Flying over Norway in 3D

At the moment Google is sending its car around the streets of Norway in preparation for including them in Google Street View, but there's something else from June last year featured in the Norwegian press that's just as fun - it's a browser plugin a bit less than a mb in size that lets you fly over Norway in 3D. When installed it says you have to restart your browser but I'm using it just fine at the moment without having to do that, and am currently flying over...Legevakten in Oslo, which looks like this:

The company providing this is Norway's Sesam.

Some info from the article in Norwegian here:

The 3D map is based on new and old advanced technology originally developed for the Swedish fighter plane project Jas Gripen and their missile navigation system.

The new map of Norway will be the world's largest realistic 3-D model, and shows for the first time the whole country in 3D.

Currently only Oslo can be seen in full 3D street to street version. In the rest of the country you can only move around in a three-dimensional landscape.

In the next few weeks Sesam will release a full 3D version of Trondheim, and they plan to start service for another two to three cities from July.

If you want to try Sesam's map service you first need a PC, which needs an Active X plugin that doesn't function on a Mac. A Mac version will be ready in about three months, while Linux users must wait for as long as half a year before they can use the service.

In addition, the application is quite slow to use...you have to sit and wait for a few seconds until all the buildings come into focus.

It then goes on to say how it will change real estate in being able to get a view from above of the neighborhood where people are considering buying property.

It looks like Trondheim is available in 3D now, but Bergen is still out, and I'm not exactly sure what other cities have been added since then.

Finally, here's a video they made to show what it looks like to fly around the Norwegian parliament (rådhus):

Rådhuset Oslo - Sesam 3D kart from Morten Jacobsen on Vimeo.