Case study

Google Earth: reconstructing 3D satellite asset formats and access

earth-reverse-engineering investigates Google Earth's 3D satellite mode and reconstructs its resource URL structure, octree metadata, Protobuf asset formats, and mesh and texture decoding steps. The repository includes a native and WebAssembly flycam client, a JavaScript model exporter, and a rocktree Protobuf schema.

Targets: Website
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06

Stars: 2.3k
Last commit: 2020-12-23
Language: C
Status: Archived

GitHub data as of 2026-11-09

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Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: The native client build requires repository submodules, g++, SDL2, Protobuf, and GLEW.
Prerequisites: The model exporter requires Node.js v8 and npm.
Limits: The README describes a bounding-box-based method for converting latitude and longitude to an octant as unstable.
License: No licence file is shown in the repository file list.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{earth-reverse-engineering-case,
  title = {{Google Earth: reconstructing 3D satellite asset formats and access}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/retroplasma/earth-reverse-engineering}},
  url = {https://github.com/retroplasma/earth-reverse-engineering},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/earth-reverse-engineering-case/}}
}

Plain text

Google Earth: reconstructing 3D satellite asset formats and access. https://github.com/retroplasma/earth-reverse-engineering (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/earth-reverse-engineering-case/

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About this entry

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · retroplasma/earth-reverse-engineering · Revision 35af10d
exporter/README.md GitHub · retroplasma/earth-reverse-engineering · Revision 35af10d