Here's hoping* that this eventually matures into a widely available (if not free & free) 'Scenario Pack/API' provided by Google and available to any Developers,

Here's hoping* that this eventually matures into a widely available (if not free & free) 'Scenario Pack/API' provided by Google and available to any Developers, - Not just for leisure, but for practical purposes. We need Google maps and street view to become consolidated (through a combination of physical mapping with drones, and CG via Unity etc.). Once this is seamless, and any 3d point in space + direction can generate a full 3D render (in real time), it will allow for 'Scenarios' - Instances of the Gmaps globe that are pulled into applications. 'Scenarios' might be used in games: - a 'real world snapshot, no wipes' scenario hosted on a game server, where players undertake a FPS survival game in an exact replica of the entire globe. - On another server, there may be a '1991 zombie apocalypse scenario, 2 week wipes' scenario being hosted, where 'filters' have been applied to the real world snapshot to make the globe appropriately aged and decimated, with appropriate models and characters for that world. Or more importantly, it might allow for serious modeling when utilized by certain platforms: - Used for traffic flow - This could be incredibly valuable for use cases such as '3-dimensional traffic theory over San Francisco low altitude airspace - What impact to delivery drones will there be if a new skyscraper is raised in this zone?' - For city councils and architects that are measuring heat absorption of concrete from the sun on the hottest day of the year / to model the wind flow through a city street that is acting as a wind tunnel. The key to its success would be a) accessibility (Google or a third party maintaining this as an easily accessible platform & api) and b) rapid automation/layers (Being able to quickly load template 'scenarios' and apply 'filters' to them, rather than manually manipulating the instance). While there are plenty of academic and technical tools available now for modeling, there is nothing ubiquitous and simple enough that allows a layman to 'load up the world as of 15/12/2018, now raise the global temperature by 5 Celsius, now fast forward 20 years.' If Google provides the API, then industries will rapidly set itself up around it. It will be interesting to see how security & privacy are handled in these spaces. How do you prevent (and should you prevent) someone mapping the inside of your own home? Presumably, the primary strategy will be simple obfuscation (3d zones are tagged with a certain privacy level, which forces them to be randomly generated with each instance, rather than allowing true mapping) *And goes without saying, here's hoping Google practices change so consumers aren't taken advantage of with such a platform