I've enjoy using Fly for visiting and exploring too. It's insanely easy for me to ramp-up my Q3 and go where I want, be it Miami, Paris, wherever imaging is available. I know it's not perfect and has a ways to go, but this tech is both fun and informative. Heck, I can check-out in advance where I need or want to go, and though the images may be within a few years it is good enough for me. Must be mind-blowing the immersion and resolutions likely possible 10-years from now. Probably a service like this will be populated with businesses that allow you to VR inside them like I've occasionally seen somewhere. Anywho's, good vid.
Wooorld is good.. I think it's the explorer version you purchase for just like solo travel etc... and theres another version where you can go on tours and online with other peple. I have the explorer version. It gives you street view anywhere and can travel along routes etc.. It's pretty much the full google earth and more. You can even select the different years. I was able to select my street and see my house from when I bought it 15 years ago and more recent view. There's also points of interest and can pin places yourself etc.. lots of control and tons of features. Includes voice control...just say where you want to go and it'll take you there.
@@mikimosky4109 EarthQuest certainly has more options. I just don’t seem to be able to get it running as smoothly as Fly, which was for me at least is the most important factor.
@@richardclarkeadeEarthQuest should now, by default offer better performance than Fly. However you can get even smoother than that, (where Fly reaches 60-70, EQ can reach stable 90)
@@boectrumI will certainly give it another go. If the default settings have it running smoother than Fly, it’ll definitely win my vote. I like all the options to tweak settings to individual preferences, but better overall performance “out of the box” would be a definite win.
@@richardclarkeade Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6) You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time ! And use Human-Size for the smoothest perceived motion!
I love EarthQuest and have seen a ton of improvements over the past months, adding feature requests regularly (like saved locations). The experience is very tunable by the user and easy to figure out. I got the AI add-on which is really good/helpful. I do like in Fly that it labels POIs as you fly around and that street view keeps your direction orientation when you pop between. Betting EarthQuest gets these soon. Appreciate the comparison but would love to see a more in-depth review of all features. To be fair it seems like you haven’t spent much time with these.
@@normkarns I definitely need to give EarthQuest more time. I prefer standalone VR to be “pick up and play”, save the performance tweaking for PCVR gaming - but I’ll definitely take another look at all those settings.
Thanks for the video! It's always great to see people enjoying the app and taking the time to talk about the features. Would love more feedback on the day/night cycle comments. You can customize the day length and freeze/turn it off in the settings but I was unsure if this was the major issue or if it had to do with the skybox itself?
@@Fly_Quest Hi. The day/night function is a nice addition, I just feel that EarthQuest’s is visually a bit more impressive. Nothing wrong with it in terms of options/functionality. FLY performed better “out of the box”, although EarthQuest’s dev suggests tweaking performance settings to get a smoother experience. I usually go on standalone to escape the need to play around with performance settings, but I’ll go back in and take a look at the weekend. Thank you again for giving us a great VR experience and continuing to make it even better.
Google Earth VR is incredible surprisingly for a Google product which usually are crap. Probably some other co made it and they bought them. But the controls for Google Earth aren’t the best. Esp you can’t turn while around in the low res 3D. It has vignette which reduces headache and motion sickness which is great. But you can only drag or move front or back. You cannot turn left or right or strafe which means it’s a pita to navigate. However the random place it drops on launch, the awesome visuals and entire Earth view etc and tilt up and then flat is superb. You can spend a lot of time hovering in the air looking around. Hopefully in future sometime it’ll all be super high res. I would have paid for that so I’m looking at alternatives. Earthquest seems highly rated. Next is Wander and Brink Traveler but it is limited. Wooorld is another choice. This video exposed me to Fly. Let’s see what’s a good alternative to Google Earth VR
I tried fly, it was the first app I bought on the Quest 3, but I didn't like it compared to Google Earth VR, so I ended up getting a refund. I also tried a demo of Wooorld, but again I didn't get on with that either. Google Earth VR is excellent, I love hovering just high enough that I can just see the curvature of the Earth when I look left or right, for that over view sensation.
