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June 30, 2009

NASA Doing Robotic Recon with Google Earth

NASA is conducting research from their Ames Research Center in California with a robot called "K10", located in northern Arizona, to simulate tele-operations for exploring the moon. They are using Google Earth extensively for both planning, visualization, and operations. In other words, Google Earth is a visualization tool for telepresence. NASA uses a black and white higher res image of their target area overlayed in GE (maybe the black and white makes it look more like the moon?). They look at the imagery to determine reconnaissance objectives and plan routes. They have developed a planning tool that works interactively with Google Earth (using network links and overlays) to develop and assign tasks for the robot and put placemarks and routes on the map. Then the task plans are sent to the robot. The robot sends back photos to NASA which are also placed in placemarks in Google Earth, and a track of the robots path is also updated continously. You can read more details and see more screenshots at the Robotic Recon web site. I'd like to get my hands on a sample KML file to see what it looks like. There is a large team of engineers involved in the Robotic Recon project, including folks from different NASA centers and several universities. And, the Robotic Recon blog shows lots of screenshots of Google Earth in use.

By the way, this story is particularly interesting to me because more than 15 years ago I developed similar tele-presence simulation software at NASA Johnson Space Center to visualize remote-operations over the Internet using a Silicon Graphics workstations. I developed the 3D software for the visualization parts, and the Internet client/server communications. In 1992, while at International Space University in Japan, I used a workstation to control a robot arm NASA had back in Houston over an Internet connection using a crude frame-grab camera (single-frame webcam) to verify position. This is so déjà vu! Part of the reason I was instantly attracted to Google Earth when it first came out, was its similarity to the software I had written. Full circle.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:10 AM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2009

Tour de France 2009 in Google Earth

Once again, Thomas Vergouwen is the first to send GEB the complete tracks for the 2009 Tour de France for viewing in Google Earth. The organizers did not release the full details on the routes of the stages until recently, so it took longer then usual for maps to be created. The race begins this Saturday - July 4th. Thomas describes the situation and provides lots of details on each stage of the race at his web site, and he provides both Google Maps and the Google Earth file on the routes.

Viewing the Tour de France routes in Google Earth is one of my favorite examples of the power of Google Earth. With GE's 3D terrain, you can tilt your view and truly get a feeling of how challenging this race really is - even if you have never been to see it in person. Just load Thomas' file for the 2009 Tour de France in GE . Then, make sure you tilt your view I'm hoping there will be some more real-time tracking this year that will let you watch the position of some of the racers in Google Earth as they go along.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:25 AM | Comments (6)

June 26, 2009

Links: Michael Jackson Neverland, Amnesty International, New Placenames, GE Outreach

• Michael Jackson Neverland - Yesterday the King of Pop passed away. People will remember him in many ways, but mostly for his amazing musical and performance talents. Google Sightseeing recalled their post about Michael's Neverland Ranch and updated it with new information. You can see the Neverland Ranch in Google Earth here .

• Amnesty International - Sri Lanka War - Thanks to some help from Stefan Geens of OgleEarth, Amnesty International has produced an excellent Google Earth file which highlights the aftermath of the Sri Lankan War. The file includes more updated aerial imagery, and many placemarks providing details to the human and physical costs to the war. Stefan has more details about the project at his blog.

• New Multi-lingual Placenames - Google has proudly announced improvements to their database of populated places names. This way you can see names in the local language for places, or in the language of your choice used by Google Earth. By default, you'll see both local and your language. In the English version of Google Earth, the names are found under the "Borders and Labels" layer folder. The normal placenames in your language are under Populated Places, and the local language placenames are under Alternative Place Names. Part of the data has come from the Google Map Maker project where people anywhere can contribute map information. They even have names in unusual scripts as well - like Chinese, Arabic, etc. I love the new data, but the naming of the layers is a little strange and somewhat confusing. How about: "Local Placenames", "English Placenames" (replacing "English" with your language)? Also, I still really miss the cool feature the placenames used to have that when you clicked on the label it gave your three links to automatically search Google for that place, images from Google Images, and news from Google News. Google: please bring that back!

