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Google Street View lets people explore the world from the comfort of their living room, but it can't replicate the experience of actually being there.

In a bid to make this the mapping service more immersive, designers have created the Sounds of Street View project, which adds audio markers to locations. 

As people move around the map, the sounds change depending on what they are looking at and this includes church bells, waves hitting the beach, a fairground, and more. 

The Sounds of Street View project lets users explore soundscapes around the world. Audio has been manually added to locations to offer a more immersive experience when virtually moving around towns and cities. Click Experience the tour (above) to begin exploring. Turn up the volume on your device, or use headphones, to hear the sounds

Sounds of Street View was created for Manchester-based hearing aid specialists Amplifon UK.

It's still an experimental technology and not all locations are covered yet, but, the designers have so far added sound to three locations; Place du Palais in Monaco, Hapuna Beach in Hawaii, and Balboa Park in San Diego.

In Monaco, for example, the user is dropped in a courtyard where they can hear the bells of the church that is visible on the right-hand side of the screen.

Moving away from the church and into a plaza, the bells become quieter and a café noise plays, including clinking glasses and people talking.

When moving away from the plaza further, a fairground appears and the music from a carousel begins playing.

Elsewhere, at Hapuna Beach, sounds include the waves hitting the beach, children playing, and rustling grass.

And moving around Balboa Park in San Diego, the audio includes people talking, a water fountain flowing, the sound of birds and an orange juice machine running on a cart.

Users can switch between the locations using dots at the bottom of the screen.

Clicking the three green blocks on the right-hand side of the screen reveals a guide on how to use Sounds of Street View, and to learn more about adding new locations.

The designers created the sounds using latitude and longitude markers to plot invisible markers on Google Street View.

Sounds of Street View was created for Manchester-based hearing aid specialists Amplifon UK. It is still an experimental technology and not all locations are covered yet, but, the designers have so far added sound to three locations; Place du Palais in Monaco (pictured), Hapuna Beach in Hawaii, and Balboa Park in San Diego 

When moving around the locations, the sounds change and develop. For example, in Monaco, the user is dropped in a courtyard where they can hear the bells of the church. Moving away from the church and into a plaza, the bells become quieter and a café noise plays, including clinking glasses and people talking. When moving away from the plaza further, a fairground appears (pictured) and the music from a carousel begins playing

They then sourced relevant sounds from the web, or created their own MP3 files using audio recording software such as Audacity.

The sound is linked to a location using a bespoke framework, and is dropped onto the map.

Markers can be dragged and dropped to other locations, too, and decibel levels can be customised to make it sound as realistic as possible.

To achieve the correct distance between the user and a specific sound, the project models the map as if Street View was a sphere, like Earth. It then finds the angle at which a sound is lying at, from the user, to generate stereophonic sound.

Meanwhile, when exploring Hapuna Beach (pictured) the sounds include the waves hitting the beach, children playing, and rustling grass. Amplifon UK is asking people to create their own soundscapes, to increase the locations covered by the project. Step-by-step instructions are available on the Sounds of Street View site

Markers can be dragged and dropped to other locations, too, and decibel levels can be customised to make it sound as realistic as possible.To achieve the correct distance between the user and a specific sound, the project models the map as if Street View was a sphere, like Earth. It then finds the angle at which a sound is lying at, from the user, to generate stereophonic sound (diagram pictured)

In human hearing, the pinna catches soundwaves and the outer ear points contains a number of curves to help determine the direction of a sound.

If a sound is coming from behind or above, it will bounce off the pinna in a different way than if it is coming from in front or below you.

This alters the pattern of the waves, and human brains recognise distinctive patterns to determine which direction the sound is coming from.

To imitate this action found in human ears, Amplifon applies a 'low-pass filter' to the sound gradually on its map, the further behind the user it is. 

Amplifon UK is now asking people to create their own sound maps, and share them with the team to increase the locations covered by the project.