I have the opposite opinion, I really hate the flying controls for Fly I think the controls in EarthQuest are way better. I like how EarthQuest is more customizable, you can change the flight speed to as slow as human walking speed or as fast as superhuman speed. In Fly there is no map and you get no street names, in EarthQuest you can have the map open while you fly and if you're low enough you can read the street names from the map. In Fly while watching streetview images you can only turn with your head while in EarthQuest you can also turn with your joystick. One thing in Fly that I did like is that you can easily see if there's a streetview image available by flying low enough and you see the orbs pop up while in EarthQuest you can only guess if there's a streetview image available. I also have Wander and while it has no 3d data it does handle streetview images very well and you can easily tell if a city has good streetview coverage from very high up because it'll show up as blue lines like it does on Google Maps. In Wander if the location has images from prior years you can switch to an older date which I think is cool and sadly that's not yet supported on either EarthQuest or Fly. It's too bad Wander doesn't have the 3d support.
@@RUclipsCommenter7402 Thank you for commenting. Yes, I need to spend more time in EarthQuest to make sure I’m getting the best out of it. Might even have to make another video if I haven’t done it justice!
Thanks for this, super helpful video, & the only I've found that shows the street view in Fly. I'm looking to gift a Quest for someone who has loved using Google Earth VR and have been looking for the best app to replicate it. Would be interesting to see a comparison of these vs Google Earth VR itself, where they are still lacking. Curious your thoughts on that. A few questions: -Is street view in Fly still limited, or is it pretty much wherever street view is available in Google Earth, it's available in Fly? -Could you go pretty much anywhere and get the 3d experience, or is it limited to major cities?
@@Noonzyism Hi. As far as I can tell so far, both apps have everything 3D that Google Earth has. So yes, there will still be places that are flat as even Google Earth hasn’t got everywhere in 3D yet. I can’t answer your other questions at the moment, but I plan to spend more time in both, and go back to Google Earth VR. Maybe do a better, more detailed video soon.
Yes, the only way of experiencing that unrestricted 3D + Street View navigation is through EarthQuest. EarthQuest not only provides a better overall flight experience than the PCVR app, but also offers more than the basics - you finally have immersive Hand Tracking flight, Multiplayer w/ friends, Better 3D Map Quality than anything else out there, and hundreds more ! Enjoy 🌍
@@boectrum I’ve spent some more time today playing with the extensive preference options provided in EarthQuest. I was only able to get it to perform as smoothly as FLY by dropping all of the visual settings, which then left it looking less impressive than FLY. Perhaps it depends on location but in another test over major London landmarks, I still have a marginally better experience in FLY in terms of performance (balance of smoothness and visual quality). I spent quite some time adjusting the various graphical settings but no combination gave me a better visual experience whilst in flight. The Streetview is great with the community content turned off and the map is great. Also prefer EarthQuests sky. But I just can’t get that balance of smoothness/visual quality that quite matches FLY. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, I welcome any advice on best settings for overall experience.
It can, not perfectly, but it can; At the moment EarthQuest has the best performance, and balancing quality is fully up to the user - unlike other apps forcefully loading slowly to keep things running smoothly..
@@leokolev Sorry about that. I think it’s the quality of my upload that makes it a bit of a rough ride. How were you viewing it, on a phone or big TV? I’ll try to upload better quality in future. Thank you for commenting.
@@deafmama It certainly has the better selection of options available, I just can’t get it to perform as smoothly at equal resolution, no matter how I tweak the various settings.
@@richardclarkeade It’s really easy ! Make sure you’re on the latest version and take a quick look at ‘How to Play’ ! Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6) You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time ! Enjoy exploring 🌍💚
@@richardclarkeade It’s really easy ! Make sure you’re on the latest version and take a quick look at ‘How to Play’ ! Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6) You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time ! Enjoy exploring 🌍💚
It’s really easy ! Make sure you’re on the latest version and take a quick look at ‘How to Play’ ! Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6) You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time ! And use Human-Size for the smoothest perceived motion! Enjoy exploring 🌍💚
U cant have 8k nor even 4k on quest 3... read what are you buying... there is limitations to the displays - you can read an exact pixel count for one Eye...
Sorry for any confusion. Yes, I know Quest 3 resolution is 2064x2208 per eye, which as you correctly point out isn’t 4k, let alone 8k. The app uses Street View with quality up to 8k, but you aren’t going to see 8k in the Quest headset, just a better quality image. The developer has pointed out to me that you can choose not to be shown the grainier photos in the options too.