• GE Outreach Birthday - Today is the second anniversary of Google announcing their Google Earth Outreach program (see GEB post of the 2007 announcement). I'm expecting Google will roll out a few layers today from Outreach.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:00 AM | Comments (1)

June 25, 2009

New 3D Cities in Google Earth: Warsaw, Prague, Oslo, Toronto, Indianapolis

Google has pushed out another big update to the 3D Buildings layer for Google Earth today. The new layer includes thousands of new buildings in five cities and user models from the 3D Warehouse for many other cities around the world. The five cities with new greatly expanded coverage include: Warsaw, Prague, Oslo, Toronto, and Indianapolis. These cities have models made by techniques Google has yet to share: but is at least a semi-automated method which includes aerial photography for photo-realistic textures on the models. NOTE: Google continues to show user models for buildings which were already in the 3D Warehouse in favor of their own semi-automated system. Here's an example of the new coverage for Toronto:

And here's a YouTube video showing three of the new cities:

Google just released a similar big update to 3D Buildings about two weeks ago! Read more.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 6:35 PM | Comments (5)

Hurricane/Cyclone Tracking with Google Earth

One of Google Earth's most powerful features is the ability to pull in real-time information from other sites and overlay the information for visualization (thanks to the network link). Weather data is one of my favorite applications in Google Earth of this ability. Imagine pulling in the latest satellite photos, radar animations, hurricane tracking, live web cams on the ground, sea surface temperature analysis, etc. Well, you can do all that with the set of the very best weather tools for Google Earth which GEB has bundled together into this: the weather and storm tracking tools collection . Simply drag this network link into your Places folder to keep it handy. It won't take up space until you turn it on. It first loads several folders of weather tools you can explore. You may want to turn only one layer on at a time - these layers weren't designed to all be turned on at once. Although, some of the layers are complimentary (like current lightning strikes with clouds or storms turned on). Read more about the storm tracking tools.

Google has added a new Hurricane Season 2009 layer in the Weather layer folder. It also will automatically highlight current named storms. But, the tools in the collection above will take you much further if you have an interest in weather. Check out this GEB video of storm tracking (from 2007) in Google Earth:

NOTE: Many of these storm tracking tools have been around for some time. While they are still cool, I'd love to see some weather sites using the Google Earth API to full advantage. Weather data is great stuff when viewed in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:48 AM | Comments (2)

June 24, 2009

Links: Muggers Caught, Tehran Imagery, Ocean Celebration, UNHCR Donation

As mentioned, I've been sailing this week, so posts have been slow coming (see first part of trip at the Tahina Expedition blog). I would have written last night, but the only WIFI near our anchorage went dead after dinner. Then today we sailed 70 miles back to our home base. Don't worrry, we'll be getting some onboard (yes, satellite, but also some other less-expensive options) Internet connectivity in a few weeks.

• Muggers Caught by Street View - Many GEB readers forwarded me this story about two muggers (who happen to be twin brothers) having been caught thanks to Google's Street View imagery. A 14-year old Dutch boy was mugged just moments after a Street View car imaged the two muggers walking close behind him. The boy noticed the image in Street View 6 months after it happened and called police. Police requested and got the original image without face-blurring from Google and they recognized the assailants and arrested them. The AP story has the blurred version of the photo.

• Tehran Imagery - Google released recent imagery of Tehran, Iran for Google Earth after a GeoSat satellite took the picture. This release was made quickly in response to the developing news there last week. You can view the photo here in Google Earth.

• Ocean GE Celebration - Google took an opportunity to celebrate the new wealth of information available about the oceans, since Google Earth 5 was released last February, with a number of their partners recently. Watch this video of awards for the new ocean content. I just had to mention this because I just spent several days sailing on the ocean!

