Google Earth Toronto buildings

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

So for the first time in months and months, I fired up Google Earth. I'm on Google Maps all the time, but almost never fire up the whole application.

Anyway, I was surprised to discover that people have been modelling excellent 3D representations of downtown Toronto buildings, and adding them to the map.

I knew that there was a project to warehouse user-submitted building models, but I didn't realise that those were making it to the main Google Earth dataset. Is someone here behind that?

 

[maestro]

yes .. quite certain it's wylie

 

[wyliepoon]

SNF:

Any model that is "Google Earth ready" (a Sketchup model that is built on a terrain downloaded from Google Earth) and is uploaded to the 3D Warehouse will show up on Google Earth.

 

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

Really. And do they fact-check these things at all? For instance, if I were to render the 200-foot high doorknob I'm very sure I saw at the corner of Bloor and Ossington, would that go on the record?

 

[interchange42]

You saw a 200-foot high doorknob at the corner of Bloor and Ossington? I better get that on the map...

42

 

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

Yes! See? The wisdom of the crowds never fails!

 

[wyliepoon]

Really. And do they fact-check these things at all?

Google doesn't do any fact-checking, so that does mean anybody can sneak anything up onto Google Earth. There must be a dozen versions of the CN Tower on Google Earth, and they come in a variety of shapes, detail and height.

Google Earth has a layer that allows you to see the "Best of 3D Warehouse" models for a given place or city. If you select it for a major American city like Chicago, you would get a very decent view of the Chicago skyline, since the layer includes mostly models done by Google's in-house modellers and other expert Chicago modellers. The same cannot be said about Toronto. Google has chosen a lot of my models, but they're mixed in with a bunch of other models that are far from being "Best of 3D Warehouse" (I'm not going to mention any names). The result is that the skyline you see when the layer is selected is not only ugly, but far from what we see in real life.