[News] Google unveils 3D cities in Google Earth

Google has announced another new feature – 3D cityscapes in Google Earth. This announcement was made on June 6, 2012. It comes right before Apple’s most famous event – WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference). This announcement will be seen as a pre-emptive strike against Apple’s event coming up this week, one of the things which is expected to announce that it is ditching Google Maps in favor of its own mapping system and services in its upcoming iOS 6 software.

Meanwhile, Google has initiated an initiative called Google Street View Trekker, which will send rucksack Googlers off to photograph places that aren’t accessible to Street View Cars, trikes and snowmobiles. It is also expanding its Map Maker tool to 12 new countries for people to help improve accuracy of it’s maps.

3D Cityscapes

The 3D Cityscapes feature will be introduced into the Google Earth apps for Android and iOS, with the desktop version getting them at a later point. Google says that by the end of 2012, it will have 3D coverage for ‘Metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people’.

I don’t know how 3D cities will benefit us apart from being ‘pretty’, but Parsons from Google has said, “Behind the scenes, this is very valuable for future applications like augmented reality.” He also said, “It gives you the ability to attach information to objects in three dimensions. For example, I’m currently sitting on the sixth floor of an office in Soho, and that’s three-dimensional information. Increasingly, mapping will be more and more 3D both online, and on mobile devices.”

It is also notable that the latter are getting the new 3D feature first, a sign of Google’s priorities when it comes to rolling out new mapping functionality across Google Maps and Google Earth.

What do you guys think about this new mapping software? Hit us a line down below in the comments section!

[News] Google unveils 3D cities in Google Earth

3D Cityscapes

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