Big News: New Imagery 8-September | New Imagery 24-August | Google Earth 5.2 Released

September 10, 2010

Beautiful new 3D buildings in Las Vegas

Our friends at CyberCity 3D are at it again -- they've just posted some new 3D buildings in Las Vegas and they look great!

CC3D created these "deluxe" 3D Las Vegas buildings (actually resorts) for Team Vision Virtual as part of TVV's plan to build out 3D destination travel sites for 10 cities/regions over the next 18 months. TVV and CC3D teamed up earlier this year to build the impressive 3DHawaii site, so a Vegas version of that site could be pretty neat. Team Vision is the "first-mover" in this space and CyberCity 3D is the production partner as well as a content partner with Google.

CyberCity even built a nice tour to guide you through the city. You can download the tour, or simply watch it in the embedded video below:

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Posted by mickmel at 7:21 AM | Comments (1)

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September 9, 2010

Google Earth gets a new website

Google has just updated the official Google Earth website with a great new look and a much more clean interface.

As you can read on the Lat Long Boog, they're encouraging users to explore the five main areas of the site:

• Showcase: Various featured content.
• Video tutorials: Tutorials on how to do basic tasks like create placemarks, record tours, etc.
• More products: Information on related Google products.
• Community: Various ways to connect with other users, such as the Google Earth Twitter account.
• Industries: Information for educators, media, developers, etc.

All in all it's a very nice update, though right now only the English version has been upgraded. Check it our for yourself at earth.google.com.

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Google Earth 5.2 is now out of beta: Version 5.2.1.1588

Back in June, Google released version 5.2 of Google Earth, which introduced us to some great new features such as tracks, elevation profiles and a variety of other enhancements.

Now, just shy of three months later, Google Earth 5.2 has come out of beta. Most of you were likely running version 5.2.1.1547, and it's now been updated to version 5.2.1.1588. The update tool inside of Google Earth isn't showing it yet, but if you head over to earth.google.com and download it from there you'll be getting the latest version.

Most of the updates are minor bug fixes, but Google is taking this opportunity to show off a few Google Earth Pro features in a bit more detail: Vector Regionation and Image Regionation. Simply put, these are ways to allow you to view vast amounts of information on the screen; Google Earth will show less detail when you're far away, and slowly add more info as you zoom in.

You can read about both features on the Google Lat Long Blog, or watch the video below for more information about Vector Regionation:

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September 8, 2010

New Google Earth Imagery - September 8

Google Earth has just rolled out some fresh imagery for us! Thanks to GEB reader 'orb2222' for being the first to let us know about it.

As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!

[UPDATED -- 9-September, 6:39am EST]

• Canada: Quebec -- thanks 'Steven'
• China: Western areas -- thanks 'Steven'
• Ecuador: Latacunga -- thanks 'Snakeye'
• Kyrgyzstan: Western areas -- thanks 'Steven'
• Poland: Various cities -- thanks 'orb2222'
• Russia: Various places -- thanks 'AlexeiD'
• Spain: Basque Country -- thanks ''Neutravo'
• Sri Lanka: Various -- thanks 'Steven'
• United States: NW Bay Area, CA : Dover, DE : Louisville, KY : Shiawassee County, MI : Houston, TX : Richmond, VA : Spokane, WA -- thanks 'belmaktor', 'Steven', 'Matt' and 'ChrisK'

If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!

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Old Kashgar

Back in July, Stefan Geens of Ogle Earth had a chance to visit Kashgar, a city in west China. It's a place he's wanted to visit for a long time, but had to hurry to see it; the government is in the process of demolishing 85% of the old town!

He spent more than a week in the city, photographing and documenting everything he possibly could. The result is nothing short of amazing.

As you can likely guess, Stefan took all of that data (georeferenced photos, GPS tracks and a superimposed map) and created an impressive file for Google Earth.

You can download that KMZ file here, and I highly recommend you visit his blog to read the entire story.

