Toggle search
Toggle menu
5.1K
5.9K
229
48K
VR & AR Wiki
Toggle preferences menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Google Street View

From VR & AR Wiki
More actions
Google Street View
Information
Type Street-level imagery
Industry Mapping
Developer Google
Operating System Web, Android, iOS, Android XR
Supported Devices Web browsers, Android and iOS devices (through Google Maps), Android XR headsets (through Google Maps), HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (through Google Earth VR)
Release Date May 2007
Website https://www.google.com/streetview/


Google Street View (branded by Google as Street View) is a Google service that shows 360-degree panoramic photographs taken at street level, integrated into Google Maps and Google Earth. It launched as part of Google Maps in May 2007 with imagery from five areas of the United States,[1][2] and Google said in September 2024 that it held "over 280 billion images collected from our Street View cars and trekkers".[3] Google captures imagery with its own camera cars and the portable Trekker, which can be worn as a backpack; other contributors can publish their own 360-degree imagery through Google's tools.[4][5]

Street View panoramas have been a recurring source of 360-degree content for consumer virtual reality. Google added a side-by-side VR viewing mode to Google Maps for Android in 2014, added Google Cardboard support to the Street View app in 2015 and Daydream support in 2016, brought Street View into Google Earth VR in 2017, and includes Street View panoramas in Google Maps on Android XR headsets such as the Samsung Galaxy XR.[6][7][8][9][10]

The imagery also underpins Google's augmented reality positioning. Google's Visual Positioning System (VPS) matches a phone's camera view against features extracted from Street View images; it powers the Live View AR walking directions in Google Maps and has been open to developers since May 2022 through the ARCore Geospatial API.[11][12]

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Checked the launch, coverage, camera, app, VR, Live View, VPS and Geospatial API claims against the cited Google blog, help and developer pages, the ICCV 2009, IEEE Computer 2010 and CHI 2019 papers, and the Road to VR, Android Police, GSMArena, 9to5Google, Engadget, NBC/AP and TechCrunch reports. About review dates.

History

Origins and launch

According to a 2010 paper by members of the Street View team, the project began when Google co-founder Larry Page drove around the San Francisco Bay Area recording video of building facades with a camcorder. His interest led to a research collaboration with Stanford University called CityBlock, which "soon thereafter became Google Street View".[13] Google's own anniversary timeline dates the idea to 2004.[14]

Street View launched inside Google Maps in May 2007.[1] The first coverage was the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami, and the feature let users view "360° panoramas of street-level imagery on Google Maps".[2] By the time of the 2010 paper, Street View had imagery from hundreds of cities in 20 countries on four continents.[13]

Expansion

Google's anniversary timeline lists Street View trikes for car-free roads in 2008, a snowmobile on the slopes of Whistler in 2010, underwater imagery of the Great Barrier Reef in 2012, a Trekker loan program for outside partners in 2013, historical imagery and an upgraded Trekker in 2014, and Street View in VR in 2015.[14] Google announced the backpack-mounted Trekker in 2012 and made its first official data collection with it at the Grand Canyon in October 2012, mapping trails on the South Rim including the Bright Angel and South Kaibab trails.[15]

On 24 May 2022, marking 15 years of the service, Google said Street View held "over 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories". It also announced historical imagery in the Google Maps mobile apps and previewed a new portable camera.[16] In September 2024 Google described "one of the biggest updates to Street View yet", with new imagery in "almost 80 countries", some of which received Street View imagery for the first time; the announcement highlighted new imagery of Bosnia, Namibia, Liechtenstein and Paraguay.[3]

Standalone app

Google released a standalone Street View app for Android and iOS on 3 September 2015. On iOS it replaced the Photo Sphere Camera app; it combined browsing Street View collections with uploading user photo spheres and supported spherical cameras such as the Ricoh Theta S and NCTech iris360.[17] Version 2.0, released the following month, added the Cardboard VR mode described below.[7]

In November 2022 9to5Google found unpublished shutdown notices in the Android app's code, and a Google spokesperson then confirmed to The Verge that the app was being discontinued. The notice read "The app is going away and support will end March 21, 2023." Browsing moved to Google Maps, photo sphere uploads to Google Maps, and 360-degree video publishing to the Street View Studio web app; the app's Photo Paths feature for contributing 2D photos of unmapped roads had no replacement.[18][19]

Recent developments

On 19 May 2026, as part of its Google I/O announcements, Google connected Street View to Project Genie, Google DeepMind's experimental world-model prototype in Google Labs. Users can pick a location on a map and generate an interactive world whose starting point is "tied to Street View's real-world imagery", drawing on "nearly 20 years of Google Street View imagery". At launch the Street View grounding covered places in the United States and was rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers.[20] TechCrunch, reporting the launch, put the collection at more than 280 billion images from 110 countries and seven continents.[21]

The following table summarizes selected milestones.

