A group of rather talented russian flash developers have been working hard on version 5 of the Alernativa3D engine and have now reached their first milestone.

Check out the magic

Our kettle of cool gives this a rather fabulous 1.6 liters which when converted to cups of tea is 5 out of 5!

This website demonstrates the features of the KIA Rio using an innovative, 3D rollercoaster ride.

Featuring lots of pre-rendered Flash animation and bold, primary colours, it makes a welcome change from the image-heavy car sites we’ve grown accustomed to.

Google have released a new beta of Google Earth, featuring a host of great new features including:

• Improved, user-friendly UI.
• 3D buildings can now feature textures.
• Linux support (nice one Google!).
• French, Italian, German, and Spanish versions now available for download.
• Better GPS support (Google Earth Plus only).
• More realistic peaks and valleys.

The addition of textures to 3D buildings adds a great deal of realism to Google Earth:

A Google Earth Scene with no textures

A Google Earth scene with textured buildings

Google are encouraging users to create and submit textured buildings created in Google Sketchup, which is a clever way of promoting another application from their stable of downloadable applications.