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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About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
It’s just amazing!!!
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
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.
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!
I also get consistent crash when trying to view the file. Visiting ComputaMap’s own website did not clear anything up either.
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!