Zooming in to a site from satellite

Hello,
Has anyone done an animation where you needed to start from a satellite image and then zooming in on the site before staring the flyround of the 3D?
Any ideas of the best way of doing this? has any one tried google earth, is this any good and can you get movie files of the zoom in?
If you’ve seen the current British Airways ad running then its somthing similar but in reverse.
Any help always appreciated!

Cheers,
Steve

http://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/earthzoom/index.htm

thats great! thank you!

you dont know the best place to buy the acutual satalite photos? do google sell their stuff?
Cheers,
Steve

nasa?

nasa pics are amazing - free and once youv’e figured out their website available at massive resolution (the world cut into 8 chunks, each around 20k x 20k) plus clouds, topographic displacement/bumps

search for ‘nasa blue marble’

Here’s a plug for Land Data 3D - www.landdata3d.com

It’s a source of mosaiked, imagery & terrain data sets for a number of major cities around the world, also offering a “Custom Area” option.

-Andrew

Planet Texture Map Collection pretty nice maps here

if you buy google earth pro you can use the textures in commercial projects.