• UNHCR Dontation - Just a follow-up to the post I made last week about the UNHCR and World Refugee Day. As promised, GEB has made a donation (via Frank Taylor) on Monday of over $100 to the UNHCR. If other bloggers accepted my Twitter challenge to do the same, I would appreciate hearing about it.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:24 PM | Comments (2)

June 22, 2009

New Places Site - Record Movie Postcards in Google Earth

Just a month ago, PlanetInAction.com released a really cool Google Earth game called "Ships" - a simulator game for ships completely run with the Google Earth API in the browser plugin (read the GEB review). One of the features I was particularly impressed with was the really innovative camera modes of the simulator.

Now the author of Ships, Paul van Dinther, has just released another cool free application he calls "Places". This application leverages some of his work with cameras to produce the "next generation postcard". Instead of a static postcard photo, how about sending a dynamic 3D postcard using Google Earth? This goes way beyond just sending a placemark, and it leverages new GE technology.

Once you pick a place, you can do more than just send it along with a greeting. You can also record a flying tour of the location. Paul has created a custom "helicopter"-like camera and interface using the mouse and keyboard shortcuts that has to be tried to really appreciate. He has a drop down help card that will explain the shortcuts. You can get cinematic like motions to fly around. Not only that, but you can record your flying tour as a GE 5 Tour - the end result is a simple URL you can send someone to see your movie postcard. This is very cool! Watch a video introduction to Places:

You can also check out a couple of example postcard movies here: Grand Canyon and Mt. St. Helens

The interface has this handy gadget in the upper right that lets you expand the plugin to full "screen" view in your browser. This makes the experience much more immersive. You can easily back out by hitting the ESC key. Google should offer this "full-screen" gadget mode as a standard option for GE plugin apps.

I highly recommend trying out the custom camera/flying interface, and the easy way to generate a movie/Tour with the GE plugin. The flying tool is one of the best interfaces for flying in Google Earth I've seen to date. You could make some cool movies with this. I've already asked Paul, and he says he might be willing to create a custom Google Earth movie camera tool. If you think this would be a cool idea, you should leave him a comment.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 6:50 AM

June 19, 2009

Going Sailing!

Just an FYI that I'll be doing some sailing next week and so GEB may have fewer posts and slower reaction times to news that comes out during the week (although, watch my Monday post as I should be announcing a Google Earth plugin application someone has planned for release). But, I should have some cool photos and GPS tracks to share in a Google Earth file here and at the Tahina Expedition web site (Tahina is our boat).

And, just to avoid having no news today, I noticed the Google Street View Trike has been spotted taking photos on the grounds of UPenn. A Googler confirmed it was theirs, and that they have also taken photos at San Diego State and University of San Diego, and are working with other campuses interested in a different look at their campus via Street View.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:00 PM | Comments (1)

June 18, 2009

Gimme Shelter Campaign via Google Earth

Google has announced a very powerful Google Earth file for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR organization provides shelter and assistance to millions of people forced from their homes - mostly by political circumnstances. With a staff of only 6500, the organization is helping millions of desperate people. The evidence of just how bad the plight is for refugees can be seen right in Google Earth. The file will fly you to many refugee camps so you can see what is happening, and learn about the challenges people are facing in remote places around the world (it used to be "out of sight, out of mind", but times are changing).

June 20th is World Refugee Day, and to help send out word about the plight of refugees to the world, Google has added recent imagery of refugee camps - and created a very dramatic tour of just a few refugee camps. The UNHCR got permission to play the Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter" song to help their campaign starting last December. So, the Tour has the song playing in the background. You can watch the Google Earth Gimme Shelter Tour in the full desktop app (free GE 5 required), or you can watch it right here (via the embed a tour tool). Note, you can pause the tour at any point and zoom in to see more details - or read the placemarks. And, more importantly, you can click at the end to the "Donate" button. Watch and listen to it below - it only takes about 4 minutes:

In honor of World Refugee Day, all proceeds from Google Earth Blog from June 20th will be donated to the UNHCR. $100 can buy a survival kit for a refugee family. I hope other blogs will both embed this tour and donate their proceeds as well.

