmingly positive" rating in the Steam Store, the store's highest rating.