The 3D view looks so comically dystopian. The distorted effect makes everything look mangled.

On the other side of the pond, about 4 houses down... the backyard looks burned out and the pool is drained and bloodstained. This is like /r/writingprompt/

What is up with that red spot in that empty pool for real though? There's a truck parked out front with the door open, obviously people are working on the back yard in general, but what in the world would that red spot even be? Bing maps shows the backyard done and the pooled filled and normal-blue-looking.

Dogfights. Empty pools are ideal venues. Handlers back up to the walls, spectators can see over their heads, and it's easy to clean up...

That sounds disturbingly real.

In some areas the soil has a lot of iron in it and looks reddish (like rust-colored literally). But I'm not sure whether this is one of those areas, and also the particular shade of red here seems a bit more vivid than just rusty-red!

It could just be a tarp or a toy that melted. Pools always attract a lot of dirt and insects. Without constant maintenance it will look discoloured pretty quickly.

There's also construction-looking vehicles parked out front of these house so it's probably under renovation.

yeah, weird. Apple 2D shows completed pool, 3D shows backyard before the pool was started. Must be construction or something.

There's some strange vehicles parked in front of the house too

Too red to be real blood, it's probably paint. Blood turns near black if it's old.

Someone may be using it to slaughter chicken or lamb

someone needs to make a VR open world game set in Google Maps 3D view

FWIW Google Earth VR on PC does let you walk around the 3D view and you can set your scale to be real-world. I'm assuming it's the same 3D reconstruction that you get on regular Google Maps / Google Earth.

It's definitely a must-try VR application.

Can confirm.

Everyone I demoed the first Vive to loved it, even though the reconstruction is far from perfect.

Google earth VR does have a VR mode which I have heard is amazing [0]. Their maps platform is also part of cloud and you can use it for gaming [1].

[0]: https://vr.google.com/earth/

[1]: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/gaming/

what for ?

novelty

sightseeing (1:1)

you may be a nobody in real life but you and your clan online control the Rome Colosseum

Google's 3d "enhancements" make it very difficult to use these images. I wish I could turn it off.

You can turn off 3d mode by the blindingly obvious procedure of clicking the hamburger button, observing that "Globe" mode is enabled (because it is blue) and then clicking "Globe" to disable this mode.

Don't be so foolish as to think the button labelled "3D" in the content area toggles the 3D mode. Only an idiot would make that assumption!

(The above is sarcastic. I think the discoverability of this feature, and the weird 1/3/1 modality behavior of the items in the second section of the hamburger menu is shockingly poor).

The quality drops off if you do that and you get a completely different set of images. There's no way to turn of the 3D garbage and still see the same thing.

Oh I see, yeah it's a shame that you get a different set of imagery too...

Where is that? I've looked and looked but can't find anything.

You can see that if you change the region to US from the link below the map. It may also enhance the resolution.

Ahh, I see, thank you!

It's straight out of JG Ballard.

"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page."

Ah ah! Quite incredibly and sadly spot on.

Are you complaining that Google maps uses JavaScript?

No, Google Maps is actually a case where JavaScript makes sense. But this message reminded me of many seemingly static pages that are actually blank if you don't enable JavaScript, without even any hint that you should enable JavaScript. Reader mode often works perfectly on these pages. Sometimes, blocking the white element hiding the content of the page works well too.

I don't hate JavaScript, I have actually developed several web applications using it, and like it.

I'll complain that Firefox isn't supported.

Google is the worst.

It is though? I'm using it on Firefox without any issues

It's supported on Google Maps and not on Google Earth in the current version.

It's funny, but whatever remains should actually be html, css and images.

except for pages where all html and css is generated client-side by javascript.

we must be using different blockers, I see:

Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported by your browser yet. Try this link in Chrome instead. If you don't have Chrome installed, download it here.

Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can preview a cross-browser beta of Earth built on WebAssembly.

I'm using uBlock Origin with JavaScript blocked by default. But your message is what I get on the Google Earth link, even with JavaScript enabled.

Clearly visible in Google Earth: https://earth.app.goo.gl/aiquVv

Much better than google maps

The single thread WASM beta version appears to work perfectly on Waterfox (the multithread version loads data then sits there doing nothing). Not the fastest thing around but useable and noticeably better than maps.

Impressive that you could identify that as a car, among all the pipes and things.

Interesting that Google doesn't have Streetview available there. I figured most of the populated areas like this would be covered.

It looks like a gated community so it probably cannot get in there.

It's a gated community - if you place the Streetview pointer on Lake Worth Rd, you can even see the gates.

I didn't even think of that. Thanks

I still don't see it! Which part of the pond is it?

It was centered and zoomed in on desktop for me (are you on mobile perhaps?). Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/ZQJMz4c.jpg

Top left. For some reason the current image on Google Maps seems to be lower resolution than the screenshot posted to the BBC.

I think different people actually get different images om Google maps..

Google has two sets of base images. I usually prefer the plain 2D images, but you can get their reconstructed/interpolated 3D view with false color by toggling the "Globe" option in Google Maps, or the "3D Buildings" option in Google Earth. At this particular location, the 3D view has higher resolution.

Yeah, enabling 3D view makes the car plain as day, even on Firefox.

I think you are correct because the screenshot someone posted above in Imgur is not what I see on google maps.

I can confirm. They might use your origin account country?

I can getting 2 images taken at different times when I am using Firefox or Chrome.

The Chrome one seems to be much higher quality.

Hey Google, is serving a lower-resolution image to Firefox part of leveraging a monopoly against Firefox?

Is your legal team fine with that? Is there any legitimate reason anyone could possibly identify for why you would purposefully worsen the experience for a fully compliant browser like Firefox, by lowering the resolution?

What does your legal team have to say about this?

You can get the better version in Firefox if you click Globe in the menu on the left.

thanks. do you work for Google?

No.

I think its top left corner of the pond, it seems to be parallel with the edge of the pond

Looks like at the bottom left.