Google Earth: 2012 London Olympics

 

The 2012 Summer Olympics, to be held in London, are getting closer all the time. As they’re working hard on preparing the various venues for competition, you can use Google Earth to follow their progress.

A handful of venues already have 3D models in Google Earth, including the London Aquatics Centre (model details), seen here:

 

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Another great model is the London Velodrome (model details), which will house the indoor track cycling events:

 

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A great overview of the venues can be found in this Google Sightseeing post from last week. In particular, you can grab their KML file to quickly find the venues in question.

Google added fresh imagery just prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as well as the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, so I expect we’ll see some great new imagery in London sometime before the games begin next summer.

Google Earth and a plan for San Francisco job growth

I don’t know the details of Ed Lee’s political agenda, and that information is irrelevant for this post, but he’s recently used Google Earth in a very creative way. In one of his recent TV ads, Ed made great use of Google Earth to help show off his plan for creating new jobs across the San Francisco area.

Details on how the video was created aren’t available, but it appears that they simply took some carefully-planned Google Earth footage and then added all of the labels and highlights in a video editing suite like Final Cut Pro. As such, no KML or tour are available.

Interestingly, they apparently chose to shoot the footage with the 3D Tree layer turned off, or else they created the video prior to last November when 3D trees were unveiled in San Francisco. For example, the park shown at the 0:20 mark of the video looks much better with the tree layer enabled:

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That said, it’s an excellent way to show off this kind of information in a quick commercial. The high altitude between stops helps to show users where they are, and the solid 3D coverage in the San Francisco area really helps it come to life.

(via Politico)

The future of the World Trade Center

We’ve shown you the past and the present of the World Trade Center area, and now it’s time for a look at the future.

wtc-future.jpgModeled by Patrick Griffin, and found in the Google 3D Warehouse, this model is an excellent look at what the future holds. As with the original WTC buildings, these are best viewed if you right-click and “hide” some of the matching buildings that are currently under construction.

Also of note is the stunning “Transportation Hub”, which will be build on the east side of the plaza. While there isn’t a model that I could find for Google Earth, you can preview a model of it that was created by user “Fish” in the 3D Warehouse.

transportation-hub.jpg