In just over a year, the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia and the folks at Google Sightseeing have taken a close look at the various venues in Google Earth to see how they’re progressing. The current Google Earth imagery is from roughly 17 months ago and shows the buildings in various stages of progress. A good example of that is Fisht Stadium, home of the opening and closing ceremonies.
I expect we’ll see a nice imagery update in the area in the coming months, as Google tends to update cities prior to them hosting the Olympics as they did for London in 2012 and Vancouver in 2010.
In addition, I expect we’ll see most of the venues in 3D and perhaps even Street View imagery around the city. For now, the only venue in 3D is the “Iceberg Skating Palace”, seen here:
Check it all out for yourself by reading their full blog post, or grab this KML file
to fly around and see the venues in Google Earth.
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.