The 3D Buildings layer update on June 4th, which included the huge collection for Disney World in 3D, included many other 3D Buildings for cities around the world. Already mentioned were those in San Diego and Chicago. But, Google hasn’t announced that there are some other significant 3D building model additions in other cities like:
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Dallas – Many of the buildings in downtown Dallas, Texas area have been modeled
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Memphis, Tennessee – Most of the buildings in the downtown area now available (thanks to GEB reader danstan)
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St. Louis, Missouri – Another large group of buildings for most of the downtown area – including the Gateway Arch.
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Sydney – A bunch of new notable skyscrapers in Sydney have been added, and the Sydney Opera House has returned (the 3D model had disappeared in Google Earth a couple of months ago). And Crocodile Man is back.
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Tokyo – Many new 3D building models are scattered about this huge city in Japan.
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Christchurch – In 2007 many of the buildings in Christchurch were added. Now there are even more and they’ve been converted to the loading format supported by GE 4.3.
There are hundreds of cities with at least a few 3D buildings in Google Earth. But, there are now dozens of cities with nearly complete 3D renderings of at least the major skyscrapers. I’m sure there were many more cities who had significant new 3D buildings added on June 4th. Feel free to drop a comment here if you know of any other substantial additions (more than a few scattered buildings). No comment at this time comparing Google’s approach to the way Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team is doing things (but, I plan to). But, right now I like to just look at both when I want to see a city in 3D – after all, they’re both free to use and view!
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.
And Chicago is lucky enough to have TWO John Hancock Towers 🙂
But at least one of them is in the correct place.
Also check out Boston. (one needs to wait a while for all the buildings to load)
A lot of building were added for Tel Aviv, Israel as well. check it out.
I made minors modifications in China Syndrome (http://www.google.com/earth/plugin/examples/chinasyndrome/) to permit stereoscopic view of world (cross view technique): http://www.meiradarocha.jor.br/earth/stereo-earth.html
downtown memphis, tennessee nearly every building…looks awesome, mainly because they used one of my buildings
Indeed Tel Aviv, Israel, has also been updated with new 3D models.
I’ve written a post about it here:
http://delpieroge.blogspot.com/
It also features two cases of “double models”, one of which I’ve mentioned in comments of that thread as well.
250 km2 are totally in 3D (ground + full textured building) with a very high definition in the town of Montbeliard, in france. A must see ! I read that the area contained more than 44 000 textured buildings !
Minneapolis, MN was impressively updated. The update seemed to coincide with the RNC September1-2008. We now have every building down town, bridges, surrounding neighborhoods, even historic grain mills that were destroyed in the early 2000’s! It’s awesome and mind blowing!
How does one advocate for completion and refinement? We could get a few more bridges finished here in Minneapolis.
Hi!