Google Earth VR was an early and enchanting app for the first generation of modern PC VR headsets, but unfortunately it never made the leap to the standalone era. Now a new app, FLY, brings the magic of exploring Google Earth in VR to Quest and Vision Pro.

Now available on Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Vision Pro, Fly aims to bring the magic of exploring Google Earth in 3D in a fully immersive way. Beyond just being able to explore the globe to your heart’s content, Fly aims for a more immersive feel than its spiritual predecessor. While the original Google Earth VR essentially had you floating around as a disembodied camera, Fly is thematically built around the idea that players are piloting a drone that can take them anywhere.

“Fly is our idea of a personal flight simulator that lets you travel on ground, above cities, and across countries to explore places you’ve never seen. Our focus has been on a seamless experience with intuitive comfortable controls, smooth loading, and detailed rendering of Google Earth Tiles,” says Eric Malafeew, CTO and Co-Founder of VirZOOM, the studio behind the app.

Image courtesy VirZOOM

The studio says that Fly uses Google Earth’s 3D Map Tiles, offering a massive Earth-sized space for players to explore, including full 3D geometry in many major cities. The project was purportedly started in collaboration with Google, but was put on hold for years.

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“Originally created in collaboration with Google for a PC VR release in 2018, we had to shelve it after they paused Google Earth API development,” says VirZOOM Co-Founder and CEO Eric Janszen. “So when we saw them announce the Google Earth Tiles API this past year we were excited to complete the product. This new version takes what we created in 2018 and benefits from our years of knowledge in VR development since then. This version of Fly is everything we had hoped for in PC VR, but available on standalone headsets.”

Image courtesy VirZOOM

While the app is available on Quest headsets—and gets a boost in quality on Quest 3—the developer says the added headroom on Vision Pro means it can deliver the optimal experience.

“The 3D Earth tiles, which Google provides, have the same maximum quality on both Quest 3 and Vision Pro. But the Vision Pro version is rendered at 2.5x the max resolution of Quest 3, and we draw tile details out to 2.5x greater distance, with none of the performance hits you get from maxing out the Quality option on Quest 3,” says Robert Collins, COO of VirZOOM. “This means the tiles, UI and overall experience in the game look significantly better on Vision Pro and provide a smoother experience as the user moves through the world.”

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • ViRGiN

    And it doesn't require your own API key?
    Downloading 3D tiles isn't exactly free for third parties.

    • Rob Collins

      Does not require your own API key, we are officially licensing them from Google.

  • MasterElwood

    So why not make a PCVR version with EVEN BETTER quality?

    • Nevets

      Something to do with user base, I suspect.

    • RedcoatTrooper

      Look I love my PCVR and its truly capable of amazing experiences but lets all be realistic, most developer stats show PCVR as less than 10% of the VR market, of that 10% of users 35% of users pirated the game!.

      It just doesn't make sense.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The 10% are often claimed and always rubbish. Ratios of ratings for games available on both Quest and Steam are on average around 4:1. We have around 2mn monthly active steam users, about 10mn monthly active Quest users, with ~1mn Quest used for PCVR streaming. Probably not exclusively, but this would give you a ratio of 4.5:1.

        There are some examples of apps that sold 10:1 on Quest vs Steam, but usually for very specific reasons, and definitely not "most developer stats". For example there are tons of good racing games on Steam, but not many on Quest, so a new, even simple VR racing game will probably sell a lot better on Quest than on Steam.

        4:1 is still a very large difference that will influence what developers are targeting. On the other hand retention has shown to be significantly larger for Quest users that (also) stream PCVR, one reason why Meta actually improved streaming on Quest to appease PCVR users, as a Quest user regularly streaming might still buy native apps, while someone who's Quest is only collecting dust won't. And of course PCVR users on average need to have more money to also pay for the PC, with about half using more expensive non-Meta headsets. So PCVR users are on average also somewhat older than the teen dominated Quest user base, 30% of which apparently play the (free on Quest, paid on Steam) Gorilla Tag. So there are reasons beyond the higher performance for developers to still develop for PCVR.

        I don't know how many of the apps are pirated on either PCVR or Quest, and whether the piracy happens mostly in areas where people can actually purchase apps. I doubt Quest developers worry a lot about their software being pirated in China, where Meta doesn't even provide an app store (e.g. via partners like Tencent), nor local services or the Quest itself.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    One of the benefits of the original Google Earth VR app was that it was actually provided by Google who also provided the required data from one of their data centers for free. The Google "Arial View Earth Tiles API" VirZOOM uses connects to a pay-per-use Google data service providing 2D, 3D and StreetView tiles, of which the 2D/3D map then is constructed.

    Google Arial View data use starts at USD 16 per 1000 tiles, with larger volumes getting cheaper. This effectively means the software creates significant extra cost whenever it is used, so it would be interesting to hear about their business model.