Fly is so much better than EarthQuest, much easier to use and navigate with real size life images and not a board game with tiny toy model images like what is in EarthQuest, EarthQuest is terrible and ended up returning it for a refund after trying it for 15 minutes, the images are a joke and the controls are awful, Fly feels like you're exploring the world in real life and not looking at the world on a board game with small toy objects, EarthQuest is a complete joke
I had the opposite reaction I was thinking about refunding Fly because I don't like its movement controls and fly speed is too slow and not customizable and smooth turning is awfully slow I had to switch it to snap turn to get an okay turning speed, in street view you can only rotate with your head not with the joysticks, and you get no street names or maps. Earthquest VR has great movement controls, fly speed is customizable, smooth turning works great, and you get a nice map that you can see while flying that shows you street names if you're flying low enough. One thing that Fly does that I'd like to see in EarthQuest VR is the bubble views that pop up when you're flying low enough, this makes it easy to see if there's a street view available, whereas in EarthQuest VR right now it's a guessing game although I'd say I really haven't had much issues finding street view images in it.
I haven't tried yet. But i think there is a setting for it. Just as there is in Google Earth VR. Human Scale on or off. When it's off everything is like a miniature playground. Its actually really cool switching back and fourth between miniature land and the real world
@midnightrocker7 Maybe they were equally good a few months ago, but EarthQuest is far more polished, capable, realistic, and overall superior it’s not even a competition ! And that’s coming from the community, I don’t think my opinions matter more than the users’ Please get back after seeing it for yourself, the comment is a bit misleading..
I've enjoy using Fly for visiting and exploring too. It's insanely easy for me to ramp-up my Q3 and go where I want, be it Miami, Paris, wherever imaging is available.
I know it's not perfect and has a ways to go, but this tech is both fun and informative.
Heck, I can check-out in advance where I need or want to go, and though the images may be within a few years it is good enough for me.
Must be mind-blowing the immersion and resolutions likely possible 10-years from now.
Probably a service like this will be populated with businesses that allow you to VR inside them like I've occasionally seen somewhere.
Anywho's, good vid.
Wooorld is good.. I think it's the explorer version you purchase for just like solo travel etc... and theres another version where you can go on tours and online with other peple. I have the explorer version. It gives you street view anywhere and can travel along routes etc.. It's pretty much the full google earth and more. You can even select the different years. I was able to select my street and see my house from when I bought it 15 years ago and more recent view. There's also points of interest and can pin places yourself etc.. lots of control and tons of features. Includes voice control...just say where you want to go and it'll take you there.
I really enjoy Wooorld as well. But I will check out fly and earth quest.
For me is earthquest. Street view its essential, plus earthquest has a lot of options to tweak it how you like it.
@@mikimosky4109 EarthQuest certainly has more options. I just don’t seem to be able to get it running as smoothly as Fly, which was for me at least is the most important factor.
@@richardclarkeadeEarthQuest should now, by default offer better performance than Fly.
However you can get even smoother than that, (where Fly reaches 60-70, EQ can reach stable 90)
It’s all up to the user, and unlike Fly, you’re not stuck with slow 3D loading times !
@@boectrumI will certainly give it another go. If the default settings have it running smoother than Fly, it’ll definitely win my vote. I like all the options to tweak settings to individual preferences, but better overall performance “out of the box” would be a definite win.
@@richardclarkeade
Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6)
You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time !
And use Human-Size for the smoothest perceived motion!
I love EarthQuest and have seen a ton of improvements over the past months, adding feature requests regularly (like saved locations). The experience is very tunable by the user and easy to figure out. I got the AI add-on which is really good/helpful. I do like in Fly that it labels POIs as you fly around and that street view keeps your direction orientation when you pop between. Betting EarthQuest gets these soon. Appreciate the comparison but would love to see a more in-depth review of all features. To be fair it seems like you haven’t spent much time with these.
@@normkarns I definitely need to give EarthQuest more time. I prefer standalone VR to be “pick up and play”, save the performance tweaking for PCVR gaming - but I’ll definitely take another look at all those settings.
EarthQuest’s Street View is already aligned to the 3D surroundings.
The creator used “Community Imagery” to get the lower quality, unaligned images.
Thanks for the video! It's always great to see people enjoying the app and taking the time to talk about the features. Would love more feedback on the day/night cycle comments. You can customize the day length and freeze/turn it off in the settings but I was unsure if this was the major issue or if it had to do with the skybox itself?
@@Fly_Quest Hi. The day/night function is a nice addition, I just feel that EarthQuest’s is visually a bit more impressive. Nothing wrong with it in terms of options/functionality.
