What’s New in 4.5

TPE Web 4.5 brings Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles to the 3D First Person View, letting you plan Sun, Moon and night-sky shots against a detailed 3D representation of the real world.

It also brings improvements to Visual Search in 3D, more flexible coordinate search, and a new What’s New system to help you keep up with future TPE releases.

Plan with Photorealistic 3D

Photorealistic is a new Ground mode for MAX subscribers in the 3D First Person View.

Instead of TPE’s modeled terrain and buildings, Photorealistic uses Google’s 3D mesh of the real world, including buildings, trees, vegetation and rock formations, providing a much richer representation of the skyline and foreground around your planned camera position.

TPE places its calculated Sun, Moon and other celestial objects into this environment, so you can explore compositions and alignments against the real-world scene.

Use the Ground setting to switch between:

Terrain – TPE’s elevation-based 3D rendering, with your chosen map style and simulated sunlight, moonlight and shadows.
Photorealistic – Google’s captured 3D representation of the real world, combined with TPE’s astronomical planning tools.

Photorealistic is currently available in First Person View only. Orbit view continues to use TPE’s Terrain rendering.

Note: Photorealistic mode is subject to reasonable use limits. Do not frequently reload the page to avoid hitting them.

Choose the level of detail

Photorealistic offers three detail levels:

Performance – fastest loading and lowest data usage
Balanced – increased detail at moderate data usage
Highest – maximum available detail

Performance typically uses substantially less data, while complex scenes at the higher settings can require several hundred MB.

TPE monitors the 3D working set as it loads. If a particularly complex scene cannot fit the requested level of detail into the available cache, TPE temporarily reduces the detail target rather than allowing refinement to stall, returning towards your selected quality level when conditions allow.

A detailed walk-through of the new functionality is available in the help article Terrain vs Photorealistic in First Person View.

See your chosen time of day

Google’s imagery records a location as it appeared when it was captured, often in full daylight. That can look unnatural when you’re planning a sunset, twilight or night shot.

TPE therefore adjusts the tone of the Photorealistic imagery according to the Sun’s altitude at your selected date and time:

Golden-hour scenes become warmer.
Twilight becomes cooler and darker.
Night scenes are darkened to sit more naturally beneath the night sky.

This is a tonal treatment of the original imagery, not a simulation of new lighting. Shadows contained in Google’s imagery remain where they were when photographed. TPE does not currently attempt to reconstruct new shadows for your selected time in Photorealistic mode. Full shadow simulation for both ground and buildings remains available in Terrain mode.

Sun, Moon and other astronomical calculations are unaffected.

Improved positioning in the real-world mesh

Photogrammetry presents some unusual challenges that don’t exist with a conventional terrain model, so TPE 4.5 includes several features specifically designed to handle them.

Ground-level detection now samples the area around your camera position, reducing the chance of tree canopy or other elevated objects being mistaken for the surface you’re standing on. TPE also warns you if it appears that your camera position may be on a tree, building or other elevated feature.

Positioning when entering Photorealistic mode with a long focal length has also been corrected.

Where Photorealistic coverage isn’t available, TPE automatically falls back to standard Terrain rendering.

Flatten problematic foregrounds

Water can be particularly troublesome for photogrammetry. A lake, harbor or other body of water can sometimes appear as artificial lumps or ridges that obstruct an otherwise clear sightline.

The Flatten foreground control lets you suppress this nearby geometry, with Near, Medium and Far settings controlling the affected distance.

Flattening affects genuine foreground objects too, so it’s intended as a temporary planning aid. Use it when you know that a clear real-world sightline isn’t being represented correctly by the Photorealistic data.

Google Elevation in Photorealistic mode

Google Elevation can now be selected as the elevation source while using Photorealistic ground.

Your elevation-source selection is preserved as you move between the map and 3D views, with TPE automatically falling back to its standard elevation data where appropriate.

Google Elevation requires a PRO or MAX subscription.

Visual Search improvements in 3D

Visual Search in First Person View has received several refinements.

After a search completes, the 3D view now tells you how many results were found and displays your position as you step through them.

The date and time label attached to a selected result can also be moved above or below the search box with a click – useful when the label happens to obscure the building, ridge or other feature you’re trying to align against.

We’ve also improved the draw-to-search workflow:

Search areas use the selected body’s color while being drawn.
Switching search bodies clears results belonging to the previous body.
Drawing outside the searchable altitude range now explains why the search can’t be run instead of silently doing nothing.

More ways to enter coordinates

Location Search now understands the coordinate formats commonly used by GPS devices and applications such as Google Earth.

In addition to decimal degrees, you can paste coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds (DMS) or degrees and decimal minutes.

For example:

37°04'46.97" N 8°40'04.91"W

TPE accepts a range of common variations, including hemisphere letters before or after the coordinates and comma decimal separators.

Other 3D improvements

We’ve made a number of smaller refinements throughout the 3D view:

Meteor shower radiant markers now maintain a consistent on-screen size when using long focal lengths.
Buildings controls now sit alongside the other terrain settings.
Loading and refinement indicators have been improved for Photorealistic scenes.
Switching between Terrain and Photorealistic is faster and more reliable.
Ground-mode information and attribution have been simplified and clarified.
Deselected celestial bodies now remain deselected after reloading the app.

Introducing What’s New

Finally, 4.5 introduces the system you’re reading this article in.

After a major TPE Web update, signed-in users can now receive a one-time What’s New announcement explaining the important changes.

Once you’ve read or dismissed it, that state is synchronized with your account, so you won’t be shown the same announcement again on another device.

You can also open What’s New from the Help panel at any time to browse articles for previous releases.

A note about Photorealistic imagery

Photorealistic 3D can provide a remarkably detailed view of a planned location, but remember that it represents the world as it appeared when Google captured it.

Seasons, vegetation, buildings and other details may have changed since then, and lighting and shadows baked into the original imagery don’t necessarily correspond to your selected planning date and time.

Think of Photorealistic as another planning model – an exceptionally detailed one – rather than a live or exact representation of what you’ll encounter on location.

Photorealistic is available to MAX subscribers in the 3D First Person View.