Google Earth VR is the app most people install first when they buy a SteamVR headset, and it still feels magic the first time you sweep from Manhattan to your childhood street. The catch is that the last substantive update landed in 2018. Street View patches were flakier every year after that, imagery outside major cities has aged, and the app has never picked up hand controllers on modern headsets past a basic level. There is still nothing else quite like it, but the Google Earth VR alternatives below cover most of what people actually use it for, from armchair travel to virtual field trips to just staring at the planet spinning.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Free plan | Cost | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Earth Pro | Flat-screen virtual globe | Free forever | Free | Historical imagery slider back to the 1980s |
| BRINK Traveler | Photogrammetry nature trips | 4 free locations | $9.99 one-time on Steam | 3D-captured natural wonders, not Street View bubbles |
| Nature Treks VR | Calming exploration and meditation | Demo available | $14.99 one-time on Steam | 15 nature environments plus weather and time control |
| NASA World Wind | Open-source virtual globe | Free forever | Free (open source) | Multi-layer scientific data, custom terrain |
| Marble | Lightweight offline globe | Free forever | Free (open source, GPLv3) | Runs comfortably on old hardware, offline maps |
| Wander | Street View in VR | 30-day free trial (Meta) | $9.99 on Meta Store | Voice search, Wikipedia panels, historical time slider |
| Google Earth for Web | Zero-install browser globe | Free forever | Free | Guided Voyager tours and Earth Studio for creators |
Why people leave Google Earth VR
Abandonware in everything but name. Google shipped a Street View update in 2018 and then went quiet. There are no new bug fixes, no controller remaps for Index knuckles or Quest 3 hand tracking, and no support beyond a Steam Community thread.
Street View imagery is dated in most places. Google refreshes the flat map regularly, but the VR client seems to lag by several passes. Small towns and rural roads often show 2013 to 2016 captures.
No new features for modern headsets. Passthrough, mixed-reality windows, upscaled resolution for Quest 3 and PSVR2 via SteamLink, none of it landed. The app is stuck in 2016-era interaction design.
Copy-paste and export are locked out. You cannot save a bookmark to your desktop, sync locations to phone Google Earth, or export a screenshot with location metadata. The app is a walled experience.
No touch on flat monitors. Ironically, the flat-desktop Google Earth Pro is often the better tool for planning routes and comparing years, and Google Earth VR has no crossover with it.
The alternatives
Google Earth Pro, best for flat-screen virtual-globe work
Google Earth Pro is the free desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it does everything Google Earth VR does except the immersive angle. The historical imagery slider goes back to the mid-1980s in many US cities and to the 1930s in some European ones. Route planning, KML import/export, and the “measure area” tool are the reason surveyors and journalists still open it every week.
Where it falls short: no VR mode, no controller support, and the 3D building layer looks noticeably behind current Google Earth for Web in a few dense cities. Also imports 3D Warehouse models fine but exports are a hassle.
Pricing: free.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: no bookmarks transfer. Save your VR locations as coordinates and paste them into Earth Pro’s search.
Download: Google Earth Pro
Bottom line: pick Google Earth Pro if what you actually wanted was Google Earth, and the VR headset was optional.
BRINK Traveler, best for photogrammetry nature trips
BRINK Traveler takes a different approach from Google Earth VR. Instead of surfacing Google’s dataset, the developer 3D-captures individual natural wonders (Horseshoe Bend, Landmannalaugar, Aoraki/Mt Cook, Cappadocia, Antelope Canyon) and lets you walk through them in true photorealistic 6DOF. The 2024 v1.1 update pushed the location count above 60. Reviews on Steam sit at 88 percent positive, and the imagery is markedly sharper than anything in Google Earth VR.
Where it falls short: no free explore, and the locations are curated rather than “anywhere on Earth.” You cannot fly from Manhattan to Sydney the way Google Earth VR lets you.
Pricing: $9.99 one-time on Steam. Free-locations pack available before purchase.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: n/a. Different content model.
Download: BRINK Traveler on Steam
Bottom line: pick BRINK Traveler if you liked Google Earth VR for the “standing at the Grand Canyon” feeling and not for the free-flight navigation.
Nature Treks VR, best for calm exploration and mindfulness
Nature Treks VR is not a globe app but it is a common Google Earth VR replacement for people who used the app to relax. Fifteen environments (tropical beach, Arctic tundra, alien worlds) come with weather control, day-night cycles, and over 60 animals you can spawn. It runs on modest headsets and stays under $15.
Where it falls short: content is stylized, not photorealistic. No real Earth data, no place names, no coordinates.
Pricing: $14.99 one-time on Steam. Free demo available.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: n/a.
Download: Nature Treks VR on Steam
Bottom line: pick Nature Treks if the point of Google Earth VR was to unwind, not to visit specific places.
