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Comment by Meph504 | Hacker News Reader

yeah I'm not getting the product other than it looks it ties into arc gis

For a comparison, here is google earths version of Portland (this isn't and apples to apples comparison, but I still think valid)

https://earth.google.com/web/search/port+land/@45.514524,-12...

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It's possible to download Google Earth's 3D model, at the resolution in your link, for any area where they show 3D buildings/landscape. It's not something they facilitate and definitely requires something of a hack, but it does work. Then you can get the model into Blender, SketchUp, etc. and start editing it to add or remove buildings and so on.

Would be interested to know whether that's technically legal. I mean, they put it out there on their website, right?

NAL, but surely they put something in the ToS that says you aren't allowed to do that. And even if you're 100% sure it's unenforceable, are you willing to defend your company against Google's army of lawyers? Scraping data from the web may be legal in many places, but that says nothing about what you're allowed to do with that data (hint: usually not much unless it's your own user data).

Having said all that, I've done this in the past for a few side projects where I wasn't selling anything and knew they would never in a million years get big enough to attract Google's attention. For those, this is definitely a good way to get 3D data (along with OSM Buldings, if you don't care about realism and just want a good approximation)

It's not that the esri one is bad. It's that the GE one is amazing.

I am constantly having my mind blown by Google Earth. How can this be free?

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