In 2007, Google did something similar by creating a layer highlighting what was happening to refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan through Google Earth. But, the technology of Google Earth has greatly improved since then. The tour above is broadening the scope of the message to include refugees around the world.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:52 AM | Comments (1)

June 17, 2009

More Embedding of 3D Warehouse Model Views

Google has enabled another feature in 3D Warehouse to make it easy to share a specific 3D model. You can now embed your choice of either just an image, 3D view, or a Google Earth browser plugin view for any specific model (the latter only works if the 3D model is a GE placed model). You look below the model for the button "Include" to get your choice of embedding and the code snippet you copy/paste to your web site/blog (more instructions in link above).

The "3D View" option gives you a quick low-resolution look at the model. It loads fast, but doesn't have much of the detail of the original model. The interface is very simple - drag mouse to rotate left or right, and use mouse scroll wheel to zoom in/out. That's pretty much it. The view also doesn't show the terrain or imagery from Google Earth. The "Google Earth" view uses the browser plugin to show the model in its saved geographic location (this option won't appear for models unless they've been placed in GE). You could already choose the option to view the model in Google Earth, but now you can embed this way of viewing on your page through this simple option. One suggestion I've made to Google: I think they need to include the navigation gadget. Some people aren't familiar with the basic mouse navigation moves to view a 3D model in GE.

For example, here is a model from 3D Warehouse of the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico by 'mark s'. First see it with the "3D View":

And now with the "GE View" (which happens to show how accurate the 3D terrain is now in Puerto Rico):

Here are some tips to looking around in the GE view: Use the scroll wheel by itself to zoom in out. Hold CTRL key down and use the arrow keys to turn your view around. Hold SHIFT key down and arrow keys to rotate your view. Or better yet, click and hold the middle mouse button (or scroll wheel - if you have one) to rotate/tilt around the model.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:06 AM | Comments (3)

June 16, 2009

Memorial to UTA Flight 772 Visible from Space

(En Español) - GoogleSightseeing.com has written an excellent post about a unique memorial to UTA Flight 772 in the desert of Niger. This tragic flight ended when a briefcase bomb exploded while the DC-10 was enroute to Paris back in 1989. The bomb was placed by Libyan terrorists. In 2007, some family members of the 170 fatalities went out to the crash site and created a huge memorial made out of dark stones placed in the sand. The memorial shows a silhouette of a DC-10 seen from above. Amazingly, a 2007 GeoEye satellite photo shows the memorial shortly after it was finished in Google Earth. Now millions of people can see the memorial for the first time. See the location here now visible in Google Earth.

The families also took one of the wings and placed it vertically in the sand with a plaque listing the names of the deceased on the side. You can see this part of the memorial in a Panoramio photo which appears at the site if you turn on the "Geographic Web->Panoramio" layer as seen here (click the photo for larger version):

Make sure to read GoogleSightseeing's post which has more details and links. Not only that, but one of the family members of the crash victims has left comments about how wonderful it is for them to see the memorial is now visible in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:06 AM | Comments (2)

June 15, 2009

Using Google Earth to Review Urban Development Project

Gerardo brought to my attention a post at the GEC about a proposed bridge construction project at the Columbia River in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington region. The author, Nick Falbo, has produced some excellent Google Earth visualizations in opposition to the project. The visualizations use the new Tour function of Google Earth 5, and he's created embedded versions of the Tours on his blog. You can watch the three tours here - using the GE plugin in your browser, or visit his blog page to download the GE content directly. The tours include narration, 3D models of proposed bridges, and overlays to illustrate possible effects of the road project.