FLY performed better “out of the box”, although EarthQuest’s dev suggests tweaking performance settings to get a smoother experience. I usually go on standalone to escape the need to play around with performance settings, but I’ll go back in and take a look at the weekend.
Thank you again for giving us a great VR experience and continuing to make it even better.
Google Earth VR is incredible surprisingly for a Google product which usually are crap. Probably some other co made it and they bought them. But the controls for Google Earth aren’t the best. Esp you can’t turn while around in the low res 3D. It has vignette which reduces headache and motion sickness which is great.
But you can only drag or move front or back. You cannot turn left or right or strafe which means it’s a pita to navigate.
However the random place it drops on launch, the awesome visuals and entire Earth view etc and tilt up and then flat is superb. You can spend a lot of time hovering in the air looking around.
Hopefully in future sometime it’ll all be super high res.
I would have paid for that so I’m looking at alternatives.
Earthquest seems highly rated. Next is Wander and Brink Traveler but it is limited. Wooorld is another choice. This video exposed me to Fly.
Let’s see what’s a good alternative to Google Earth VR
I tried fly, it was the first app I bought on the Quest 3, but I didn't like it compared to Google Earth VR, so I ended up getting a refund. I also tried a demo of Wooorld, but again I didn't get on with that either. Google Earth VR is excellent, I love hovering just high enough that I can just see the curvature of the Earth when I look left or right, for that over view sensation.
I think EarthQuest VR is more similar to Google Earth VR.
@@RUclipsCommenter7402Far superior too !
@@RUclipsCommenter7402And far superior too!
I have the opposite opinion, I really hate the flying controls for Fly I think the controls in EarthQuest are way better. I like how EarthQuest is more customizable, you can change the flight speed to as slow as human walking speed or as fast as superhuman speed. In Fly there is no map and you get no street names, in EarthQuest you can have the map open while you fly and if you're low enough you can read the street names from the map. In Fly while watching streetview images you can only turn with your head while in EarthQuest you can also turn with your joystick. One thing in Fly that I did like is that you can easily see if there's a streetview image available by flying low enough and you see the orbs pop up while in EarthQuest you can only guess if there's a streetview image available.
I also have Wander and while it has no 3d data it does handle streetview images very well and you can easily tell if a city has good streetview coverage from very high up because it'll show up as blue lines like it does on Google Maps. In Wander if the location has images from prior years you can switch to an older date which I think is cool and sadly that's not yet supported on either EarthQuest or Fly. It's too bad Wander doesn't have the 3d support.
@@RUclipsCommenter7402 Thank you for commenting. Yes, I need to spend more time in EarthQuest to make sure I’m getting the best out of it. Might even have to make another video if I haven’t done it justice!
Thanks for this, super helpful video, & the only I've found that shows the street view in Fly. I'm looking to gift a Quest for someone who has loved using Google Earth VR and have been looking for the best app to replicate it. Would be interesting to see a comparison of these vs Google Earth VR itself, where they are still lacking. Curious your thoughts on that. A few questions:
-Is street view in Fly still limited, or is it pretty much wherever street view is available in Google Earth, it's available in Fly?
-Could you go pretty much anywhere and get the 3d experience, or is it limited to major cities?
@@Noonzyism Hi. As far as I can tell so far, both apps have everything 3D that Google Earth has. So yes, there will still be places that are flat as even Google Earth hasn’t got everywhere in 3D yet.
I can’t answer your other questions at the moment, but I plan to spend more time in both, and go back to Google Earth VR. Maybe do a better, more detailed video soon.
To answer the question on Streetview availability: We currently pull in official Google images but not community contributed images.
Yes, the only way of experiencing that unrestricted 3D + Street View navigation is through EarthQuest.
EarthQuest not only provides a better overall flight experience than the PCVR app, but also offers more than the basics - you finally have immersive Hand Tracking flight, Multiplayer w/ friends, Better 3D Map Quality than anything else out there, and hundreds more !
Enjoy 🌍
I promise to find the time to go back into EarthQuest this weekend and give it some more time 😃
@@boectrum I’ve spent some more time today playing with the extensive preference options provided in EarthQuest. I was only able to get it to perform as smoothly as FLY by dropping all of the visual settings, which then left it looking less impressive than FLY. Perhaps it depends on location but in another test over major London landmarks, I still have a marginally better experience in FLY in terms of performance (balance of smoothness and visual quality).
I spent quite some time adjusting the various graphical settings but no combination gave me a better visual experience whilst in flight.
