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December 17, 2008
New York City in Photo-Realistic 3D Now in Google Earth
Google has updated the 3D buildings in Google Earth for New York City! This is a HUGE update with at least hundreds (if not thousands) of new 3D buildings with photo textures applied. Basically, Google has completed nearly every building in Manhattan Island for Google Earth. Just fly to "New York City" and turn on the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth. Tilt your view so you can see the buildings in all their glory. This is the largest city i've seen done with photo-realistic textures to date.
As a comparison, here is what New York's 3D photo-realistic buildings looked like in January 2007:
And here is what it looks like today (click on the image for a high resolution version made with Google Earth Pro):
By the way, many people had already contributed dozens of photo-realistic 3D buildings to NYC since January 2007. And Google has faithfully kept those models in the layer while adding in the new buildings to fill in the gap.
I plan to create a video fly through soon. In the meantime, check it out for yourself in Google Earth now. By the way, there's a cool way of flying around buildings in Google Earth 4.3+ - You can swoop between buildings like Spiderman.... read this story for tips.
Posted by FrankTaylor at December 17, 2008 9:48 AM
Comments
Posted by: Pete at December 17, 2008 1:24 PM
@Pete: You're right. I should have made my statement more clear. This is the largest number of buildings for a single city I've seen Google release with their new photo-realistic texture methodology. The city of Berlin actually did a similarly quite large city, but was not nearly as optimized and resided on their own servers. Berlin was much harder to view because of performance issues.
Posted by: Frank Taylor at December 17, 2008 1:29 PM
Fantastic! I would love to see Hong Kong like this!
Posted by: Jonny Cheung at December 17, 2008 2:16 PM
yeah, berlin is slow loading, but NYC isn't that much faster neither....;-(
Posted by: smokeonit at December 17, 2008 2:35 PM
Was Paris always completely with grey buildings ?
Posted by: Wesbuer at December 17, 2008 4:37 PM
All Paris buildings are on 3d !
Posted by: Fromage at December 17, 2008 8:10 PM
Wow! would like to see Trondheim like this!
Posted by: Mads at December 17, 2008 8:51 PM
I don't know how to tilt my view, can you help me? I thought I could but I can't. Thank you!
Posted by: 1986 at December 18, 2008 8:10 AM
you can use "page up" and "page down" key to tilt
Posted by: xia at December 18, 2008 1:12 PM
This is extremely cool, but it looks to me that with a few exceptions, most of the buildings stop at 96th St. So your claim of "nearly every building in Manhattan Island" is a bit exaggerated -- there's a lot more to the north!
Kind of unfortunate that it stops there, actually, as this is right about where Harlem starts. So... who made that decision? Are Harlem and Inwood just not as important as the rich whiteys to the south?
Posted by: Alex at December 18, 2008 3:10 PM
Even at a medium-rez this is pretty cool. I did this NYC fly-through on an older PC with only 128MB cache and added music and the file is still is about 1.6mb after rendering. It's not photo-realistic, but it's good enough for a lot of uses, IMO.
Posted by: Jim Reppond at December 18, 2008 5:20 PM
@Alex
I doubt its that Harlem and Inwood are less important, as you can see most of this was user submitted, so maybe no one has created the 3D models of this. While racism is still a big problem in this country, I find it hard to believe that a company like Google has a racist agenda.
Posted by: Brandon at December 18, 2008 5:42 PM
This is pretty cool. I wonder what other cities they mught do?
Posted by: Calgary Painters at December 18, 2008 10:57 PM
You can already see Trondheim like this:
http://kart.sesam.no/3d/trondheim
but not with Google Earth.
Posted by: Henning at December 19, 2008 2:12 AM
Nice update. Google Earth is the kind of soft we, at Geeks3D, love!
Posted by: JeGX at December 19, 2008 4:25 AM
Please take some time and update the cities in Romania, we have roads the too. We can't use Google Maps or Earth at all and because that we use Yahoo Maps ... so ... think about it.
THX
Posted by: Adrian din Arad at December 19, 2008 5:20 AM
No offense to anybodys work, i think that what you have is amazing but my question is why, whats the point?
Posted by: shawn at December 19, 2008 2:39 PM
We contributed Paris in 3D as Gray but will add textured buildings as we develop our commercial market. We also added Waikiki and a dozen other cities mainly in the US. Cities like Sacramento, Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, El Segundo and Santa Monica. We created Washington DC as well.
Posted by: KevinD at December 19, 2008 8:32 PM
I wait to see people in the windows which make for me 'hello' in passing !
Posted by: huemaurice at December 21, 2008 5:54 AM
@Brandon: Not convinced that Google not 3d mapping Harlem shows that they have a racist agenda.
Still, this looks great. Please do the same for London!
Posted by: devolute at December 23, 2008 11:00 AM
That's very neat, Frank, to see the major contrast in comparison between then and now. Thanks for sharing that and all the stuff you point-out.
Posted by: Daniel at December 24, 2008 11:05 PM
i love 3d buildings,and look forwarding for your video.
Posted by: 广告笔 at December 27, 2008 3:05 AM
Is there any way I can update Google Earth? Mine
is freezing up before it processes.
judy tooley
Posted by: Judy Tooley at January 8, 2009 6:48 PM
I love google earth so much and these 3D buildings. A virtual trip to NY is FREE!!!
Posted by: Elizabeth G at January 23, 2009 11:33 AM
I can't see the 3d buildings. The 3d buildings setting in the layers menu is on, but when i look at Manhatten it's all flat. Does anyone know why?
Posted by: Jeff at March 3, 2009 1:14 AM
Hy I have noting to say. :P
Posted by: Dylan at March 5, 2009 10:34 AM
fantastic,,,,,,,,,,,,
i wish i could one day visit USA NEW YORK CITY
THE most beautiful city in the world
Posted by: rachel at March 10, 2009 4:06 PM
Here is a browser based full textual 3D Manhattan map with interactive features to allow you browse for local businesses and events. Looks much cooler than Google 3D map, also fast to navigate around.
check out: www.youcity.com
Posted by: Bin Li at April 19, 2009 1:33 PM
Cool! When will they add this feature to other cities in the world?
Posted by: fanofgraphics at June 5, 2009 7:48 AM
Post a comment:
NOTE: Please use English. Comments are moderated.
"This is the largest city i've seen done with photo-realistic textures to date."
Errrm didn't VE do this over a year ago? And that's not even the biggest city they have done. If you go to LA, you will see that the 3D city model even extends very far east, including the entire Inland Empire.