New Google 3D.
-
I was looking at a building I'll be working on in Denver in Google Earth and I realised the whole city was in 3D and it wasn't the normal inserts by individuals - looks like someone has written a program that turns the 2D images into 3D. The building facades seem accurate so it must be accessing Street View.
Very Clever, Check it out.
-
@john sayers said:
I was looking at a building I'll be working on in Denver in Google Earth and I realised the whole city was in 3D and it wasn't the normal inserts by individuals - looks like someone has written a program that turns the 2D images into 3D. The building facades seem accurate so it must be accessing Street View.
John,
Denver was one of the very first cities we modeled in 3D back in the early days of the Google Earth geo model pipeline (by hand). This also meant that it didn't get to benefit from all of the little things we learned in the first few years after that as the initial all-manual process was soon supplemented by all kinds of other data.
In consideration of Google's desire to map the entire world, reliance on more automatic, algorithmic modeling techniques is the only way to go long-term. That was a definite factor in Google selling SketchUp, and more obviously, in Google retiring the 3D model pipeline last year.
Combinations of satellite, lidar, street view, etc., all contribute to Google's ability to perform algorithmic modeling of large geographic areas in high detail with little to no user intervention.
As a result of Denver being an early "guinea pig" in the geo modeling process, it looked dated much sooner than it otherwise might have, which is I suppose, a great reason for it to have been recently refreshed by Google's new geo modeling robots.
Cool stuff, indeed, but still a ways to go before the quality of individual models will be able to match what was produced by the most passionate and active members of the geo modeling community.
Andrew
-
Thanks for that info Andrew - I was really taken aback when I saw it.
On the other hand perhaps Sketchup can now get back to what it was originally intend to do, be a cheap, easy to use 3D modeling program for architects and designers.
cheers
john
Advertisement