Date Milestone Source
May 2007 Launch in Google Maps with five US areas [1][2]
2008 Trikes capture car-free roads [14]
June 2010 Coverage in 20 countries on four continents; anaglyph 3D panoramas described [13]
October 2012 Trekker backpack maps Grand Canyon trails [15]
June 2014 VR (side-by-side) Street View mode in Google Maps for Android [6]
September 2015 Standalone Street View app for Android and iOS [17]
October 2015 Street View app 2.0 adds Google Cardboard support [7]
November 2016 Street View app adds Daydream support [8]
September 2017 Street View added to Google Earth VR [9]
August 2019 Live View AR walking directions enter public beta [22]
May 2022 ARCore Geospatial API opens Street View-based VPS to developers [12]
21 March 2023 Standalone Street View app support ends [18]
October 2025 Google Maps with Street View panoramas on Android XR at the Galaxy XR launch [23][24]
May 2026 Street View grounding in Project Genie [20]

Capture and processing

Vehicles and cameras

The 2010 paper describes several generations of capture vehicles. An early SUV carried cameras, lasers and GPS; a second-generation Chevy van had laser scanners, two high-speed video cameras and eight high-resolution cameras in a rosette; low-resolution "lite" cars followed, then cars with the in-house R5 camera on a retractable mast with three laser scanners for coarse 3D data. Special platforms included the Trike for pedestrian routes and a snowmobile system first used for the 2010 Winter Olympics sites in Vancouver.[13] The rosette cameras evolved from R2 (eight 11-megapixel CCD sensors) to R5 (eight 5-megapixel CMOS cameras plus an upward fisheye) and R7 (15 of the same 5-megapixel sensors, no fisheye).[13]

The Trekker used at the Grand Canyon in 2012 had 15 cameras of 5 megapixels each, weighed 40 pounds and took a photo every 2.5 seconds.[15] In 2017 Google introduced a new car camera system with seven 20-megapixel cameras in place of the previous 15, plus two lidar units; Android Police, summarizing reporting by Wired, called it the first major upgrade in eight years and noted that Google's algorithms read street names and numbers from the imagery.[25] The portable camera Google previewed in May 2022 weighs less than 15 pounds, can be fitted to any vehicle with a roof rack and operated from a mobile device, and accepts modular add-ons such as lidar; Google said it would "fully roll out next year".[16] Google states that its Street View cars have "captured more than 10 million miles around the world" and that the Trekker can be worn as a backpack or mounted on a pickup truck, snowmobile or motorbike.[4]

Pose, depth and 3D data

Each vehicle logs GPS, wheel encoder and inertial sensor data. An online Kalman filter gives drivers real-time navigation, and a batch sensor fusion solution computes a smoothed pose trajectory at 100 Hz, which is then snapped to a probabilistic model of the road network.[13] To support 3D navigation such as "click-to-go", the team computes a compact depth map for each panorama that encodes only the dominant surfaces (building facades and roads). Depth comes from laser range scans on newer vehicles, and from optical flow between successive images on older imagery that lacks laser data. The encoded depth map is "only a few kilobytes in size".[13] Laser scans and imagery were also used to build high-resolution 3D facade models that were fused with airborne models in Google Earth.[13]

Google's current description of the pipeline lists alignment using GPS, speed and direction sensors, stitching of overlapping photos into 360-degree panoramas, 3D modeling from laser data, and automatic blurring of faces and license plates in Google-collected imagery. The same page says processed imagery is also used to train Google's generative AI models, with "blurring and AI removal of people and vehicles" applied first.[4]

