Making the news rounds this morning is that Google has an experimental WebGL interface to the normal google maps. I have said that WebGL will make a big dent in maps and this is the first of them I expect.

So whats this all about ? If you have Firefox 6 or more and have turned on WebGL or have Chrome 14+ or Safari then you can do WebGL. In google there is a box appearing today saying "Want to try something new ?". If you hit that and go to the try WebGL then it might allow you to do so. Once enabled then you get some extra features.

a) Its faster with smoother scrolling and updates.
b) Its supposed to do the street view in web gl instead of flash

also from quite recently google maps have done a 45 degree city view.

c) In sat view and in certain locations that have been covered and when you are zoomed in enough, you can get sat view with 45 degree ISO style buildings. You can change the view direction to the cardinals and if on maps instead of satellite then you get the 3D buildings like in Google Earth.

So try it if you can. Im not seeing a huge difference but then I am on XP where it says you need Vista or 7, linux or some Mac OS's. And maybe my FF is not the dev 8 stream instead of 6. Heck I am not sure what I am supposed to see since mine is pretty fast anyways. But see what you get and post if you do get some differences.