Vancouver is now available in photorealistic 3D. It’s a beautiful city in Google Earth now as well as in real life. I looked around quite a bit for other new 3D cities, but couldn’t find any other new ones. There are some expanded coverages in other cities. For example, New York City is now extended north a bit covering Harlem all the way up to the Bronx. Also, I have reports of Portland and Seattle being a bit more expansive. While looking for new coverage I was looking at Los Angeles. The amount of coverage from downtown LA to the coast and north up to the foothills is amazing. Thousands of buildings! But, those areas were part of the last update. Read GEB’s last 3D cities post which lists all the known major 3D cities in Google Earth – except for the new one: Vancouver.
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 Living Shangri-La, Vancouvers tallest building is seen incomplete in the 3d set, (not shown at all on the image set). Even incomplete it is the tallest 3d building in vancouver.
i’m just curious how it is done…..
did someone go around town and take photos of all sides of the building?
If I’m using GE4.2, does the image or 3d buildings will be updated similar to 4.3 version?
because university in my place shows the older image where certain buildings are still in construction although now the buildings are all completed.
I’m wondering if it’s possible to download any of these buildings into sketchup or other 3d software
I’m visually able to aproximate when the textures were created due to a renovation tarp on my apartment building. It was also around that time that I recall being on my balcony one night around 3am and having a cigarette. I heard a long loud continuous sonar ping noise eminating and echoing out from some building. I remember thinking “Could that be Google measuring buildings somehow?” Looks like I may have been right! I’m pretty sure Google did this because of the upcoming Olympics