Privacy protection

Faces and license plates are detected and blurred on all published imagery, which the 2010 paper called "a very compute-intensive step".[13] A 2009 ICCV paper by Frome and colleagues described the automatic system: a sliding-window detector tuned for high recall followed by a post-processing stage that removes false positives. On evaluation sets sampled from Street View it sufficiently blurred more than 89% of faces and 94-96% of license plates.[1] Reporting on the 2012 Grand Canyon project, the Associated Press noted that hikers' faces would be blurred and recalled Street View's earlier problems with collecting data from unsecured wireless networks in Europe and Australia.[15]

Contributions and developer access

Anyone can publish 360-degree imagery to Street View. Google lists "Street View ready" cameras such as the Insta360 Pro 2, GoPro Max and Ricoh Theta X; contributors can capture 360-degree imagery on the move with a vehicle or helmet mount and upload it through the Street View Studio web tool.[5] Contributed imagery appears in Google Maps with the contributor's account name.[4]

For developers, the Street View Static API returns a static image of a panorama for a given location, heading, pitch and field of view; the Maps JavaScript API includes an interactive Street View service; and the Street View Publish API lets applications publish 360-degree photos with position, orientation and connectivity metadata.[26][27][28]

Virtual reality

The 2010 paper by the Street View team describes "panoramic 3D anaglyphs" that let users see depth with red-cyan glasses: the client used the known depth map to synthesize a second, displaced view and replaced the red channel of the original with it.[13] (See Anaglyph 3D.)

In June 2014, alongside the Cardboard viewer introduced at Google I/O, Google Maps for Android gained a VR Street View mode: double-tapping the rotate icon split the screen into a side-by-side view with head tracking. Road to VR reported that it worked with any smartphone VR adapter, did not pre-warp the image for lens distortion as the Cardboard demo app did, and was not yet 3D.[6]

Version 2.0 of the Street View app (October 2015) added Cardboard mode on Android, reached by an icon in the upper right corner when viewing a 360-degree photo.[7] Google announced on 12 October 2015 that people could explore Street View with Cardboard viewers through the updated app on both Android and iOS.[29] On 9 November 2016, the day before the Daydream View headset went on sale, the app added support for Daydream, "Google's platform for high quality, mobile virtual reality".[8]

On 14 September 2017 Google added Street View to Google Earth VR on the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, with imagery from 85 countries. Users fly down toward street level, check the controller to see whether Street View is available, preview the location through a lens, and click to enter "an immersive 360° photo". The imagery mixes Google's own captures with photos shared by users.[9] Road to VR described the preview as a floating photosphere above the controller that the user holds up to the head to enter.[30] Google's announcement pointed users without those headsets to the Street View app for Daydream and Cardboard.[9] The standalone app that carried the Cardboard and Daydream modes was later discontinued, with support ending on 21 March 2023.[18]

Google presented Google Maps on Android XR, with its 3D Immersive View, at the launch of the Samsung Galaxy XR in October 2025.[23] A Unity case study on the app, which was built with Unity, says the Android XR version lets users move between 2D maps, aerial views, "360-degree Street View panoramas" and 3D indoor environments.[24] According to Google's help page, users select a location with Street View content in aerial view and choose Street View to enter the 360-degree panorama. They move by pointing at the next teleport point, marked by an X on the ground, and turn by pointing at the horizon; place cards let them jump between aerial view, Street View and indoor views.[10] The same case study says ground-level panoramas let users "scout a location to check for nearby parking or see the surrounding area".[24]

Platform Device How Street View is shown Status Source
Google Maps for Android (VR mode) Smartphone in a Cardboard-style viewer Side-by-side view with head tracking, not 3D Introduced June 2014 [6]
Street View app Google Cardboard viewers (Android and iOS) 360-degree photos in VR mode Added October 2015; app support ended 21 March 2023 [7][29][18]
Street View app Daydream View Daydream VR mode Added November 2016; app support ended 21 March 2023 [8][18]
Google Earth VR HTC Vive, Oculus Rift Preview lens, then full 360-degree photo Added September 2017 [9]
Google Maps on Android XR Samsung Galaxy XR and other Android XR devices 360-degree panoramas with teleport points inside Immersive View Current; app launched with Galaxy XR in October 2025 [23][24][10]

