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December 01, 2006
Hong Kong in 3D in Google Earth
The guys from ComputaMaps have created another excellent rendering of city buildings in 3D. This time the city of Hong Kong has been rendered with 29 detailed textured buildings and over 5000 building components in total. Download Hong Kong in 3D here 
(3.4 MBytes). Double click on one of the detailed building placemarks to fly in closer. ComputaMaps has colored buildings with lower heights darker than taller ones which helps give a better sense of realism. According to Steven at ComputaMaps, they believe hand-built buildings put together by artists look better than auto-generated photo-textured maps like what has been done in the Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D (VE3D) buildings. One issue Steven sees is that when future versions of these virtual globes model sunlight, the shadows cast by an artist rendered building will look much better. The VE3D buildings will have shadows stamped onto the photo textures - so they are stuck. Anyway, this collection for Hong Kong is definitely worth viewing. Great work guys!
By the way, ComputaMaps also published Vancouver in 3D, and Cape Town in 3D.
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Posted by FrankTaylor at December 1, 2006 12:51 PM
Comments
Posted by: me at December 1, 2006 05:12 PM
This is a Emperor Nintoku's ancient burial mound.
It is the largest burial in the world.
Please see!
http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=34.558103,135.48945&z=15
Posted by: Takeshi at December 2, 2006 03:40 AM
Stephen is correct when he says "hand-built buildings put together by artists look better than auto-generated photo-textured maps". But incorrect to assume that Virtual Earth doesn't support hand modeled buildings! The Virtual Earth is built of both algorithmically generated and textured buildings as well as those created completely by hand. The advantage of supporting both is that it is possible to add entire new cities very quickly with 'good' quality (not just 20 buildings), while augmenting the city with hand modeled buildings.
Posted by: steve lombardi at December 2, 2006 04:11 PM
I am trying to load the ComputaMap layer for Hong Kong and Google Earth crashes every single time. Anyone have any guesses about why or what to do? I really want to see this layer! Thanks!
Posted by: Todd at July 30, 2007 05:38 PM
I also get consistent crash when trying to view the file. Visiting ComputaMap's own website did not clear anything up either.
Posted by: erik at August 20, 2007 03:53 PM
The 3D model are great! but there is some mistake. The Hong Kong Coliseum in Hung Hom, was a building of inverted pyramid-like construction, but not just a rectangle
you can see the photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hong_Kong_Coliseum.JPG
Waiting for more product!
Posted by: Aron Lau at December 1, 2007 08:19 AM
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It's just amazing!!!