Google Earth 3D scenery

Google Earth has done a fantastic job with their 3D rendering of many towns and cities, for example here's a screenshot of part of Leicester (England).

Two questions- firstly as a matter of technical interest how on earth did they bring every building to 3D life like that, and secondly is there any chance it can be married up to FSX or X-Plane etc to provide us simmers with sensational scenery that blows all other scenery out of the water?

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/Goog-earth-Humberstone_England_zpsobol7zz2.jpg~original

The 3D models were probably made in Sketchup (http://www.sketchup.com/) which used to be owned by Google and was promoted as a way for people to add objects to Google Earth. I don't know if Google do most of the modelling for the cities, but, I suspect there is an individual or group of people in your area that have created them (very dedicated people!!!).

I don't know if Google Earth can be hooked up to FSX, but, there is a built in Flight Sim. Click the Tools menu and select "Enter Flight Sim".

The 3D models were probably made in Sketchup (http://www.sketchup.com/) which used to be owned by Google and was promoted as a way for people to add objects to Google Earth. I don't know if Google do most of the modelling for the cities, but, I suspect there is an individual or group of people in your area that have created them (very dedicated people!!!).

 

I don't know if Google Earth can be hooked up to FSX, but, there is a built in Flight Sim. Click the Tools menu and select "Enter Flight Sim".

Depending on the city and/or country, some of the 3D building data is publicly available, so the process can be at least somewhat automated. Landmarks, such as the Sydney Opera House, are typically done manually. And finally, it is now possible to generate 3D models from aerial imagery. Not always as accurate as the manual method, but still quite impressive and can be applied to wide areas.

Here's a blog article talking about Google using imagery to generate 3D data.

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2012/06/google_announces_upcoming_3d.html

A lot of this is out of date.

Sketchup used to be the tool for creating objects in Google earth, but hasn't been in a couple of years. I don't know how it is now done, but many areas have extensive scenery, though lower quality texture than the old Sketchup models.

There is the built-in flight sim, but you might also want to check out gefs (google earth flight sim, http://www.gefs-online.com ) which gives you a global flight sim, with different aircraft, and all the scenery (I think the built in one only show ground textures with no 3D objects) Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the latest version of IE, if you are still using that as your browser.

I don't know if Google Earth can be hooked up to FSX, but, there is a built in Flight Sim. Click the Tools menu and select "Enter Flight Sim".

Yes there is a tool, GE View: Google earth viewer for FSX and P3D, it needs internet connection and only works with Firefox but is great.

GE View link: https://drive.google...uNXM&authuser=0

I was supposed a version using the installed GE in the computer but no news:

http://vps-8048-2348.cloud.tilaa.com/forum/threads/ge-view.436365/#post-734410