Britain’s capital was added this week to the roster of major cities available for viewing in three dimensions via Google Maps 5.0, however, only major buildings in the centre of the capital are currently included in the model.
The app was released in December and now allows Android users to drag and tilt their way around more than 100 cities worldwide.
In order to introduce 3D, engineers had to rebuild Google Maps’ graphics engine. Previously the app just downloaded two-dimensional maps as a series of image tiles, but now it downloads a vector-based description of the area and draws the map itself.
As well as allowing 3D buildings, the new approach means the app needs to download much less data, useful where mobile broadband coverage is poor or slow.