This week is Google IO 2013, the company’s annual developer conference. While we expected to hear about Google Glass, it turns out Google may be bringing Oculus Rift support to their new version of Google Maps.
Update: First Photos of Google Maps with Oculus Rift and Leap Motion
Today at Google IO 2013’s day 1 keynote, the company made a big deal about their forthcoming version of Google Maps. The revamped online map software sports new ways to get directions, a new look, in-browser Earth functionality, and more.
On stage, Bernhard Seefeld, product management director on Google Maps, walked the audience through some of the new features.
Two of the new features are 3D photo tours, that are automatically generated from user-submitted photos, and the integration ‘Photo Spheres’ that users can take with the Android camera app; both similar to Microsoft’s Photosynth technology. Seefeld described Photo Spheres as being like “user-generated Street View.”
At around 2 hours and 49 minutes in the day 1 keynote, Seefeld says about the Google Maps booth, “if you go there tomorrow morning we’ll have Oculus Rift [sic], and you’ll get the experience you just saw, with the Leap Motion.”
Seefeld’s phrasing was a bit confusing if you listened to the actual presentation. As much as we’d like, this is far from any sort of official confirmation of Google Maps Oculus Rift support.
It isn’t clear what parts of Google Maps (if any) that Google has adapted to the Oculus Rift. It could be the 3D photo tours, or Photo Spheres, or both. Maybe they’ve even added support for the Google Earth portion?
It’s also unclear if this is anything the public will ever see. More than likely, this is just a quickly hacked together tech demo to ‘wow’ attendees at Google IO 2013. As much as we’d like to think that Google would make such functionality available, given the present niche audience of Oculus Rift users, it’s unlikely that they committed to a full rollout. Still, it’s encouraging to know that at least someone inside Google is playing with the Rift.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled tomorrow to find out just what Google has done with the Oculus Rift and see if we can’t get someone on the show floor to give us a hands-on report!
If you’d like to see more about the new Google Maps, take a look at the video below:
