Spiegel Online in Germany has posted a story (in German) [Here’s an English summary of the story.] about an awesome collection of phototextured 3d buildings for Google Earth. According to the article the collection will be published soon by Google, but the models were not created by Google. Apparently the models were developed by the “city and private sector”. Spiegel Online released a gallery of screenshots and a video (Flash required) which show the building models – and they do indeed look beautiful. Hopefully the collection will be published in the 3D buildings layer soon (the article indicates in a few days or weeks). I’ll let you know as soon as its published. Thanks to German GEB readers Volker Kinkelin, and Boris Friedrichs for the tip.
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.
the data geodata was supplied by the geodata office of the state of hamburg, germany. around a 1000 aerial photos were taken for this project. the company that put the data into a format usable in GE was cybercity. the end result is a morph of aerial and satellit pictures…. (translated from an article by DPA, german press agency).
(original german text: Die Daten für das Projekt des Branchennetzwerks Hamburg@work und Google stellte der Landesbetrieb Geoinformation und Vermessung zur Verfügung. “Für das Abbilden der Fassaden im Innenstadtbereich wurden im vergangenen August rund 1000 Luftaufnahmen gemacht”, sagte Geschäftsführer Hagen Graeff. Das Softwareunternehmen Cybercity bereitete die Daten für das Internet auf. Die dreidimensionale Darstellung entsteht durch die Verschmelzung von Luftbildern und Satellitenaufnahmen.)
Well, what about it…. Its been 3 months and the models haven’t been added *looksdown*