3D Nature‘s Chris Hanson has made a Matterhorn!

Google Earth sans Matterhorn:

Google Earth avec Matterhorn:

Le real deal:

I am so impressed. Download it now to make Switzerland whole again.

Chris explains all:

The Google Earth 4 Matterhorn demo also shows off the ability to convert terrain into 3D geometry for display. Here, a small patch of 30m DEM data is inserted into the Google Earth environment to demonstrate the lack of detail in the base terrain model. The draped imagery is 30m Landsat, natural-color processed with AlphaPixel’s PixelSense. Since no higher-resolution imagery was available the permitted free redistribution, VNS’s Snow, texturing and fractal subdivision features were used to improve the look of the relatively-coarse imagery and introduce more apparent detail and variation. This project was done in response to Ogle Earth demonstrating the poor resolution of GE’s basic terrain.

Chris got the Matterhorn’s detailed elevation data from Jonathan de Ferranti’s page containing tons of freely downloadable data for many mountain ranges — a real treasure trove. Jonathan even voices an appeal I can only second:

If these files were imported into Google Earth or NASA World Wind, there would be a spectacular improvement in results. If anyone finds some way of doing this, or better still, persuading Google, NASA, Terraserver or ESRI to do this themselves, then please tell me!

Previously on Ogle Earth: New from 3D Nature: Textured terrain using COLLADA, 3D Nature’s 3D trees: Colliding COLLADA standards? (BTW, the rendering problems mentioned in the latter article will be fixed in the next update of Google Earth, I’m told.)