How to Create an Aerial Panorama from Google Earth

September 9, 2006 7:09 AM

How to Create an Aerial Panorama from Google Earth. The Digitally Distributed Environments blog, and others following their tutorial, have created Google Earth panoramas of Belgium, Moscow, Paris, New York, London and the Sydney Olympic Site. They also note Panogames, who use a similar process to create panoramas from videogame worlds. This follows their Frank Lloyd Wright architectural/videogame walkthrough demo using the Half Life 2 engine [mefi thread] following which they appear hard at work formalising a clear method for importing CAD models into Half Life 2 for architectural visualisations.
posted by nthdegx (11 comments total)

Could that Frank Lloyd Wright house get any more evil? I was half expecting a headcrab to jump out of one of the rooms. HL2 murkiness kinda kills the mood of the house, especially with the generator noise. Panoramas are cool, though.
posted by Mach5 at 7:37 AM on September 9, 2006

Is the origin of the view modifiable or fixed? The New York one is initially over lower Manhattan. Is it possible to move to another location, say over Central Park?
posted by hwestiii at 7:44 AM on September 9, 2006

Very cool - I too, love panoramas. I find the Google Earth rendition more useful though [one of the first things I did when a mac version became available was to travel from Homebush to the City, checking out my house on the way] (Americans might be a bit blasé about all of this, but it's only recently Australia got mapped, so I am a little bit awed by it still). Can I, for the record, assure people viewing the Sydney Olympic Site, that the water is not the same colour as black ink.
posted by tellurian at 9:02 AM on September 9, 2006

Isn't this exactly the same as using Google Earth, only you're stuck in one place?

Is the origin of the view modifiable or fixed? The New York one is initially over lower Manhattan. Is it possible to move to another location, say over Central Park?

Click here.
posted by cillit bang at 9:21 AM on September 9, 2006

How indeed is this different from simply using Google Earth?
posted by odinsdream at 9:44 AM on September 9, 2006

This is nice, but "Belgium"? It's just Brussels, or greater Brussels. Might as well label the Moscow one "Panorama photo of Russia". (Not nthdegx's fault, rather the blogger's, but still, a nit worth picking).
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:10 AM on September 9, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Does anyone know of a tool/method that makes it easier to export and stitch images from Google Maps into giant aerial photos? Panoramas are neato but I want something to put on the wall in my cube.
posted by nathan_teske at 11:45 AM on September 9, 2006

I don't know what the fuck are they thinking with the fake clouds and insanely skewed versions of what were once decent stiched together screengrabs. It doesn't look panoramic at all, it looks like crap.

The Quicktime VR of NY looks decent, but what's the point? Google Earth itself does a far better job of that, including that gasp, you can move the goddamn camera around. All this is missing is anagrams and subway maps.
posted by blasdelf at 12:08 PM on September 9, 2006

odinsdream: "How indeed is this different from simply using Google Earth?"

Clouds.
posted by koeselitz at 3:30 PM on September 9, 2006

...and the interesting novelty of a relatively sunny sky over London.
posted by koeselitz at 3:31 PM on September 9, 2006

You can download ultra high-resolution images from the USGS National Map Viewer with all manner of fancy overlays. I once compiled a 2 terabyte image of downtown Lincoln, Nebraska down to the meter: it took about an hour to put it all together in Photoshop. Luckily you can download 80 megabyte image chunks of overlays (on the left, under Downloads—not available on all maps).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:57 AM on September 10, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]