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Comment by phyzome | Hacker News Reader

By the way, for anyone who prefers Google Maps to load fast and show actual satellite/aerial imagery (rather than trying to render each tree as a weird crumpled blob) there's a flag you can set to get the old, fast 2D mode:

https://maps.google.com/?force=canvas

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Thank you!

I'm actually quite annoyed that Google took away the visible option to disabled the 3D aerial view. It's such a resource hog, and my work's internet is often quite slow, and 3D has far more data to retrieve.

The option is there. It's in the hamburger menu, labeled "Globe".

You can also just use the "Globe" button in the side panel to toggle flat satellite imagery, while still keeping the smooth zooming.

For those like me who had trouble finding it, it's in the hamburger menu.

I particularly like the transition when zoomed out and toggling the Globe button.

Thanks, I delayed the release to squeeze that in :)

A breath of fresh air, being able to visualise our place in the world as it truly is.

I think it's all fantastic, extremely fast, smooth, love the inertia on spin, the camera movement or simulation of is great, occlusion of objects nicely done.

Would like to see an example with clustering.

Is it possible to add elevation data ?

Is it possible to access this mode in the API to use the webgl version ?

The alternative to switch back is: https://maps.google.com/?force=webgl

Thanks a lot. I was afraid that I was going to be stuck on the canvas mode. Sometimes, my curiosity gets the best of me :(

Crumpled weird distorted trees and houses have to be one of the worst features of the newest google maps.

I still don't understand how could anyone find this defacing useful.

Just give me the satellite or the Street View photos.

TBH Bing's "Bird's Eye" view was far more useful that the shitty resolution (mandated by law BTW) satellite photos.

Of course, Microsoft killed it :(

This is actually slower in many cases. If you want to view 2D imagery and/or Mercator maps you can simply enable/disable Globe mode from the hamburger menu on the left.

That does seem to show older images though.

Agreed, the images do seem lower quality than they used to be. I was curious, though, and chose buildings at random around the Google office in NYC, just to do a side-by-side, and even the old pictures look better:

https://i.imgur.com/0xEG4pb.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bxwr3Ez.jpg

I'm assuming left is old and right is new? This looks like aerial photography shot from a plane rather than satellite imagery, which seems like it would depend more on the quality(?) of the plane than the quality of the cameras.

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