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New York City gets fresh 3D Imagery

April 15, 2013

Google’s “3D Imagery” has finally arrived in the largest city in the United States — New York!

nyc-3d

As with other cites that have this new imagery, it looks stunning from the air but looks blocky when you get down low.

nyc-street-level

In all of the cities we’ve seen so far, flat surfaces like roads simply aren’t flat.  That’s likely due to the fact that streets are covered with vehicles when the imagery is captured, but it makes for poor viewing in Google Earth.  Over time I expect this flaw will be remedied by Google, perhaps when combined with Street View imagery to get better-looking roads and facades.

In fact, the lifelike facades that Google added back in 2010 were one of my favorite features as they made cities really come to life!  New York in particular was absolutely amazing with those facades, as it made it very realistic.  Now those facades are gone and it’s quite a mess when you dive down to street-level view.  As an example, below are two pictures of Times Square using the old and new imagery:

Old imagery / buildings
New 3D Imagery

It’s really kind of sad.  However, I see this as being similar to the early days of the digital camera.  Some people laughed at them because they were so inferior to standard cameras in terms of quality, but the technology was the difference and the quality caught up.  Google’s bet seems to be that their techniques for the 3D Imagery will improve over time and make it worthwhile.  Plus, they’re clearly going to keep pushing Street View so I’d be surprised if the two don’t meet up again at some point in the future.  Using the 3D Imagery to create the models and then applying Street View imagery to smooth things out at the ground level could work very well.

For now, enjoy the scenic New York skyline but switch back to “legacy 3D buildings” (under [Tools] –> [Options]) if you want to zoom in close.

Filed Under: 3D Models, Sightseeing Tagged With: 3d imagery, new york city, street view

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.

japan.jpg


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!
kfc.jpg

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.

Filed Under: Google Earth News, Sightseeing, Street View Tagged With: Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, japan, street view, tsunami

Street View for Spain Arriving by Tuesday

October 25, 2008

A message sent out last week by E-mail to the press has stirred the anticipation of Street View imagery coming to Spain. The E-mail was posted on a Spanish blog called Blog Urbanismo and says there will be a press announcement on Tuesday, October 28th, about the release of Street View imagery for Spain. I’ll be keeping a close eye on both Google Earth and Maps for the impending release (which usually happens several hours before Google makes a press announcement).
While you’re waiting, you might want to check out the new Street View imagery in France released on the 14th of October.

Filed Under: Google Earth News, Sightseeing Tagged With: street view

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