« Vancouver Olympic venues in Google Earth | Main | Happy Holidays from Google Earth Blog »
December 22, 2009
More cities get lifelike facades: Portland, Austin, Chicago and Philadelphia
Last month, Google unveiled detailed facades for five cities in California (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Franciso, Berkeley and Stockton). By mapping StreetView imagery onto the 3D models, they were able to give great detail to those downtown areas.
Today Google has added the facades to four more US cities -- Portland, Austin, Chicago and Philadelphia. Considering all of the cities out there that already have 3D buildings and StreetView imagery, I would expect this list to keep expanding in 2010.
Fly around and check them out for yourself, or watch the video below for a quick tour:
Tweet
Posted by mickmel at December 22, 2009 11:16 AM
Comments
Posted by: David Bryant at December 22, 2009 5:03 PM
Post a comment:
NOTE: Please use English. Comments are moderated.
I'm all for more detail, and was especially looking forward to seeing my old stomping grounds of Hollywood.
Unfortunately, many of the facades there are absolutely wretched. They are not aligned, often contain huge chunks of sky, and in some cases act as billboards that obscure the 3D models behind them.
For a good (bad?) example, take a look at the buildings on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard at these coordinates: 34.101550, -118.332284.
From what I've seen of downtown LA, they can do a very good job. Hollywood, though, is a horrible mess.