Wooorld

Wooorld 2.0 with Google Earth
Wooorld includes the full Google Earth 3D catalog
Explore 2,500+ 3D cities and thousands of natural places in VR and MR
Intuitive UI with powerful tools
Conversational AI Assistant can answer questions, take you anywhere and even see what you're seeing
Mixed Reality Table-Top Mode lets you bring the world into your room
Mixed Reality Table-Top Mode lets you bring the world into your room
Explore the world together with friends
Change your scale to become a giant
Change your scale to become tiny
All of the world's natural landmarks
Wooorld includes "Where in the Wooorld", a social location guessing game
Play Where in the Wooorld as a team or compete against your friends

Inspiration

We wanted to create a way for people to explore the world together, no matter where they are. The idea of standing side by side with someone on the other side of the planet, sharing a moment in a faraway place, sparked the vision for Wooorld.

What it does

Wooorld is a social VR platform that transforms Google Earth’s 3D data into a real-time, multiplayer exploration space. Users can meet, talk, and travel together across more than 2,500 cities and billions of 360° panoramas. It includes a rich set of features, including social exploration and content creation tools, a conversational AI assistant, and a location guessing game called Where in the Wooorld, where players collaborate or compete to figure out where they are. Whether you're floating above the Mount Everest or walking through the streets of Tokyo, Wooorld makes global discovery social, immersive, and effortless.

How we built it

Wooorld is built using the Unity game engine and uses Google Earth’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles and Street View data. We created a custom user interface, real-time voice chat, social features, content creation tools, games and AI integrations to make it a shared experience from the ground up.

Challenges we ran into

Getting high-quality 3D data to perform smoothly on standalone VR hardware was a major challenge. It required us to use and develop several optimization strategies. We also had to design for a unique interaction model where users can freely change their scale and still interact with each other naturally. In mixed reality tabletop mode, users can explore Earth on a table while others may be fully immersed in VR. Ensuring that all users feel connected and coordinated across these different contexts required careful UI/UX design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud to have built a big, vibrant global community of explorers who use Wooorld to connect, learn and share a sense of wonder about the planet. Wooorld is now used in classrooms in over 30 countries, helping students explore geography, history, and culture in a way that feels real and memorable. It's also used in the workplace around the world. People use Wooorld to revisit places from their childhood, explore destinations for upcoming trips, and discover new corners of the world they never knew existed.

What we learned

The world is incredibly diverse, and people are naturally curious to experience it together. We’ve learned how powerful geospatial data becomes when it’s made social, immersive, and accessible. We also saw how important it is to support meaningful interactions across different languages, cultures, and contexts.

What's next for Wooorld

We’re continuing to develop new features in Wooorld that make shared exploration even richer. This includes more ways for users to create content and share their experiences with others. Beyond Wooorld, we're working on new apps and games that share the same mission of bringing people closer to the world and to each other through meaningful experiences.