Google’s Model Your Town Competition…A Great Prize for a Great Cause

Bored?  Looking for a cause?  Well here’s your chance to leave your mark on the world…quite literally.  In an effort to accelerate the rate at which towns and cities are modeled in 3D within Google Earth, Google is sponsoring a competition in which anyone can participate.  Using free online 3D sketching tools, such as SketchUp and Building Maker, Google is asking for participants to accurately develop 3D town layouts to include in its 3D buildings layer within Google Earth.  The layer, when activated within Google Earth, overlays photo realistic building models models correctly located within a city.  It’s a crude but constantly improving way to “virtually tour” distant locations.  The video below highlights some examples. Competition winners, who will be judged on criteria such as realism, accuracy, overall detail, and coverage, will receive the following (via Google’s contest page): USD$10,000 for the town’s public school district (or intern ...