Augmented reality and positioning

GPS is unreliable in dense cities. In a February 2019 post, Google Maps engineer Tilman Reinhardt wrote that signals reflecting off buildings can put a user on the wrong side of the street and that phone compass readings "can be inaccurate by up to 180 degrees". Google's answer was "global localization", which combined its Visual Positioning Service (VPS) with Street View data "from over 93 countries" and machine learning that focuses on permanent structures while ignoring transient objects such as trees. The result was AR walking navigation that overlays directions on the camera view, then in testing with selected Local Guides.[11] Google launched a beta of Live View in August 2019 for ARCore-compatible Android phones and ARKit-compatible iPhones in areas with Street View coverage; it draws arrows and street markers over the camera image.[22] Google's 2022 anniversary post lists Live View among the features that Street View imagery "powers", and says immersive view in Google Maps fuses "billions of Street View and aerial images" into a digital model of places.[16]

On 11 May 2022 Google opened the same localization service to developers as the ARCore Geospatial API. Google said it uses machine learning to "extract trillions of 3D points from Street View images", determines a device's position and orientation in under a second, and works in more than 87 countries without developers having to scan a location first. Early partners included the NBA, Snap, Lyft, Bird and Lime.[12] The ARCore documentation calls Street View images, "captured around the globe for more than 15 years", "the foundation of VPS". The API supports Android, the Android NDK, iOS, Unity (AR Foundation) and Unreal Engine, and offers WGS84, terrain and rooftop anchors for placing content.[31] In May 2023 Google added the Streetscape Geometry API, which provides a 3D mesh of buildings within 100 m of the device, together with rooftop anchors, Geospatial Depth and the Geospatial Creator authoring tool for Unity and Adobe Aero.[32]

