Street View

Remembering 9/11 with Google Earth

September 11, 2014

We have talked about the anniversary of 9/11 a number of times in the past, including 2006, 2010, 2011 (a three part series 1 2 3), 2012 and 2013. We also followed the progress of the new World Trade Center buildings in May 2010 and May 2012.

The 3D imagery in New York is still the same as it was last year, with the ‘new’ type of 3D imagery actually showing slightly less progress on the buildings than the older type of 3D, which can be viewed by going to ‘historical imagery’. However, Historical Street View was introduced in April 2014, so we can now show you the progress of the building of the new World Trade Center using Street View.

The new World Trade Center over time in Street View.

Destiny – Google Street View in a game world

September 5, 2014

With our recent story on the possible demise of the Google Earth plugin – at least in the Chrome browser – it begs the question, what is currently possible with the Google Maps API?

Paul van Dinther of PlanetInAction.com, whose many great Google Earth Plugin creations we have featured over the years, is developing a new version of his ship simulator, Ships 2 Career, based on Google Maps. The previous version is based on the Google Earth plugin and is still available at PlanetInAction.com. You can get an idea of what the game will be like from this YouTube video.

Upcoming console game Destiny will be released in 3 days. Game developer Bungie, who also created Halo, has created a website showing the worlds of Destiny – Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Although the intro does give the illusion of a 3D experience reminiscent of Google Maps ‘Earth Mode’, the website is really much closer to Street View than the Google Earth plugin. The website says “created with Google Technologies”, and appears to be more sophisticated than simply using the Google Maps API.

The worlds of Destiny.

Street View on Venus! I think they used the ‘Trekker’ for this one.

Street View on the Moon, looks much more exciting than the Google Maps version.

The TARDIS in Google Earth

August 27, 2014

The popular British TV Series “Dr Who” Series 8’s premiere episode aired on Saturday, August 23, 2014. The series features a blue British police box known as the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space).

If you search for the address “236 Earls Court Road W.8, London, United Kingdom”, in Google Earth and make sure you turn on you the 3D buildings layer, you can see a 3D model of the TARDIS as seen below. (Or you can fly straight to it using this KML file)

If you enter street view at the exact location of the TARDIS model, you can see the inside of the TARDIS – which is considerably larger than the outside.

If you look around the area in Street View you will see that there really is a blue police box at that location.

The oldest references I could find to this Street View Easter Egg are from August 2013 (for example this article from Time magazine) just in time for the premier of Series 7.

We have previously brought you other stories of Google Street view in unusual places such as under the sea, the temples of Angkor Wat and a corn maize, but this is the first instance of Street View in a part of the world that is technically ‘not of this world’. If you know of any other unusual instances of Street View please let us know in the comments.

New Street View imagery – Indonesia and Cambodia

August 22, 2014

We told you in April about Street View imagery in Cambodia around the temples of Angkor Wat. Now, Google have released imagery for much of the rest of Cambodia, as well as a significant amount in Indonesia, although the Indonesian imagery appears to be almost entirely on the islands of Java and Bali. Thanks to GEB reader IxBxTx for alerting us to the update.

According to this article Google set up a fleet of Street View cars in Indonesia, back in 2012. All the imagery I checked in both countries was dated some time in 2013, so maybe it has taken a while to process the imagery, or they had to wait for approval from local authorities. It apparently took 4 years to get approval in Greece which finally got Street View in June this year.

Interesting transportation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

A scenic roundabout in Badung, Bali, Indonesia

Street View coverage for Cambodia. Note that Thailand already had Street View.

Street View coverage for Indonesia.

Historical Street View imagery for Japan

December 13, 2011

One of the neatest features added to Google Earth in the past few years is the Historical Imagery added in Google Earth 5. Being able to go back in time and few older imagery is such a neat thing to do.
Now that Google is starting to roll out fresh Street View imagery around the world, we’re getting a glimpse of a somewhat similar feature in there. There’s two parts to this:
First, Google has created a special “Build the Memory” site for imagery in Japan, allowing you to see before and after shots of towns affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

It’s not a full-fledged “historical” view, since it’s only for Japan, but it’s a very neat way to see that imagery.
The also added the oft-requested feature of putting dates on the Street View imagery. It’s been a fun game to try to determine when imagery was captured, but now they tell you the month and year right on the imagery while you’re viewing it!

The dates don’t appear when you’re using Street View inside of Google Earth, but I would expect that’ll be coming in a future update.
You can read more about these updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.