3D Models Of London In Google Earth

With all the attention on Street View over the past few weeks, it’s easy to forget about the wider Googleosphere. Brilliant as it is, Street View limits you to, well, the streets. But in Google Earth you can fly into the upper atmosphere and plunge into the deep ocean. You can even explore the Moon or Mars with the right plugins.

One of the best features is the ability to fly between the skyscrapers of New York and other US cities, which have been faithfully rendered in 3D to almost photographic quality. No such luck in London, where attempts to use a digital model of our city containing all the buildings within the M25 were blocked by Ordnance Survey, who partly own the data.

But the web is full of resourceful people. Many of London’s famous and not-so-famous buildings have been digitally reconstructed using Google’s Sketchup program. We downloaded a handful from the 3D Warehouse, which contains 1045 objects filed under London. Click through the gallery above to see some of the highlights.

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