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Mar.26,2010Google is happy to announce that the city of Dortmund, Germany is now in 3D – with Google Earth. The new 3D building models extend from the city center to the edge of the Westfalenpark, an area of open space where locals visit to “wandern”. Like many medieval cities, Dortmund is punctuated with churches and other relics that have a history dating back to the Holy Roman Empire. An example would be the Petrikirche (St. Petri Church), which was built in the middle of the 14th century. The tallest structure in this northern German city is the Florianturm, a TV tower with a height of 219.6 metres that sits at the center of the Westfalenpark. Watch this video to fly to the tower and other landmarks in Dortmund in 3D.
Archive for March, 2010
A few days ago, CyberCity 3D unveiled 3DBizMap, a slick way to showcase your city using the Google Earth Plug-in. Today, they’re unveiling the first city that’s using the technology: El Segundo, CA
This could be a great feature to add to any website focused on a particular city — government sites, travel, etc. It’s quite slick. In the case of El Segundo, they’ve added a variety of layers to the 5,166 3D models in the city to showcase business listings, city news, and even embedded YouTube videos. You can check out their blog for more info, or below is the full text of their press release.
Tags : 3D
It’s the 25th anniversary of the .com’s today.
And we now can see Hotels in 3D on Google Earth
In not even 5 years from now, we will see complete Digital Cities !
Cybercity 3D who just published that video on Youtube
Tags : Google
Google just posted the story of Fredericton, Canada, and how they became a 3D city in Google Earth : By using the Cities in 3D program, the City of Fredericton was able to get more than 100 3D buildings added to Google Earth back in January. The building are very well-done and quite detailed, and you can see a fly-through of the city here :
For more information, you can read the full blog entry or visit Google’s Cities in 3D page.
Tags : Google
Google typically releases a city or two with each 3D buildings update, but this week they dropped five.
The new 3D cities are :
• Barcelona, Spain
• Bloemfontein, South Africa
• Port Elizabeth, South Africa
• Pretoria, South Africa
• Mulhouse, France
Not only is this a larger number of cities, but the quality of some of the buildings is remarkable.
For example, look at this building in Mulhouse; the quality of the imagery used on the building is amazing.
At first we thought maybe it was a separate model that was created by hand in SketchUp. However, those buildings are clickable so you can see the details about it, and this one isn’t. In fact, much of the city is in this same sharp quality. We assumed they used StreetView imagery to model the facades, like they did in some California cities late last year. The imagery doesn’t quite match up (the StreetView images of the building shows flowers in many of the windows), but that could still be the case. Perhaps they used older StreetView imagery to help create the models? Regardless, they did a superb job and they look great.
The other city you need to take a close look at is Barcelona. The coverage there is quite remarkable as well. You can read about it on the Google Lat Long Blog, or watch this view tour that Google created to help show it off. Enjoy the cities !
Tags : Google
Touring Songdo, one could not help but notice how quiet it is with virtually no cars on the roads and no one walking on the streets. But Incheon is banking on its success. Recently, the Incheon City government and Korea Post magazine, a monthly covering all aspects of diplomatic affairs in Korea, organized a trip for some 130 envoys, senior diplomatic officials and foreign correspondents. The trip had another purpose, to enjoy the first full moon of the new year, known as Daeboreum. Mayor of Incheon Ahn Sang-soo listed several of his city’s accomplishments, most notably the airport, which “won first place of the world in customer satisfaction,” the Incheon Port as a major hub for Northeast Asia and the newly completed Grand Incheon Bridge, the 5th largest suspension bridge in the world. He also mentioned as accomplishments the developments of the cities of Songdo, Yeongjong and Cheongnam in Korea’s first Free Economic Zone. “Please look forward to Incheon Metropolitan City developing itself into the top ten masterpiece cities of the world and the logistics and distribution center of the Northeast Asian region,” he said.
The diplomatic corps and members of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club are all decked out in durumagi during their visit to the Incheon Daeboreum Festival and Songo City
Late last week, Google pushed out 3D buildings for Vienna, Austria. We played with it over the weekend, and it’s amazing! We don’t know the exact numbers, but the guess that it’s among the best 3D coverage of any city on the planet. Great level of details in Milan a few months ago, Vienna is even more widely covered. We highly recommend that you check it out for yourself, or enjoy this brief video that Google has put together :
Tags : Google