In May this year, at its annual I/O developer conference, Google revealed some new features that it was working on for Maps.

One of these was a 3D immersive view specifically designed for cities and notable landmarks in particular. Now this feature is ready to roll out to the Google Maps community, providing a detailed aerial view of roughly 100 landmarks across the globe.

As such, it may take some time to add locations from South Africa to the mix, but the likes of Table Mountain in the Western Cape or Pontie Tower in Johannesburg seem like ideal additions.

For now though, Google says that, “Immersive view will work on just about any phone and device. It starts rolling out in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo later this year with more cities coming soon.”

As for the other features, while they are perhaps less eye catching, they are potentially more important. This as improvements have been made to location sharing in Google Maps. To that end, you will soon receive notifications letting you know when a friend or family has departed or arrived at a specific location.

This would be particularly useful for those wanting to keep track of their children or older relatives should they be making journeys solo.

The last feature will be of interest to cyclists. With Google having prioritised bikes as a mode of travel on its app, this new update will add more information on planned routes, such as how much road traffic there is, the type of road they will be cycling on and whether there are any bike lanes along the way.

While these new features will not bring more people to Google Maps, they are quality of life improvements that should make you want to engage with the app for longer.

The above features are set to roll out on the mobile version of the app in selected regions from today onwards, for both iOS and Android phone users.