ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) – Google has announced a new Google Maps navigational feature using AI to give you a hand with making your next travel plans.

The Immersive view will give travelers a preview of how busy a location will be, as well as a look ahead at the expected weather forecast. This allows anyone to plan their journey beforehand including whether walking, driving, or cycling. All of this uses AI to fuse together billions of street view and aerial images so Google Map users can know what a location is like before going.

The Google lens in maps will allow drivers to see the whole area and what other locations to visit. The lens tool can help travelers check local businesses like bars, shops or pop-ups that are nearby are worth checking out. By using AI and augmented reality, this tool can help acclimate to a new city and environment.

Google says soon the navigation map will reflect real-world objects like buildings more accurately, helping drivers orient themselves quicker and easier. For example, if driving downtown these realistic images can help navigate will driving. On highways, where drivers often must produce trickier maneuvers, drivers will see the latest and improved lane details to help travelers further prepare. In the U.S., drivers will soon see if there are HOV lanes along routes so more informed decisions can be made about how to get to a destination.

Finally, AI will give users searching in Google Maps even more answers to questions, faster discovery things to do and finding inspiration in a whole new ways. Now when searching in maps for specific places, users will get photo-first results of what’s being searched. These results are based on the analysis of billions of phots shared by the Google Maps Community, all done through AI and advanced image recognition models.

With the visual list of places, users can scroll through the results, tap on a photo to learn more, and navigate right there to discover new sports that match what’s being looked for.

For more information on Google Maps and AI, visit https://blog.google/products/maps/Google-maps-october-2023-update/.