Trip to the Super Bowl with Google Earth


We’re two days away from one of my favorite events of the year, the Super Bowl (and I’m sure I’m not alone!). I’m one of those fans who starts watching football during pre-season and can have entire weekends ruined if my team loses. For me, the Super Bowl is the culmination of hours spent glued to the television and more hours doing post-game analysis (read: arguments) with fellow football enthusiasts.

However, what I love most about the Super Bowl is the tradition around it. It’s a time when friends and family get together and stuff their faces with nachos and beer, argue about who they wish were performing at halftime and watch the two best teams in the league slug it out for the storied Lombardi trophy. Even the commercials are good!

Unfortunately, not all of us can have the luxury of being at Cowboys Stadium – site of Super Bowl XLV – for the game, so we thought we’d offer users the next best thing: the Cowboys Stadium in 3D for Google Earth. Watch the video below to fly to Arlington, Texas and see the stadium in 3D.

You can also visit the stadium in Google Earth by searching for “Cowboys Stadium, Arlington TX” (make sure the 3D layer is turned on). Or, click here to see the area in your browser with Earth view in Google Maps.

We hope you enjoy the game as much as we will. Oh, and go Packers!

Posted by Gopal Shah, Google SketchUp team

Over the Red Carpet in Google Earth

Google has made some fun enhancements to the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, just in time for the Oscar Awards this Sunday. They’ve added the red carpet, a bunch of paparazzi and other decorations for the awards ceremony.

oscars.jpg

To see it for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file, or simply watch the video below:

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