Google Earth: Amsterdam in 3D

Google has just pushed out thousands of new 3D buildings in Amsterdam, making for quite a remarkable-looking city. What I’ve found especially noteworthy is the level of architectural detail on the smaller buildings in the city. The texture quality on them isn’t great, but the rooflines, chimneys and other aspects of the buildings are quite good.

amsterdam-smaller-buildings.jpg

The other thing missing is the trees. I know that most cities around the world still don’t have 3D trees introduced in Google Earth 6, but it would be a major improvement on some of the tree-lined streets, such as the one seen here:

amsterdam.jpg

All of that being said, the city looks great! Google is continuing to expand their 3D coverage, making Google Earth more and more like what you’d find in real life.

You can fly there and check it out in Google Earth by using this KML file, or watch the video below for a fly-through of the city.

New in Building Maker: See what’s already modeled

We’ve launched a slew of new features in Building Maker recently, but I thought I’d focus on one in particular for now. One of the trickiest things about Building Maker was figuring out which buildings had already been modeled and which hadn’t. I’m happy to announce that we’ve added a feature that solves this problem.

Colored markers in Building Maker indicate the “modeled status” of buildings on the map.

When you’re looking at a city in Building Maker, you’ll notice hundreds of colored blue and gray markers. These markers indicate the “modeled status” of the buildings on the map. Round dots show models by other people; placemarks show models you’ve made. Here’s what the colors mean:

  • Blue markers: Models which have been accepted and are live in Google Earth
  • Cyan markers: Models which are awaiting review by us
  • Gray markers: Models which have not been accepted
Feel free to tattoo this on your arm to help you remember what the symbols mean.

Buildings which haven’t been accepted (indicated by gray markers) fall into one of two categories. The first includes those which we’ve reviewed and decided not to include because they don’t meet the acceptance criteria for buildings in Google Earth. These gray markers also indicate geo-located models which are in draft (not marked “complete and ready for review”). If you’re geo-modeling a city with Building Maker, look for buildings with gray markers or no markers.

Fun fact: Internally, we refer to the little, round dots as “measles.” Since infectious diseases generally carry a negative connotation, we decided to call them “markers” instead. You’re free to call them anything you like.

3D fireworks in Google Earth

In celebration of the new year many people shot off fireworks. GEB reader ‘Steven’ took it a step further and created some great 3D fireworks in Google Earth! As you can read about in his blog, the fireworks are intended to duplicate the 2011 Taiwan New Years Eve show, based on the simulation that you can view here.

3d-fireworks.jpg

As you can see from the photo above, the fireworks aren’t just simple animated images — they’re fully 3D! Some of them shoot into the sky, and some wrap around the Taipei 101 tower. As Steven points out in his post, animations like this are only possible because of the work of 3D modelers that created the buildings. In this case, credit goes to user tang Huang who created the exceptionally detailed model of the Taipei 101 tower.

To see the fireworks in action, you can view them here using the Google Earth Plug-in, download this KMZ file