{"id":20531,"date":"2020-11-17T07:53:08","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T13:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gisgeography.com\/?p=20531"},"modified":"2025-04-04T11:27:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T16:27:53","slug":"3d-maps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gisgeography.com\/3d-maps\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Maps: A Complete Guide To See Earth in 3D"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today you’re going to see the best 3D maps<\/strong> in action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These aren’t your traditional top-down satellite maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, you can interactively fly around buildings and landscapes in three dimensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s start exploring.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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1. Google Earth<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Almost in a league of its own, Google Earth<\/a> has mind-blowing detail in its 3D maps. The architecture in cityscapes shows bridges, towers, monuments, and even rollercoasters.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This Google Earth 3D screenshot is a hyper-realistic 3D model of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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“Google Earth has 20+ zoom levels with the most basic as Landsat. It’s when you zoom into metropolitan regions that you see a mix of realistic 3D textured buildings, bridges, and even rollercoasters.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Yosemite is an example of the amount of detail that a photogrammetric mesh can capture. It has everything you’d expect to visit there like the towering granite monoliths, deep valleys, and ancient giant sequoias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how are 3D buildings and landscapes generated in Google Earth? It’s actually a combination of two types of 3D feature types:<\/p>\n\n\n\n