A “brand new” Google Earth to arrive April 18

PanARMENIAN.Net - Google just sent out invites for a pre-Earth Day event in New York City next week. In keeping with the obvious theme, the search giant is promising to take the lid off of a "brand new experience" for Google Earth, Engadget said.

While Google doesn't offer many details aside from the time, date and location -- April 18th, 8:30 AM ET at New York's Whitney Museum of Art -- the Earth team did launch a virtual reality version of the planet-visualizing app onto Steam late last year. The app was only available for HTC Vive headsets at the time, but the team promised to add support for additional platforms in the near future. So we'd be surprised if next week's event didn't come with an update for Google Daydream, which would make it much more affordable as a VR educational tool, Engadget said.

Google has also been developing its stand-alone virtual tours and augmented reality museum experiences for years now and could be incorporating more of those "on-the-ground" kinds of VR experiences directly into its incredibly detailed whole-Earth model.