• Amap introduces “Flying Street View”, a new 3D store tour feature designed to help users make more informed choices when deciding where to eat and visit.
• The feature is part of Amap Street Stars 2026 upgrade, which adds new tools for seasonal discovery and social recommendations.
•  “Flying Street View” is powered by the platform’s proprietary world model, which has achieved leading results on the industry benchmark WorldScore for consistency-related metrics, according to results reported by the project team.

Alibaba’s location-based services platform Amap,has launched “Flying Street View”, a new feature that allows users to take immersive, 3D virtual tours of restaurants and other venues. The feature is designed to help users gain a clearer sense of a place, such as the layout, seating areas and private rooms, before deciding where to go, while also helping local businesses attract offline traffic.

In the initial stage, Amap said it will offer this feature free of charge to one million businesses, lowering the barrier for merchants to showcase their venues in a more interactive format.

“Flying Street View” is part of the broader Amap Street Stars 2026 update, which also introduces new features for seasonal discovery and recommendations based on friends’ activity.

 “This launch represents more than a product upgrade – it is a step forward in how we bring spatial intelligence into everyday life,” said Guo Ning, CEO of Amap. “With Amap Street Stars, we are harnessing the power of digitalization, trust, and technology to unlock growth in consumer services, with diligent businesses seen, authentic choices respected, and every spark of local life drives better living.”

Since its debut last September, Amap Street Stars has supported Amap’s continued evolution from a navigation app into a lifestyle discovery platform. Amap Street Stars now serves more than 660 million users and has onboarded 860,000 merchants. While according to QuestMobile, Amap’s overall monthly active users is approaching the one billion milestone.

Flying Street View: Transforming Offline Discovery for Users

Photos and short videos can show ambience, but they often fall short when users want to answer practical questions—How big is the dining area? Where are the private rooms? How does the space connect?

“Flying Street View” aims to close that gap by giving users a more consistent, spatial sense of a venue. Users can preview a destination virtually and better understand its scale and layout in a way that feels closer to “being there” than conventional media.

For merchants, the feature is designed to work with a simple phone capture: restaurant owners can create a 3D tour by filming a short walk-through, without specialized equipment.

“Flying Street View” is powered by Amap’s proprietary world model. The model is designed to maintain spatial consistency across viewpoint changes, helping generate views that behave more like a coherent place rather than a series of disconnected frames.

In evaluations reported by the project team using WorldScore, an industry benchmark for “world generation” that tests controllability, quality, and consistency across camera trajectories, the model achieved leading results on consistency-related metrics, including 3D consistency, photometric consistency, and style consistency.

Amap also plans to launch “Live View AR,” which overlays virtual information onto real-world destinations. With the feature, users can point their phones at a cultural landmark to view historical information or at a restaurant to see its signature dishes and ratings in real time, offering a more intuitive way to explore cities.

Redefining Local Discovery through Seasonal Insights and Shared Exploration

Beyond “Flying Street View,” Amap Street Stars 2026 introduced a suite of features designed to deepen local discovery including “Seasonal Specialties Ranking,” “Gourmet Dish List,” and “Friend Activity.”

“Seasonal Specialties Ranking” dynamically tailor recommendations to seasonal changes across cities, and includes more than 6,500 lists. The “Gourmet Dish List” offers a dish-centric guide that highlights specific menu items at restaurants, covering more than128,000 items. “Friend Activity” prioritizes recommendations and feedback from users’ own networks and supports the co-creation of curated lists with friends.

Amap said Street Stars’ daily active users surpassed 70 million in October 2025, and that the platform has expanded beyond food and drink into categories such as cycling, camping, and fishing, spanning nearly 1,700 cities across over 220 countries and regions.