Today I stumbled upon this new tool by Google: Building Maker. It is quite impressive to see how with a few mouse clicks you can make a 3D model using images showing the object from different angles. I guess this way of constructing would be the dream of many FS developers as well.

I did try the tool for a simple office building and that worked quite good, but I am not sure how easy it is with irregular shapes. I guess it is mainly suitable for objects that don’t need too much detail and mainly rely on their photo textures.

I also noticed that the latest Google Sketchup has a function to use Google Streetview images on the object directly. Although it might be easy, this new feature and the Building Maker tool make me wonder about the copyrights of the images used. We are not allowed to take images from Google Earth and use them in FS, but these kind of object depend a lot on such images. So would a designer who made an object like that be allowed to use it outside Google Earth?