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3D London and more Google Earth goodies

Unfortunately not available for public use yet, but a team has put together a working 3D model of central London in Google Earth… Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London has the story:

The main area of the Virtual London model was developed in both ESRI’s ArcGlobe and Kinetix 3D Studio Max – largely by Steve Evans at CASA. We have now been able to export this data direct to Google Earth, allowing a rapid model of London to be visualised via the web with acceptable framerates.

 

Pretty cool, eh?

 

But then take a look at this incredible panorama viewing tool, also from Dr Hudson-Smith’s blog.  Basically it allows you to put  a 3D sphere into Google Earth which will display a high resolution panoramic photo of the area.

 

Take a look at these stills for an idea of how it works…

 

 

Or knock yourself out with this YouTube video of the tool in action (also available in an HD video download – which is highly recommended)…

Launching in January 2007, apparently. Bravissimo!

 

 

Antony Mayfield

2 responses to “3D London and more Google Earth goodies”

  1. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    The really important thing here though is that it’s done with *public money* (local London governments), yet the public can’t view it.

    Why? Because of Crown copyright – specifically, the Ordnance Survey’s licensing, which doesn’t let this be put on a website without all sorts of pay-per-click restrictions.

    Which means that people who could benefit, like all of us, can’t benefit.

    It’s a classic, and classically stupid, bind that “crown copyright” creates. Which is why the Free Our Data campaign (http://www.freeourdata.org.uk) keeps going on about it. It would be so nice if other people realised how shortchanged we are by the requirement for the OS to make a “profit” – by restricting the public’s wider use of mapping data that we could all benefit from.

    As it happens, this story is our FOD piece in Thursday’s edition. Stay tuned..

  2. raghu Avatar
    raghu

    hi
    Today I downloaded Google Earth and saw chicago city through this. It was a amazing experience, which is very difficult to express in words. It seemed as if I am watching Places from top, sitting in a chopper. All I would like to say that everyone must see this software atleast once. http://www.earth-maps-3d.com

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