Google has just integrated the 3-D fly-through technology of Google Earth into their standard Google Maps website. How do they pack the tech of a 70mb program into a utility that runs in a browser? I do not know, although it appears they may have just (“just”) made the Google Earth plugin for web browsers into an automatic download and install.

Vancouver in its 3-dimensional glory

I was concerned that the arrival of Earth view had replaced the ‘terrain’ view option. Among other things, the hillshaded terrain view is handy for grabbing lat/long locations of natural features for quick input into GIS, particularly when used in conjunction with the LatLng marker option.

But all is well. ‘Terrain’ view is still there, it’s just been moved into the ‘More’ dropdown menu.

decent terrain, too