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Comment by sbarre | Hacker News Reader

I've done this in Google Earth VR, and it's very fun. You can get down to basically street view, but everything is very blocky and blurry..

Or you can stay at "Godzilla scale" and walk around the city with buildings the (relative) size of appliances or furniture.. NYC is kind of fun that way.

If you are somewhere that you've been in real life, it's uncanny how familiar it still seems even at low res..

For somewhere you haven't been, or are planning on going, it can give you a sense of scale/scope/direction that is quite nice.

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There's also a number of videos on YouTube with varying amounts of 3D or 180/360 of people just walking through all kinds of various tourist places without comment. From inside a VR headset, is it as good as visiting yourself? Of course not. But it's not the worst way to spend some time. And in my opinion it captures at least a little of the je ne sais quoi of visiting a place that watching a video on a screen does not. Not necessarily a lot. But non-zero.

VR gives you SCALE in a way you simply can’t perceive on a flat screen. Going down in to the Hoover Dam in Earth VR is something else.

I used to do this with videos on DeoVR - they had a couple of long drive channels (usually across Korea) or biking in Japan - while on my exercise bike. After their app stopped working for me I looked for similar videos on Youtube.

I found a lot but unfortunately the VR ones tend to be badly compressed. There are a lot of 8K HD walking/driving videos but none of them are VR.

It is objectively better than staring at my back wall, though.

Somewhat related: Something I learned about South Korea is that a non-Korean service can't export detailed location data, so Google Maps doesn't work there. No turn-by-turn. Navar Maps is a local one to use if you're there.

They are still technically at war with the North, so some strange things like this come up. Awesome place to visit generally! Seoul is an awesome city, and Busan is gorgeous.

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