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More Info on Google's 3D Maps
Will Stewart writes "You have doubtless read that Silicon Valley Watcher reported on Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D, online version of San Francisco and eventually other major US cities, but you may not have seen the picture of where the trucks are kept and Berkeley's unrelated research project and published technical research (PDF file)."
To avoid loads of db queries and ads, the actual (rather uninteresting) picture is:
o ogleGarage.jpg
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/G
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/cityblock/
Some related info:
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More on Google 3D maps
3D Buildings
Lets start with the big things first. On selected US cities, you can view a grey scale 3D rendering of the city skyline. Pictures are worth more then words so I'll let the screenshots do the talking.
This was in Keyhole but it's still amazing. Screenshots really can't capture how amazing it is to freely move around a 3D world.
Amazon's "Blockview"
The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is "Block View," which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.
Yup - have a look at this. Although the image doesn't show the facades of the buildings.
Oh - on that note, take a look at the images here, especially this one... if google are using trucks, how are they going to get the texture maps for the top of the buildings as shown in that image??
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
As described in the page you linked (http://www-video.eecs.berkeley.edu/~frueh/3d/), that is done by merging the street level data gathered from drive-thrus with aerial data gathered from fly-bys. You can see a picture on the same page where only street level data was used and what the result looks like.