The Streetview is great with the community content turned off and the map is great. Also prefer EarthQuests sky. But I just can’t get that balance of smoothness/visual quality that quite matches FLY. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, I welcome any advice on best settings for overall experience.
please slow your panning im seasick!
Standalone VR cant don't this stuff properly yet
It can, not perfectly, but it can;
At the moment EarthQuest has the best performance, and balancing quality is fully up to the user - unlike other apps forcefully loading slowly to keep things running smoothly..
Really interesting, but you are moving your head to fast .. it's make me dizzy... 😮
@@leokolev Sorry about that. I think it’s the quality of my upload that makes it a bit of a rough ride. How were you viewing it, on a phone or big TV? I’ll try to upload better quality in future. Thank you for commenting.
@richardclarkeade Don't worry, I'm still alive 😀 Happy Merry Christmas 🎄🎁
EarthQuest is better than Fly
@@deafmama It certainly has the better selection of options available, I just can’t get it to perform as smoothly at equal resolution, no matter how I tweak the various settings.
@@richardclarkeade It’s really easy !
Make sure you’re on the latest version and take a quick look at ‘How to Play’ !
Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6)
You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time !
Enjoy exploring 🌍💚
@@richardclarkeade It’s really easy !
Make sure you’re on the latest version and take a quick look at ‘How to Play’ !
Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6)
You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time ! Enjoy exploring 🌍💚
It’s really easy !
Make sure you’re on the latest version and take a quick look at ‘How to Play’ !
Fly uses an extremely slow Loading Speed, so make sure to use a similar speed in EQ, the closest should be 6 (‘Loading Strength’ 6) You’ll get even smoother performance than Fly in no time !
And use Human-Size for the smoothest perceived motion!
Enjoy exploring 🌍💚
I haven't tried the Quest version, but I use Google Earth on my Quest 3 via Virtual Desktop
U cant have 8k nor even 4k on quest 3... read what are you buying... there is limitations to the displays - you can read an exact pixel count for one Eye...
Sorry for any confusion. Yes, I know Quest 3 resolution is 2064x2208 per eye, which as you correctly point out isn’t 4k, let alone 8k. The app uses Street View with quality up to 8k, but you aren’t going to see 8k in the Quest headset, just a better quality image. The developer has pointed out to me that you can choose not to be shown the grainier photos in the options too.
@@richardclarkeade Kind of silly for them not to make that the default setting.
8k is the resolution of Street View 360º pics, not related with Quest resolution panels.
@@dtz1000 I actually found some of the grainy community photos to be entertaining, some go a bit more “off road”.
why cant this be made into a gta like game with the whole of the real earth
I agree!
A Flight Simulator could also work 😀
Fly is so much better than EarthQuest, much easier to use and navigate with real size life images and not a board game with tiny toy model images like what is in EarthQuest, EarthQuest is terrible and ended up returning it for a refund after trying it for 15 minutes, the images are a joke and the controls are awful, Fly feels like you're exploring the world in real life and not looking at the world on a board game with small toy objects, EarthQuest is a complete joke
I had the opposite reaction I was thinking about refunding Fly because I don't like its movement controls and fly speed is too slow and not customizable and smooth turning is awfully slow I had to switch it to snap turn to get an okay turning speed, in street view you can only rotate with your head not with the joysticks, and you get no street names or maps. Earthquest VR has great movement controls, fly speed is customizable, smooth turning works great, and you get a nice map that you can see while flying that shows you street names if you're flying low enough. One thing that Fly does that I'd like to see in EarthQuest VR is the bubble views that pop up when you're flying low enough, this makes it easy to see if there's a street view available, whereas in EarthQuest VR right now it's a guessing game although I'd say I really haven't had much issues finding street view images in it.
Dunno what you were using but Earthquest is great for me personally.
I haven't tried yet. But i think there is a setting for it. Just as there is in Google Earth VR.
Human Scale on or off. When it's off everything is like a miniature playground. Its actually really cool switching back and fourth between miniature land and the real world
@@monosbeats7398Yes, that’s only available in EarthQuest !
You also have more freedom than the PCVR title !
@midnightrocker7 Maybe they were equally good a few months ago, but EarthQuest is far more polished, capable, realistic, and overall superior it’s not even a competition !
And that’s coming from the community, I don’t think my opinions matter more than the users’
Please get back after seeing it for yourself, the comment is a bit misleading..