GOOGLE has unveiled one of the greatest toys ever – a virtual glass elevator that lets you fly around the world.

Made by a few of the engineers in their spare time, the Liquid Galaxy project is an interactive booth with wraparound LCD screens.

The screens show synchronised views from Google Earth and you can use a six-axis mouse to move your way through air and water.

The effect is stunning. Take a look above

The video was taken by Mashable staff at a live demo by creator Jason Holt at TED.

Mr Holt, a software engineer at Google, first announced the project last year.

“It was amazing to all of us how much more impressive Google Earth felt when we were surrounded by screens and able to turn our heads to look around (and even walk around),” he said.

“It felt more like a ride than a computer program, something between an observation-deck and a glass-walled spaceship.”

Liquid Galaxy is the product of Google’s “20 per cent time” initiative which sees its engineers encouraged to pursue their own projects on company time.

More reading:

“With the Liquid Galaxy, we could fly through the Grand Canyon, leap into low-Earth orbit, and come back down to perch on the Great Pyramid of Giza without even breaking a sweat.” – Jason Holt on the Google Lat Long Blog

source: http://blogs.news.com.au/techblog/