Google has provided its answer to Apple maps with its 3D city models. The new Google Maps immersive mode promises an immersive user experience by letting you know how a place on a map looks like in real life throughout the day.

To create the effect of presence, Google combined billions of photos using a combination of computer vision and artificial intelligence. In essence, the company has made a hybrid of street view and satellite imagery. Interestingly, such city panoramas can even display actual car traffic and weather conditions, and various objects literally come to life, which creates the feeling of broadcasting in real time. With the help of a special slider, you can see how a particular place looks at different times.

The new feature will be centered around various points of interest, restaurants, and other points of interest. It is stated that in a similar way it will be possible to look inside different establishments. To do this, you will need to go down to street level, and then select the house of interest. Of course, for this, the company needs to upload additional data to Google first.

The immersive map mode will be available before the end of this year and will cover several major cities at launch, starting with Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo, with further expansion of this list in the coming months.