Visit Hamburg From Home
So this very city that I happen to live in will be the first city worldwide to receive full
textured 3D models in Google Earth. Wonder why they chose Hamburg? It's
surely not so famous that it would be the first town to come to your mind.
The article (I couldn't find an English article on the topic, so you'll have to
learn German or just believe what I'm saying here) says that the idea came from
some Hamburg initiative and the image data used for the for the models and textures
was provided by a local survey agency. A Swiss company specializing in 3D worlds
then built the models and extracted the textures from the aforementioned aerial
photos. Whaa?! How does this work? Did they cut out every wall by hand and transformed
it into a plain front-view texture? That's gotta be a LOT of work, and would likely
result in a miserable image quality due to the excessive perspective transformations
- although you can't expect hi-resolution textures being transmitted through the
web anyway.
And while this three-dimensional city is not even available yet (but will be “in
a few days or weeks”), the creators are already dreaming of the next step:
Modelling the insides of buildings as well, so you can actually go inside and
do a complete virtual sightseeing trip. Crazy.
The area covered in 3D will not include all of Hamburg though, just the inner
city. So, chances are good that my place will still be just a flat texture on the
ground.
Comments
hahaha!
p.s - hell yes
I don't understand what they are talking about, except for the words Google and Virtual Earth. It sounds very exciting and congrats to the people from your hometown. I must rely on your post...Painfully! CHEESE!
I finish reading your "post". I am a bit confused. It says Hamburg (I thought the whole city-harbor) and at the end you said: "The area covered in 3D will not include all of Hamburg though" I am very disappointed, those Swiss people...At least I will wait to see "Hamburg" or "part of Hamburg" the next couple weeks, or months or years. I may end up making my own 3D city when it will be developed :-)
In fact, I just saw that they added a translation of this article on their English site. Go here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,460429,00.html
I understand now; it will be Downtown Hamburg and a few buildings", not very exciting, still disappointed at Google and their 3D ideas. It seems a good project; although, Google is always asking for "volunteers" to finish a project. It may take a while to develop, but the idea is nice. I am not very interested in 3D mapping, but I hope the VOLUNTEERS do a nice job. Thanks for the link! You did a good job with your post anyway Toby. I was kidding before :-)
I forgot to mention, the article in English says (bottom line) Hamburg will be downloaded for free to anyone who has Google Earth. Doesn't it make Hamburg Special? I think, YES! I will look up for Hamburg, I have no idea how your hometown looks like Hehehehehe! what Pablo would say.
Google Earth is getting all its image data live from the web at the moment that it's needed. Go to New York for instance, you can see buildings as white blocks. In Hamburg, they just added the original surface textures for the buildings instead of simple white surfaces. Those images are loaded the moment when you look at the city. Pretty easy. :-)
And yes, the article (or somewhere else, I don't remember) mentioned that Google tried to rely on the users to create the buildings themselves. But the response was not very big. So, they start doing it themselves. Or at least do some cities in order to make people interested, and the users might go on and create buildings themselves.
Of course, I meant "go to New York in Google Earth" and not actually going to New York. Just in case you really go there and wonder that the buildings are not white blocks at all. Hehe. ;-)
What the heck? You are right, New York has white blocks :-| Even London and other cities...But it is cool! I wonder how Logan will look in 3D...Maybe not good, will be cows in 3D format. I still think Google will use Volunteers :-)
WHERE'S THE HAMBURG 3D? (O_o)
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