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.
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.