Google Earth VR has been one of the most mind-blowing experiences that I’ve had so far in VR, for so many different reasons. It’s felt like it’s been rewiring my brain to accommodate the new perspectives of the Earth in a way similar to what returning astronauts report as “The Overview Effect.” It’s also enabled me to navigate the Earth based upon natural landmarks and without seeing borders, and therefore start to cultivate a new type relationship with the Earth. It’s also allowed to find common ground with friends and strangers by sharing stories that are based upon geographic locations, and it’s one of the most intimate and powerful social VR experiences that I’ve had so far.

I had a chance to do an interview with Mike Podwal, Product Manager for Earth VR as well as Dominik Kaeser, Engineering Lead on Earth VR to ask them about their design process. They focused primarily on performance, comfortable navigation, and an overall immersive experience of the earth. They weighed the tradeoffs between simplicity vs. usefulness in looking at what features to implement, and very few of their beta testers requested an explicit search functionality. They instead preferred to do organic exploration and navigate based upon landmarks in a way that provides a new perspective and relationship with the Earth. In the future, they will be looking at the 2D version Google Earth for inspiration for new features such as annotation, but they also are open to feedback for the types of features that people are requesting. You can hear a lot more insights and stories behind the process of creating Google Earth VR in the interview below.