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June 06, 2012

Google Earth Gets a 3D Upgrade

By Katie Gatto, TMCnet Contributor
The odds are good that you have seen the Google Earth project before. You have seen how it has taken images of a stunning amount of the earth, allowing you to see it in detail. While at first many people may enjoy seeing Beijing from Lubbock, Tex. as a novelty the application does have some other uses for governments, schools and even corporations. 

Well, now it looks like the system is going to get an upgrade. The people over at Google (News - Alert) are going to be adding a new fleet of scanners that are designed to help to help give a serious upgrade to the 3D capacities of the system and give users the stunning views of the world they live in. The company has, in order to achieve that goal, commissioned a fleet of planes. Google's newest planes will be relatively small and equipped with some high speed camera gear. When all is said and done these cameras, along with some carefully planned flight routes, will allow Google to make 3D images of the scanned areas. For now, Google is deploying the fleet over major cities. 

The company is excited about the potential upgrade. Peter Birch, a product manager for the Google Earth project said the following to a reporter for Reuters, "We're trying to create the illusion that you're just flying over the city, almost as if you were in your own personal helicopter." 

There are some concerns about the privacy factor though as this solution scans whole cities for 3D image use, but for the time being, Google does not seem to be too concerned with those problems. Perhaps they are not worried about individuals being recognizable in the images.


Edited by Jamie Epstein
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