Toward the end of last year, Google pushed out a bunch of excellent 3D models for the upcoming Vancouver Olympics, covering 8 of the 9 venues. They’ve now updated many of those models with higher-resolution imagery and they also added the ninth venue (the Bobsled Course).
With this update, they have include a total of 54 buildings across all nine venues. You can view them in the Google 3D Warehouse, or simply fly out there (Bobsled KML
) to see them in Google Earth (make sure to have the “3D Buildings” layer checked).For another way to view the venues, Soren Johannessen has built a tour of the venues using the Google Earth Plug-in, which you can view here
.Also in the past few days, Google has added 3D buildings to Cincinnati, Ohio. These buildings come from a variety of sources; some are user-generated, some are Google-generated, and some gray buildings were submitted via the Cities in 3D Program. All in all, it makes for a great 3D city to fly through!
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
I really don’t know why Google hasn’t implimented a better flight simulator game with 3d buildings turned on for google earth. The detail rivals flight simulator X.
I’m sure everyone emjoys the experience of flying over a 3d city, google already has that, just needs to add a bit more excitement to it!
Why stop at planes, they could include boats and even cars
Does anyone know if there is a 3D model of the “Hometree” featured in the Avatar movie that I can open in Google Earth? I just think that would be so cool…Pandora in Google Earth!
CTRL-ALT-B allows you to flip the 3-D buildings layer (or any other) layer on in flight simulator.
Cincinnati–The detail in the latest release of auto-generated models is the best yet. This is the first I’m seeing actual single family homes that don’t look like cubes with crumpled images plastered all over them. Architectural detail of roofs, chimneys. Crisper photo-imagery and color of facades. The residential neighborhood near downtown looks great.