NASA World Wind, best for open-source scientific data
NASA World Wind is the open-source virtual globe NASA built for scientific visualization. It reads a much wider set of remote-sensing data than Google Earth Pro (weather layers, LANDSAT time series, DEM terrain, geologic overlays) and the Java client runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. There is no VR mode and no Street View, but the customization ceiling is dramatically higher.
Where it falls short: no active corporate maintenance, Java runtime is heavier than users expect, and the UI is unmistakably early-2010s.
Pricing: free, released under NASA’s open-source license.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: KML files load fine, so any coordinates you noted in Earth VR paste in cleanly.
Download: NASA World Wind
Bottom line: pick NASA World Wind if you want to layer real scientific data on the planet rather than just look at it.
Marble (KDE), best for a lightweight offline globe
Marble is the KDE project’s virtual globe. It ships with OpenStreetMap, satellite, and historical map layers, works offline once you cache the tiles, and runs cleanly on hardware that would choke Google Earth Pro. There is a route planner, a solar system view, and a moon-phase widget, all in one package.
Where it falls short: satellite imagery is coarser than Google’s (Bing tiles by default), no VR mode, and animations look stiff next to Google Earth’s flyovers.
Pricing: free, GPLv3.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: GPX and KML import both work.
Download: Marble
Bottom line: pick Marble on old laptops or where you cannot install Google software.
Wander, best for immersive Street View
Wander by Parkline Interactive is the closest single-app match to Google Earth VR’s Street View mode. Speech recognition drives location search, integrated Wikipedia panels give context for landmarks, and the time slider lets you flip through Street View captures across years to watch how a place changed. It ships on Meta Quest natively and runs on Windows SteamVR headsets through Meta Quest Link for Rift.
Where it falls short: development has slowed dramatically. The Quest version keeps getting content patches but bug fixes lag, and the PC VR path via Rift is the older interaction model.
Pricing: $9.99 on Meta Store. 30-day free trial available.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: no import, but bookmarks in Wander are searchable by exact address which mirrors how you would look a place up in Earth VR.
Download: Wander from VR Voyaging (Meta Store link inside)
Bottom line: pick Wander if what you used Google Earth VR for was Street View, not the flyover mode.
Google Earth for Web, best for zero-install browser use
Google Earth for Web runs in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on any desktop OS with no install, and it now covers most of the flat Google Earth Pro feature set plus the Voyager guided tours that were paywalled before. Earth Studio (a related tool for creators) lets you script camera moves and export them as image sequences for video projects. Neither has a VR mode.
Where it falls short: no offline caching, feature parity with Earth Pro still lags on measurement tools, and Chromium-based browsers get noticeably better performance than Firefox.
Pricing: free. Earth Studio requires a free application step for full access.
Migrating from Google Earth VR: none. Both accept KML.
Download: Google Earth for Web
Bottom line: pick Web when you are on a shared or locked-down machine and cannot install Pro.
How to choose
Pick Google Earth Pro if you want everything Google Earth VR does minus the headset. It is free, it runs on any desktop OS, and the historical imagery is better than the VR client’s.
Pick BRINK Traveler if the appeal of Google Earth VR was the “being there” feeling in nature spots. The photogrammetry beats Street View bubbles for immersion in the places it covers.
Pick Nature Treks VR if the reason to open Google Earth VR was to decompress after work. Cheaper, more content, real weather and time controls.
Pick NASA World Wind or Marble for open-source, offline-first, or scientifically-serious use. Marble is lighter, World Wind is deeper.
Pick Wander for a Street View experience that still gets some attention, especially if you already own a Quest.
Stay on Google Earth VR if the free-flight globe view with Street View drop-ins is the specific interaction you want, and modern headset polish is a bonus you can live without. It is still the only app that does exactly that.
FAQ
Is Google Earth VR still being updated? No. The last substantive update was in 2018. Google has not commented on future development. The app still runs on current SteamVR headsets but no new features have shipped since.
What is the closest free Google Earth VR alternative? For flat-screen use, Google Earth Pro is a full drop-in. For VR, there is no free equivalent that covers the whole Earth. NASA World Wind and Marble are open-source globes but ship without a VR mode.
Which alternative works best on Quest 3? Wander, BRINK Traveler, and Nature Treks VR all have native Quest builds and run standalone without a PC. Google Earth VR itself requires SteamVR and a tethered PC.
Can I use Google Earth in VR without buying Google Earth VR? Not directly. Google has not shipped a browser-based WebXR version. The closest workaround is running Google Earth Pro on desktop and mirroring the screen inside a VR desktop app, which is not immersive but is free.
Are there Google Earth VR alternatives for macOS or Linux? For flat desktop: Google Earth Pro, Marble, NASA World Wind, and Google Earth for Web all run cross-platform. For VR, the SteamVR ecosystem is Windows-only in practice.
Is there a VR globe that shows current satellite data instead of Street View? Not really. BRINK Traveler is 3D-captured, not live, and no current VR app streams live satellite imagery of the whole Earth. NASA World Wind is the closest for scientific layers, but it is flat desktop only.
