My Google Map Blog

Google has recently updated the 3D imagery for some of the key Olympic venues. Sometime in June Google had significantly increased the 3D coverage for Rio de Janeiro but that imagery was captured around February 2013 in preparation for the FIFA World Cup that took place in Brazil in 2014. There is also fresh aerial imagery that we believe was captured at the same time as the 3D imagery. This would put the date of the 3D imagery of the white water and BMX venues as late as July 2nd, 2016. So Google really rushed it, getting the imagery processed in under a month. The aerial imagery of some of the other venues is a bit older (early June). The aerial imagery is available only in the default layer. It has not, as of this writing, been pushed to ‘historical imagery’.

The white water venue looks ready for action.

Google clearly put in some extra modelling effort on some of the buildings:

Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre.

We wanted to post a link to a map of Olympic venues that we found on the Google Maps Gallery a few weeks ago, but when we checked today it appears the Google Maps Gallery has been discontinued and replaced by My Maps. It appears to still be possible to see maps that were formerly in the Maps Gallery, but there is no search function that we could find! So instead, use this KML file for the main Olympic venues that we previously created for this post

“Top Maps” and “Staff Picks” are familiar headings from the Google Maps Gallery. But where is the search box?

The Google Maps Gallery had lost a lot of its best maps last year when it dropped maps from Google Maps Engine, which was deprecated and later shut down.

The post Olympic venues get a 3D update appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

With the opening of the Olympics just two months away (August 5th), it is a good time to have a look at the host city, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Google has kicked off the sight-seeing by updating and adding to the Street View of the city. Read more about it on Google’s Lat Long Blog.

When we looked at historical imagery density we mentioned that Rio de Janeiro is one of the hotspots where Google Earth has an extraordinary quantity of historical imagery. This means that for facilities that were built specially for the Olympics, you can see the construction in process.

So, for example, we have put together an animation showing the Whitewater Stadium and BMX Centre being constructed.

Speed in milliseconds per image:

You can adjust the speed of the animation by dragging the slider.

We have put together a KML file showing the various Olympic venues as listed on the official site

The post Rio de Janeiro with Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Our friends at DataAppeal, who recently released a variety of updatesto their excellent tool, are back with some great visualizations of the Olympic torch relay.

The first is the “Ribbon Path”, which you can view on their site here, or by downloading this KML file for use in Google Earth.

They also have an animated version that can be found on their site here or loaded in Google Earth using this KML file.

The post The path of the Olympic torch in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi will be kicking off in a few days, and while I expect Google will release some neat tools to help you follow the games, George at MyReadingMapped has already put out a great post with links and info about some of the venues.

George’s post includes a detailed map of the various venues, and you can grab the KML file from there to view everything inside of Google Earth (including a few 3D models, as seen here).

I’m expecting we’ll see many more Olympic-related Google Earth posts coming this week, but please contact us if we miss any. In the meantime, check out the full blog post on MyReadingMapped and start digging in.

The post Mapping the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.