Barklund.org

A huge part of the inner city of Copenhagen has recently been created in 3D on Google Earth. The most interesting thing would be to know how exactly it has been added. And it could be interesting to create an application, that would allow ordinary people to easily put there own houses on Google Earth without them having to know 3D programs – even though Sketch-up is quite simple.

It could sure seem like, that some buildings – e.g. this small house in Brønshøj – have been made by extruding top-down images into a structure, which then maps very strange images to the facades. Other buildings are clearly made externally with custom textures on all facades – like this long building in Brønshøj as well (where I have actually once lived). Notice how the even trees, bushes and lawn are added.

The last one is quite unique though, as it only has “standard” textures on the facades and not images, as almost any other building in Copenhagen has. I have been wondering whether the buildings have been done with a technique similarly to the one used to create a 3D map of Stockholm, which used many different aerial photos from different angles to automatically extrude heights of all elements. The buildings in Copenhagen have much sharper edges and much more details in some places, so some custom fitting must have been applied. And for instance, see The Opera – it could of course not have been created from aerial photos alone.

Søren Johannessen from Microformats.dk has already created several fun small applications based on the 3D map of Copenhagen. There are so many possibilities and I can’t wait to put it in use for some client or hobby project.

Update 2009-11-11: As pointed out by Jonathan, Google has since launched Google Building Maker, which is exactly the kind of application, that I describe in the introduction.

Related posts:

1. A comparison of Eniro’s and Google’s mapping innovations
2. Google Docs Application – January 2010 Ideas
3. I was just like biking down Park Drive N