This is really exciting if you think about being able to (for example) play CoD4 *IN YOUR BACK YARD* and know exactly where everything on the map is!

Or blaze around your own town centre in PGR!

Or have the ENTIRE COUNTRY to run around in a post-apocalyptic RPG!

^_^

How will they deal with privacy issues, like for example if I take a drunken leak up a tree in a local park.... will I be forever imortalised in Google maps. Or will this laser not be that advanced

Where one person thinks of creating, another thinks of destroying!

I'd be more worried what the laser might be doing to my retina!

My hometown has put a bunch of buildings in 3d on the map:

http://3dclearearth.nl/modules/content/content.php?id=8

also

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=a1e53b0bce8065b6c01ffcf21843e47d

Greetings from Nashua NH USA,

Hein.

Surely genitailia could never make it onto Google Maps?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=hazleton&ie=UTF8&ll=40.957989,-75.969847&spn=0.001564,0.00353&t=h&z=18&om=1

.....sod the 3D map of Westport. Where's my 3D map of Paris?

When we get our 3D map of Westport (and, OK, a 3D map or Paris) can we finally have our (virtual) flying car to navigate around it?

I obviously don't know what resolution that laser scanner has. No information in the article.

It may be so course that it shows your indiscretion as just a few voxels (volumetric pixels), too little detail to even see what's happening, much less identify you.

On the other hand, it may be hi-res enough to tell your religion! :-)

But seriously, I don't think you have to worry.

The article implies that there will be some post-production before it goes onto Google Earth. If it's generating 20,000 points per second, that's vastly more than is feasible to transmit over the net, even for Google. They probably have some 3D artists "cleaning" the data, eg. replacing 50,000 co-ordinates that all fell on the same wall, with just four.

So these artists will probably "clean" the image of you and your half-mast trousers, too. ;-) And if they don't, I'd imagine that you have a damned good "invasion of privacy" case against them. This is a manual process: They can't just claim "The computer did it!" and wash their hands, as Google tends to do.

i for one welcome our new retina burning 3d virtual mapping overlords!

Paris is so shallow she's only 2D anyway

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=chalk+giant&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

I noticed you could do that on Google Earth last year. Was thinking of doing a few bits around here for a laugh, but was advised, weirdly enough, that if I did it I'd get sued, as only the council were allowed to. Apparently all your vision are belong to Kirklees.

Woo! Now, at last, everyone can marvel at magnificent Westport in full 3D! See hairy knuckled Mayo men scratching their arses and grunting occasionally, see the town's own horse! Just as inbred and cross-eyed horse as its other inhabitants! And be amazed by the awesome spectacle of the town's tumbleweed, wonderfully rendered in high definition 3D. As the bracing Atlantic gale blows through the town even faster than I did when I went there once.

Westport man? WTF! It makes Craggy Island look Cosmopolitan by comparison.

"Westport man? WTF! It makes Craggy Island look Cosmopolitan by comparison."

That made me laugh so hard I was nearly sick.

well if you examine the efforts of Kirklees Highways in recent years it *is* clear that it is staffed by aliens . . so your closing comment is probably true

Here is a section of Google Maps satellite pictures (at maximum available zoom) near where I live:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.985185,-3.367567&spn=0.03431,0.06815&t=h&z=14&om=1

Marvel in the 5-10 metre per pixel resolution. Gasp in awe as you can just about make out the River Dee. And is that brownish smudge a town? Gosh!

Rather than render a town in ~centimetre accurate 3D, can we get some of the poorly covered regions filled in with higher resolution images first?

Bit like that as you head into Scotland but Google Maps has the MOD base down the road nice and clear. (annan / longtown)

microsoft has better resolution images of north wales ;)

Those of you wondering about privacy issues may not have heard of Google Street View, which has already raised problems like that. Car-mounted cameras have recorded images in many US cities, capturing whatever people were doing at the time.

Westport is a very pretty little place, and if they do a decent job of digitising the place it will save me the ferry fare, we'll just google it instead of going again. Kirklees, by comparison, is not pretty, and even has a made up name (was called the West Riding (of Yorkshire) when I was at school).

Now just hold on a ticker there, old son. There are some lovely looking places in Kirklees. It's true that the centres of Leeds and Bradford are not among them, but go a few miles outside the cities and there's some lovely places around and about. :-p

Oooh, hark at him, getting his back up about God's Own County. Let's play Spot the Yorkshireman. ;-)

Before any smart-arses make smug comments about Leeds not being part of the West Riding/Kirklees, I invite them to rearrange these words into a well known phrase:

Off

Sod

A post-apocalyptic RPG around the UK sounds like the best thing ever, speeding down real motorways done and straight into a small village in full 3D at 150mph. Kick in the post office door , take the money and reverse full speed down the high street.

Taking over towns with tanks and fully deformable props. Sniper battles in small Yorkshire villages. I hope someone does this.

Westport is a better drinking town than Paris.

Another not full of emotionally unstable frogs.

I wasn't going to, but seeing as any mention of a "rural" setting, induces an almost knee-jerk culturally racist sarcasm from city dwelling fuc&wits who assume that just because they happen to live in some grimy p!ss-stinking, skanger-inhabited, rat-infested, puke-drain, of a putrid scar on the @rsehole of a cultural cesspit, somehow makes them infinidismally superior in some self-deluded, wank-minded, narcissistic drug-induced, parallel twilight zone for the terminally cripple brained, way. Let me just say Angry Beard, lighten up, its not your fault your mother had you when she was twelve after getting knocked up by the local corner shop-robbing, purse-snatching, dregs-swilling, geriatric-sodding, bottom-feeding, gutter-raised, cardboard-box dwelling bastard of a father who by some strange twist of a convoluted distended synapse in your proton sized brain has all combined to become a reason to believe that you alone, somehow against all the odds, enlightened and reasoned argument, empirical evidence, not in the least common sense, are in someway superior to the sheep-shagging, sibling-raping, bog-hole dwelling, wart-sucking, snot-eating, dung-hut dwelling gimp-fathered village idiots like the ones to which you so arrogantly alluded to in your pathetic excuse for a reply, gibberish. However, the fact that you seem to be able to read and write, and that you haven’t done anything about your circumstances, or seem remotely interested in doing something about your backwardness, or attempted to raise yourself evenly slightly above the ignorance you have inflicted on this otherwise lighthearted debate, is entirely your own fault and the sooner you slink back into the p!ss-drain you crawled out of, the better it will be for all humanity. As for Tom, I couldn’t be bothered, you're just pathetic.

and pretty as well.

'A post-apocalyptic RPG around the UK sounds like the best thing ever, speeding down real motorways done and straight into a small village in full 3D at 150mph. Kick in the post office door , take the money and reverse full speed down the high street.

Taking over towns with tanks and fully deformable props. Sniper battles in small Yorkshire villages. I hope someone does this.'

They do, it's called modern Britain.

I suppose there is a possibility that the sociopaths will act out their fantasies only online, but it seems much more likely that they will simply hone their skills for the real-world version, or else cease to be able to tell the difference between the online experience and the real world.

Surely you can come up with a more creative way of using such a resource?

Angry Beard - I live near Westport..... haven't ever seen the horse.... must be my dodgy cross-eyes.....

Also terrible news. The local glove store closed down due to lack of demand - even during this cold snap we are having.