It appears that someone has already done something like this [0]. In 2013 during 30C3 in Hamburg, someone bought in a bicycle which you used to bike through cities virtually using an Oculus rift [1]. Unfortunately I couldn't find any extra information about that project, but I do seem to remember that they had to cache everything locally because Google blocked them after 10000 API calls a day.

[0] https://github.com/troffmo5/OculusStreetView [1] https://instagram.com/p/ibU1IXFhCz/

I used to think VR was mostly for gaming, but with this, and expeditions that they demoed, I'm starting to get really excited about VR apps for the masses.

That'll be awesome! Walking on any street of the world, just as if you were there? Why not!

You'll need some fancy ML/CV algos to take photo-only data from this to turn it into 3D environments, but Google could already create Street View in 3D with their self driving car data their collecting using their cloud point laser scanners.