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Posted by mickmel at 8:36 AM | Comments (1)

September 7, 2010

The Google Earth COM API is being phased out

One of the neat things included as part of SketchUp 8 was the new way that it pulled in imagery from Google Earth. Rather than using the Google Earth COM API, as it had for years (Frank covered it in 2006), it pulls in imagery via Google Maps which results in color imagery instead of the black and white that you're used to.

While the color imagery is certainly a great feature, it appears there is another reason for the change as well -- Google is eliminating the COM API.

Instead, Google is encouraging developers to take advantage of the powerful JavaScript API that was released in 2008 along side the Google Earth Plug-in. This allowed for a wide variety of applications, like the popular "monster milktruck!" demo.

It's worth noting that current and all past versions of Google Earth (5.2 and earlier) will continue to support the COM API, but future versions will not.

If you're a developer, what do you think of this news? Have you moved on to the JavaScript API already and this is a non-event? Or does this have you scrambling to make sure your app will work with future versions of Google Earth?

Posted by mickmel at 7:58 AM | Comments (7)

September 6, 2010

Christchurch Earthquake Visualizations

By now you've likely heard about the earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand over the weekend. While there have been no deaths reported, the magnitude 7.1 earthquake has caused quite a lot of damage.

GEB reader Kelvin sent us a file that is a great visualization of the quakes, with data from the GNS Science and their GeoNet website.

You can view the data by simply downloading this KMZ file and then clicking the [play] button in the upper-left corner. If you find any other Google Earth resources related to the New Zealand earthquake, please let a comment and let us know.

Posted by mickmel at 8:32 AM | Comments (2)

September 3, 2010

Burning Man 2010 in Google Earth

We covered some neat things with Burning Man (a very popular annual event that is "an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance") back in 2006 and 2007, and they've done some more cool stuff this year.

GEB reader Jeff has shared an image that was captured by GeoEye a few days ago that shows many of the participants forming a giant peace sign around the "man" in the center of the city. Here's the pic:

In addition, GeoEye has already published a fresh image to their "Featured Imagery" layer in Google Earth. You can find the layer titled "GeoEye featured Imagery" under the "More" section of your layers. Fly to this KML and turn the layer on, and you'll see something like this:

There will likely be other imagery coming in over the next few days. If you come across anything noteworthy, share your finds in the comments below.

Posted by mickmel at 7:14 PM | Comments (3)

AnotherEarth.org -- Two globes in one

John sent me an email last week telling me about a new project he's working on, and it's quite cool -- he calles it anotherearth. He explains it as follows:

This application gives you a number of tools with which you can easily and comprehensively compare two views of the Earth, using the Google Earth browser plugin. These include the ability to synchronize the movement of two Earths, select layers such as buildings, roads and borders for the Earths, jump to locations of your choice, undo/redo any movements, and save coordinates as a URL.

The controls are very fluid, and there are a lot of excellent potential uses for it. You can try it for yourself at anotherearth.org. What are some neat things you can do with it?

John has plans to add more features in the future, making the tool even more useful. If it were up to you, what kind of features would you add to it?

Posted by mickmel at 8:38 AM | Comments (0)

September 2, 2010

3D sounds with the Google Earth Plug-in

Paul over at PlanetInAction is at it again. The man that brought us Ships and Helicopters has a new toy for us to play with. This is more of tech demo than a game, but it's quite impressive.

He's simply calling it a 3D sound demo. Here is a brief video of it in action:

You can read the full write-up on his site, but here's the basics of it:

sound3D manages a collection of soundSource objects that have knowledge of the location they are at. A soundSource has a collection of channels. Each channel represents a sound file with associated falloff range. Outside this range the channel can not be heard.

Multiple sound channels per sound source enables you to use different sounding audio files for nearby and far away. The "far" file should sound more muffled and have a longer falloff range. These audio effects can be prepared in a sound editor such as Audacity.

The helicopter on the beach is a great example showing how this works. Move in close and notice how the engine sounds louder but also sharper.

Be sure to check out the PlanetInAction site for more info.

Posted by mickmel at 7:38 AM | Comments (8)

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