    Currently the Fly app sells at a fixed price, and they probably calculated with some average use of tiles per user covered by the purchase price. That may work out if people only occasionally use the app, but to e.g. integrate a flight simulator that people will use for lots of hours, they'd either need a subscription model or have users use/pay for their own Google API keys. MSFS gets away with this because Microsoft has their own mapping service, so they don't have to pay someone for each map tile shown.

  • Stephen Bard

    Far better than Fly is EarthQuest and Wooord on Quest. Full 3D flight and hi-res Street View.

    • Ryan Brancel

      Fly vs Earthquest, I was just wondering which is better? Have you used both and compared?

      • stephen bard

        Fly has only a handful of destinations, whereas with EarthQuest you can go anywhere on the planet. Earthquest has so many features, including Chat GPT AI, and you keep discovering more features the more tutorials you read an the more you experiment with it. Wooorld also lets you go anywhere, has a fascinating different UI that works great once you understand how to use it.

        • Eric Janszen

          For FLY we have focused on ensuring the experience of immersive flight is front and foremost. You can teleport anywhere in the world but we have focused on the pure joy of flying around the world, anywhere. With fun and comfortable controls and an easy to user experience. We are also working on adding street view, bookmarks, and other features and should have more soon. FLY is available on both the Quest and the Apple Vision Pro.

      • ichigo

        i just got both and tested for 3 hours. I found myself in EarthQuest more. While its clunky UI is a learning curve for most it has more options. Fly clearly wants to be subscription based but needs the user base first. Fly also wants to be all about flight not visuals. Both use the same tiles imported from the same server. Earthquest does a better job as it gives you the control over how they show. Despite the outdated UI. Everything is there in Earthquest you just need to find it. Also some tiles was 2D went to Fly and thy was the same. Again the titles are from Google for both.

        • Rob Collins

          Just to clarify one point, we have no intent on turning this into a subscription. We have stated publicly we may add cosmetic items for sale in the future, but that is not our current focus.

    • Nevets

      Woorld is confusing and the interface needs a lot of work. But I support its evolution since we need to keep these sorts of apps alive, especially now that the Wander devs have ghosted their users.

  • Nevets

    Fly vs Earthquest. WHICH ONE WINS? Which has better tile quality or is the quality identical? There are answers to these questions, and I could even find out those answers myself, but I would rather read them here.

    • namekuseijin

      "assets", "textures" and "lights" are all scans by google maps, so probably all the same…

      behavior is calls to google API… pick an app and stick with it. I have Earthquest

      • Nevets

        pick an app and stick with it

        That's like saying that all restaurants in Chinatown get ingredients from the same supplier, so pick one and stick with it.

        "calls to google API" just is how the app is designed and programmed. Not a trivial consideration.

        That said, while I know nothing of the Fly devs, I know the Earthquest dev is a 15 year old from Romania. I like stories of people starting out with ambitions that belie their years, so I agree he should be supported.

        But supported regardless of how the competition evolves? That's not how marketplaces work.

      • Hatori Hanzo

        does earth quest download as it goes, can you pre-download data?

        • Stimmenhotel

          Sadly not, as it is streamed from google directly. I am not sure how much data this will be, but I don't think it is a low amount of data for a play session for one hour.

    • Jeff

      UI / menus are really awful on Earthquest to the point of being distracting, so I'd be interested to see if Fly is any more professional looking. Either way, I'm not really looking to replace Google Earth VR because it's not an experience I need on standalone away from home and latency is a non issue with this experience. Might as well have the full quality and rendering power of my PC.

  • Foreign Devil

    So for PC VR Microsoft Flight simulator is giong to have the best and most detailed VR maps still right?

    • Stimmenhotel

      You may need to compare MS map data to google map data. some folks of MSFS did this on youtube, there is a Mod adding GMaps to MSFS.

  • Rob Cram

    So, how does this compare (visually) to Google Earth VR PCVR version?

  • Nothing to see here

    It looks great. Finally Virtual Earth in my wireless Quest 3 VR headset. One problem though: The UI is really really bad. Dear VR developers. Do you have an amazing idea for a new VR user interface that you want to share with the world. That's great. But first, pretty please with sugar on it, get a standard user interface working using the buttons and sticks on the controllers. That way we can fly around the world without having to lean forward, back, left and right in our chairs. Until they fix this, their FLY is unzipped.

    • Rob Collins

      The novel body as a joystick controls are patented for VR comfort and this is our first implementation of them in a product. We also released them in a test app on app lab and will probably use them in future games. We think they really do add to the enjoyment and sense of flight when playing the game.

      That being said we understand not everyone likes to actually move when playing VR and we fully support joystick input for a more traditional approach. You can find these settings in the options (there are a lot of options so probably worth spending a few minutes going over them).

  • Fdruid

    Ok, so it's based on the 2018 PC app. Is this gonna be updated on the PC Google Earth app too then? Wouldn't make sense not to do it, but well, we know Google.