I was keen on keeping as much of the complexity on the GPU, so I wanted to avoid having to update the geometry. Not to say I'm against exploring different approaches. Did your "Google Earth"-alike, ever see the light of day?
Completely understood, it's better to focus on interesting 3D stuff and easier to do it this way in JavaScript than to handle tile caching using WebWorkers/WebSockets and local storage in a language that doesn't support proper multithreading.
Yes, the project was completed and working fine though it ended up buried deep within my former employer's R&D lab and I have no update if they are using parts of it anywhere. They got acquired and another office was aggressively taking over, getting rid of internal competing technologies. I also had a prior experience in adding dynamic 3D cities and vector maps into NASA's World Wind, and therefore writing a completely own globe from the scratch was a joy ;-)
I am thinking about doing similar apps in WebGL and Qt and writing some tutorials on how to do it as I progress, so perhaps we can inspire each other then. First I need to finish some tutorials for advanced 2D geometry and Bezier curves though (Illustrator-class algorithms with JavaScript + HTML5 live examples).
