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Fun fact: you can also generate 3D buildings in Google Earth: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/earth/gener...
I worked on this but left a year ago. It was a product formerly by Sidewalk Labs and ported to work within Google Earth for over 2 years. Pretty sure it's abandoned now.
This is fun, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Google did something like this a couple decades ago, as a 20% Project.
Outside of Google, around that time, I used Google Earth for a 3D visualization tool for real flight data recorders, integrated into a larger browser-based system.
(Stack: Google Earth Plugin did the heaviest lifting, especially before there were better ways to render 3D in a browser window. The frontend used JS, HTML for instruments, and some kludges to work around some limitations of off-label use of Plugin. The backend was in Scheme, and retrieving and serving up cached data for this was one of the simplest of the things that the Scheme did in that large system. Aircraft 3D models were off-the-shelf, which I tweaked lightly in (IIRC) Google SketchUp.)
Unfortunately, whoever did the controls for this doesn't understand how airplanes work.
While this doesn't do anything to threaten MS flight simulator, it's still charming. Google Earth is a delight to experience in VR if you ever get the chance, and the flight sim mode is likewise.
Cool, I'll have to try it in the next 18 months before they turn it down.
Fun fact: you can fly through the entirety of the Great Wall of China!
Spent a long time as a kid doing so. I still use Google Earth "Pro" today, so much better than the webapp.
I wonder why Google doesn’t bother competing with Microsoft in the flight simulation niche. All that Google Maps data would be pretty cool to use for that purpose, but instead we’ve got only this toy feature inside Google Earth.
lovely, but needs sound and an altimeter. i went flying over NZ, the controls got really laggy, hence the chaotic experience...
Am I tripping or was this in Google Earth ages ago? I distinctly remember flying SU-27 on Google Earth map like a decade or more ago.
It doesn't seem to work very well - my plane is spinning around like crazy and I can't stop the spinning.
Gimbal lock?
Next up: Google driving simulator.
Took them long enough to add it to the web app too. Bit disappointing how lazy the implementation is though, you never fall out of the sky even with throttle at 0%. Making the most basic flight physics even ignoring aerodynamics really isn't that hard
Another nail to Xbox (MS game studios) coffin :)
If only they took this seriously as a competitor to Microsoft Flight Simulator... Or licensed the photogrammetry to X-Plane. But I guess that’s asking too much of Google.
Do people in the comments not realize this is a very old feature from desktop Google Earth that's just now being brought to the web version? I see so many joke comments or those simply out of the loop thinking this is something new, it's not.