Research

Street View has been the subject of computer vision papers by Google's own engineers, including the 2009 privacy-blurring system and the 2010 overview of capture, pose estimation, depth recovery and serving.[1][13] Outside researchers have also used it to build mixed reality environments. Geollery, presented at CHI 2019 by Ruofei Du, David Li and Amitabh Varshney of the University of Maryland, is a mixed reality social media platform that builds a mirror world from building polygons and street-level data. Its second version projects Google Street View panoramas onto the building geometry in real time so that the nearest street views texture the 3D buildings as the user walks. The paper compares Geollery with the authors' earlier Social Street View system, which blended immersive street views with geotagged social media but only let users teleport between panoramas.[33]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Andrea Frome, German Cheung, Ahmad Abdulkader, Marco Zennaro, Bo Wu, Alessandro Bissacco, Hartwig Adam, Hartmut Neven, Luc Vincent (2009-09). "Large-scale privacy protection in Google Street View". 2009 IEEE 12th International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pp. 2373-2380. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCV.2009.5459413. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Big News: Google Maps Street View". Google Maps Mania. 2007-05-29. https://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2007/05/big-news-google-maps-street-view.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Stafford Marquardt (2024-09-24). "3 imagery updates to Google Earth and Maps". The Keyword (Google blog). Google. https://blog.google/products/earth/3-imagery-updates-to-google-earth-and-maps/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "How Street View works and where we will collect images next". Google Street View. Google. https://www.google.com/streetview/how-it-works/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Create and Publish your own Street View images". Google Street View. Google. https://www.google.com/streetview/contribute/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Ben Lang (2014-06-28). "Google Adds Virtual Reality Street View Mode to Google Maps for Android". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/google-adds-virtual-reality-street-view-mode-to-google-maps-for-android/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Cody Toombs (2015-10-07). "Latest Street View v2.0 Adds Google Cardboard Support To Use With All Of Those Awesome Photospheres". Android Police. https://www.androidpolice.com/2015/10/07/latest-street-view-v2-0-adds-google-cardboard-support-to-use-with-all-of-those-awesome-photospheres/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Rita El Khoury (2016-11-09). "Google Street View adds support for Daydream". Android Police. https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/11/09/google-street-view-adds-support-daydream/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Joanna Kim (2017-09-14). "Get a closer look with Street View in Google Earth VR". The Keyword (Google blog). Google. https://blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/get-closer-look-street-view-google-earth-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "Use Immersive View in Google Maps on Android XR". Google Maps Help. Google. https://support.google.com/maps/answer/16667577?hl=en. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Tilman Reinhardt (2019-02-11). "Using Global Localization to Improve Navigation". Google Research Blog. Google. https://research.google/blog/using-global-localization-to-improve-navigation/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Bilawal Sidhu, Eric Lai (2022-05-11). "Make the world your canvas with the ARCore Geospatial API". Google Developers Blog. Google. https://developers.googleblog.com/2022/05/Make-the-world-your-canvas-ARCore-Geospatial-API.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  13. ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 Dragomir Anguelov, Carole Dulong, Daniel Filip, Christian Frueh, Stéphane Lafon, Richard Lyon, Abhijit Ogale, Luc Vincent, Josh Weaver (2010-06). "Google Street View: Capturing the World at Street Level". Computer (IEEE Computer Society), vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 32-38. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2010.170. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 "Celebrate 15 years of exploring your world on Street View". Google Street View. Google. https://www.google.com/streetview/anniversary/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Felicia Fonseca (2012-10-24). "Google cameras map popular Grand Canyon trails". NBC News (Associated Press). https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/google-cameras-map-popular-grand-canyon-trails-flna1C6643654. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Ethan Russell (2022-05-24). "Street View turns 15 with a new camera and fresh features". The Keyword (Google blog). Google. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/street-view-15-new-features/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Kaloyan (2015-09-03). "Google launches new Street View apps for Android and iOS". GSMArena. https://www.gsmarena.com/google_launches_new_street_view_apps_for_android_and_ios-blog-13840.php. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 Kyle Bradshaw (2022-11-01). "Google is shutting down its dedicated Street View app next year". 9to5Google. https://9to5google.com/2022/11/01/google-street-view-app-shutting-down/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  19. ↑ Mariella Moon (2022-11-02). "Google is shutting down its dedicated Street View app". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/google-shutting-down-dedicated-street-view-app-102514292.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Diego Rivas, Jonathan Herbert, Nicole Segaran (2026-05-19). "Simulate real-world places with Project Genie and Street View". The Keyword (Google blog). Google. https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/project-genie-expands/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  21. ↑ Rebecca Bellan (2026-05-19). "Google's Genie world model can now simulate real streets with Street View". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/googles-genie-world-model-can-now-simulate-real-streets-with-street-view/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Darrell Etherington (2019-08-08). "Google launches 'Live View' AR walking directions for Google Maps". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/08/google-launches-live-view-ar-walking-directions-for-google-maps/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Shahram Izadi (2025-10-22). "Introducing Galaxy XR, the first Android XR headset". The Keyword (Google blog). Google. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/samsung-galaxy-xr/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 "Google Maps Immersive View: Redefining Navigation with Android XR & Unity". Unity. Unity Technologies. https://unity.com/resources/google-maps. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  25. ↑ Corbin Davenport (2017-09-05). "Google's Street View cameras are getting an upgrade". Android Police. https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/09/05/googles-street-view-cameras-getting-upgrade/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  26. ↑ "Street View Service - Maps JavaScript API". Google for Developers. Google. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/streetview. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  27. ↑ "Street View Static API overview". Google for Developers. Google. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/streetview/overview. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  28. ↑ "Street View Publish API". Google for Developers. Google. https://developers.google.com/streetview/publish. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Brandon Wuest (2015-10-12). "Bringing Google Cardboard and VR to the world". Android Developers Blog. Google. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2015/10/bringing-google-cardboard-and-vr-to.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  30. ↑ Ben Lang (2017-09-14). "Google's Massive Street View Library Now Available in 'Google Earth VR'". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/google-earth-vr-street-view-update/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  31. ↑ "Build global-scale, immersive, location-based AR experiences with the ARCore Geospatial API". ARCore - Google for Developers. Google. https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/geospatial. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  32. ↑ Eric Lai (2023-05-10). "Build transformative augmented reality experiences with new ARCore and geospatial features". Google Developers Blog. Google. https://developers.googleblog.com/2023/05/build-transformative-augmented-reality-experiences-with-new-arcore-and-geospatial-features.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  33. ↑ Ruofei Du, David Li, Amitabh Varshney (2019-05). "Geollery: A Mixed Reality Social Media Platform". Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300915. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
Retrieved from "https://vrarwiki.com/index.php?title=Google_Street_View&oldid=47605"