Google Maps Today

[Charl]

When last did you zoom out of Streetview in NZ cities?
I was surprised to see a beautiful 3D rendition of Auckland.
Sadly no NZAA**... amazingly NZCH is modeled, as is the city right down to the ruined cathedral.
Wellington: nada.

Who does this, and surely one should be able to bring this information quickly and seamlessly into a flightsim?
Even Google Earth recognizes this need, with their rudimentary flight experience!
Aerofly should do a deal with them...

**EDIT: Funnily, GE has a bit of 3D at NZAA. Is Google so big it doesn't care about its sister product?

[toprob]

Yes, I tend to use the 3D Google Earth all the time at the moment, building NZCH. I've taken a lot of photos around the airport, but since I can only shoot from public areas, and ground level, I tend to end up with glimpses of buildings in the distance, so GE lets me find what is there, and extrapolate it to an actual 3D model. It also lets me get a look of the back-side of things which I haven't photographed. Good for estimating heights etc too.
Looking at NZAA, the couple of hangars there are actual 3D models built in the old days, before GE moved to the new method. Back then, you could submit a model to Google, and they'd include it in their 3D warehouse. The NZAA models were supplied by Air New Zealand.

There's a cool video showing how GE works, including the techniques to build the 3D cities. The interesting bits are about 3:40 on... getting this into a simulator would be great, but I suspect that you'd need to build the simulator from the ground up -- so to speak. Our current sims are not really set up to handle the huge 3D meshes which the video shows. The nearest thing I've seen is using the LINZ digital surface model (DSM) data to build a mesh for the sim. (Normally we use DEM, which shows the elevation of the ground only, rather than the objects on it.)

By 'mesh', I mean the elevation mesh, which normally defines elevations in the sim, not a 3D mesh which the GE video talks about. So mine sticks to the normal sim rules for mesh, in that it isn't really possible to display vertical faces, it expects everything to be a hill or a hole. So my buildings tend to have angled sides:) Vegetation has the same problem, but worse.

The buildings on the left are normal 3D models, on the right are DSM mesh buildings, in P3Dv3.

[Charl]

Fascinating stuff... great video.
At the end the zoom is onto what I thought might be NZ, mm no then Cuba? Japan, maybe?
I love Google Earth, and the VR version is going to kill international tourist travel

[Fozzer]

Fascinating stuff... great video.
At the end the zoom is onto what I thought might be NZ, mm no then Cuba? Japan, maybe?
I love Google Earth, and the VR version is going to kill international tourist travel

Touché...!... ...!

I spend hours, every day, touring the world at ground level and wandering around, with my Google Street Map!

A wander around San Francisco is always a joy to experience...

...at just the cost of a few Pennyworth of electricity!

The zoom level is amazing!

Taking a wander over Golden Gate Bridge... ...!

Paul.....The Intrepid Explorer!.... ...!

[Splitpin]

Charl, you may or may not recall a few years ago , I had a great idea
Snap a google earth screen, and paste a FS shot over the top ... came out well. I posted a couple here but took them down and reposted out of the public eye after a rather terse legal email from google (lawyers) .
Its a shame, because I was never going to gain (financially) from the images ... I think it was Rob who warned off the idea ... wise old bird that fella.