Just months after becoming the first Arab city added to Google's Street View, Dubai has gone a step further – and higher – with what it's calling “the world's largest and highest quality interactive tour.”
Taking a team of 30 over 18 months to create, Dubai360 links more than a thousand shots and locations, allowing users to pan and click through nearly the whole city.
Starting at the pinnacle of the iconic Burj Khalifa tower, users can pan across the whole city, with the ability to zoom in to amazing street-level detail from the top of the 829-meter tower. As the cityscape slides past the viewer, markers offer other panoramic shots, from helicopter bird's-eye views to street-level landmarks such as the Atlantis and Al Farooq Mosque.
But it's not just the city's streetscape that virtual tourists can get a sneak peak of; the interior of many of Dubai's hotels, shopping centers and tourist attractions are also available on the site. Our personal favorite virtual tour? Take a swim in Dubai Mall’s Aquarium with over 70 different marine species .
While the more than 8 terapixels of imagery and 500,000 individual images required to create the tour are impressive, the ability to navigate the city from within the panoramas – jumping from tower top to street to lobby in just seconds – makes the site a breeze for locals and potential tourists alike.
“Dubai 360 is illustrative of what Dubai stands for,” Ismaeil Al Hashmi, project manager for Dubai 360, told The National . “With Dubai360.com, whether you live in Dubai or are planning a visit, you can discover something new in the city every day.
For tourists, the interactive tour even offers the ability to view suites in different hotels – allowing a real test run of any vacation.