While you’re probably already read that Android will soon be getting offline support in Google Maps, it was Google Earth’s new 3D imagery that impressed us most. Sure, we’ve seen it before, but Google took the time to show how it has achieved such realistic images for its Earth application.
Google sent out airplanes with cameras attached to them and set them off to snap pictures of a designated area in multiple directions to ensure the proper modeling of buildings to be rendered in the Google Earth app. It then sent the planes to fly in a specific pattern so that every angle of said buildings would be covered. From there, a pixel map of sorts was laid on top the 3D models to achieve the proper coloring. The end result? A pretty gorgeous and realistic representation of the world around us. We’re sure there’s a significant amount of processes that Google left out of the presentation earlier but we definitely like what we see.
The search giant’s goal is to make the user feel like they are in a plane or helicopter, flying over a certain area when viewing the new 3D imagery in Google Earth. From what we did see in the presentation earlier, that’s pretty much exactly how it looks. Pictures are crisp, true to colors, and you feel like you are truly looking down on the world.
At the moment, Google has yet to announce this sort of 3D imagery for its Maps application but we wouldn’t be surprised if we saw just that in a future update. We can also expect to see something similar from Apple soon, but while we know that if anything, it’s going look great, but will lack the hoards of data Google has collected over the years. Aesthetics are always a factor in an app, but functionality and accuracy should be top priority for something like a maps application. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Check out the video below for a glimpse of what’s to come in Google Earth!
[Via: GoogleBlog]