Can anyone fill us in on how they're collecting such accurate 3D detail for all these buildings? I mean are they flying airplanes with 360 degree cameras over the major cities at low altitude, for instance?
The LIDAR data is also used in the Nokia City Scene app http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MxnUAVhdnU Worth noticing is that you can click on every building i.e. 3D information is combined with regular streetview data.
Australian company Nearmap started with exactly the same goals and have a similar product (custom aerial photography system with automated processing), but they don't seem to have figured the 3D photogrammetry part out yet.
Another impressive spot is the top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas -- it manages to capture the spike at the top fairly well. It'd be interesting to know how much hand-editing they did for sites of interest like that, and how they represent hand-edits in a way that can be re-applied when new lidar datasets come in.