Skycaptain,

My understanding of this phenomenon is as follows:

Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) comes in many different resolutions.
DTED Level one takes the average altitude for a 100 square meter area and creates one point.
____________________
|___________________|
|___________________|
|___________________|
|___________________|
|___________________|
|___________________|
|___________________|
DTED Level two takes one data point for a 30 square meter area.
______
|_____|
|_____|
|_____|
DTED Level three takes one data point for a 10 square meter area.
___
|__|

Most DTED data that is level three (and higher) is classified. The higher the level, the more datapoints you will have in a given area. In a 100 m^2 area,
DTED Level 1 has 1 data point.
DTED Level 2 has 9 data points.
DTED Level 3 has 27 data points.

I do not know if GE uses DTED or some other data, but they will both work on the same principles. I also believe that there are different resolutions in the GE database for different areas. So an area that is highly populated may have higher level DTED data to go along with their hier resolution imagery.

Since the points of these peaks are not 100 spare meter plateaus, (or even 30 square meter plateaus) GE will not show the true altitude of these peaks. It will show the general layout of the peaks.

I hope this helps.

p.s. If anyone, anybody, or some other person has more to offer (or I made a mistake) please add and let me know. I am also curious as to whether or not GE uses DTED. If so, what is the default level of data?