This is awesome, though not very surprising. It's been a long wait for getting some 3D information in online maps, and Amazon's a9 service was one of the first to show street-level maps. In those, the maps would display pictures of the stores and buildings along a side of the street, and you could use arrows to move further in a direction down the street. But there was the possibility that something was obscured and the coverage was limited.

Google's also got limited coverage, but where they've got it it's amazing. The images are much higher quality, and you can not only navigate streets, but you can also turn the camera angle to look straight down the street, perpendicular to the street, or anything in between. It looks like the cities they do cover have a lot of area covered. Check out the Luxor hotel in Vegas:


I can't wait 'til they expand to Chicago!

In related news, Microsoft has come out with true, full 3D city views for a few select cities, including New York City: