August 18, 2020 3:15pm Comment Brandon Russell

Google Maps will soon show more colors and details for landscapes and streets

Google Maps has introduced a redesign that provides users with a more detailed, colorful map. With the changes, Google says its service will display more varied geography, so users can distinguish between “tan, arid beaches and deserts from blue lakes, rivers, oceans, and ravines.”

In a blog post, Google explained just how comprehensive today’s update is:

With this update, Google Maps has one of the most comprehensive views of natural features of any major map app — with availability in all 220 countries and territories that Google Maps supports. That’s coverage for over 100M square kilometers of land, or 18 billion football fields!

According to Google, the company used a new color-mapping technique able to identify the planet’s varied topography, including arid, icy, forested, and mountainous regions. These features are assigned colors on the HSV color model, making it easy to distinguish between forests, shrubs, and more.

They also embedded an album showing off the different views over places like Iceland, Morocco, Mount Rainier National Park, Croatia, and Sedona, Arizona. Here’s the before and after view of each location on Google Maps:

: Google’s caption: “Iceland’s rich landscape is now much easier to visualize. You can see the varying densities of greenery throughout the country and more easily spot Vatnajökull–the largest ice cap in Iceland, which is now depicted in white.”

: Google’s caption: “Morocco’s greenery pops, so you quickly get a sense of the vegetation that lines its coast and the northern part of the country.”

: Google’s caption: “Zoom out on Mt. Rainier National Park to see its mountainous ridges, white snowcap, and vegetation surrounding the area. The borders of the national park are more clearly defined with a darker shade of green.”

: Google’s caption: “You can clearly make out the beaches and greenery that line Croatia’s coast and nearby islands, like Hvar.”

: Google’s caption: “Panning over Sedona, Arizona accurately reflects its desert landscape and more clearly displays where Red Rock State Park is located.”

The redesign doesn’t just cover the splendor of earth’s natural wonders; the update is also visible in large, metropolitan areas and small, rural towns. Today’s update also includes more detailed street information, including the “accurate shape and width of a road to scale.” Google Maps users will also be able to see where sidewalks, crosswalks, and pedestrian islands are located, making it safer for people to travel around a city.

The new colorful representation for landscapes will show up in Maps this week for all users. Simply zoom out to see the new styling. More detailed street maps, on the other hand, will be available first in London, New York, and San Francisco in the coming months, and will roll out to more cities down the road. Google Maps platform developers will also be able to apply this new styling to their own maps soon.

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Brandon Russell

Brandon's love of technology can be traced back to his childhood, when he would obsessively watch Back to the Future. Since then he's followed the industry and its many innovations, from handheld consoles to powerful smartphones. He's still waiting on a hoverboard.