This is not at all the first time Google Earth has been used to visualize urban projects. Check here for some others:

• New York Buildings project
• Fight against logging plan in Santa Cruz
• Cape Wind Project

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:33 AM | Comments (2)

June 12, 2009

Google Reveals Details on 3D Buildings Layer Process

At the SketchUp Blog, Google has written an excellent post describing how they've changed the process for handling the pipeline of new 3D models posted to the 3D Warehouse for inclusion in the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer. Since this involves a community of 3D modelers around the world donating their time to provide quality content for Google Earth, I'm glad to see Google providing details on what they are doing to streamline the process so contributions are visible more quickly.

The process is not simple, and humans have to be involved. Judging the quality of 163 different versions of the Eiffel tower is not something easily left to a computer. Google chooses to show a user-generated model over an "auto-generated model" if the user-generated model is better. The process had been losing ground (i.e. models were being created more quickly than they could be reviewed). So, Google has streamlined the process. They have also modified their acceptance criteria so it is more lenient (meaning more models will be accepted). The article tries to explain their rationale for balancing quality verses their desire to accept as many models as possible.

I'm sure there will be models included now in the layer that some people won't like. But, the 3D Warehouse provides feedback mechanisms for both rating and providing comments on models. So, hopefully the user community can help provide data to help in the judging process.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:22 AM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2009

Notes from Twitter

Here's a couple of notes from my twitter feed (follow my twitter) with further elaboration:

Tweet1: Found location of Street View bike trail in Monterey, CA..

Explanation: The USA Today published a story about how Google is now taking Street View photos of bike trails and paths with the Google Trike. The article indicated only one bike path has been mapped so far. So, I went hunting in Google Earth and found the trail. Here is the location:

View Larger Map

I'm a little disappointed because much of the bike trail is along a road which also has Street View. So, you don't get a very unique experience for much of the trail. But, maybe this isn't the only trail. The Google Trike is actually a 3-wheeled vehicle of substantial size. I don't think they'll be taking it on the more rugged mountain bike trails.

Tweet2: Finally released my Google Earth file & photos of Arizona vacation.

Explanation: About a month ago I went on a vacation to Arizona. This was the last chance for a big backpacking trip with my buddies before leaving on the five year sailing circumnavigation - the Tahina Expedition. You can view a Google Earth travelogue of the trip including GPS tracks, photos, and placemarks and a description of the trip in this post.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:15 AM | Comments (4)

June 10, 2009

Lots of New 3D Content Added in Google Earth

Google has added thousands of new buildings to the 3D Buildings layer including 4 cities in Japan with dozens of city blocks where all the buildings are rendered in 3D, more Disney content for Orlando, nearly 4000 new 3D Warehouse models all over the planet, and more! The new coverage in Japan include: Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto. The new 3D buildings are covered in photorealistic textures using some automated method. (NOTE: most Japan cities were already rendered with gray non-photo-textured buildings, the new buildings replace those in the areas where they have coverage.) You can see samples of the new cities here (I recomment watching it in HD):

In Orlando, Disney has added the Wide World of Sports complex to the already huge number of 3D models for the main DisneyWorld in 3D.

Google has been slowly adding cities using an unpublished methodology where vast numbers of buildings for large areas of cities are being rendered in 3D with photorealistic textures. The photos appear to be aerial in some cases, in others they seem to be from the ground. But, they are using an at least semi-automated process judging from the cases where some buildings are not properly "dressed" with the photo textures. In December Google added New York City in 3D. Here's a round up of cities which have the photorealistic 3D treatment, with the exception of these two which were added later.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:27 PM | Comments (1)

Links: Disneyland Paris Street View, GE on TV, 3D from 2D Tech

• Disneyland Paris Street View - Yesterday Google released a new special Street View update which covers the streets of Disneyland Paris. This follows the amazing update in Google Earth showing you Disneyland Paris in 3D with amazing detail. You can turn on the Street View layer in Google Earth and visit Disneyland Paris that way. Or, here's a sample view in Google Maps:

  
  View Larger Map

• Google Earth on TV - Someone uploaded a few examples of Google Earth being used by the news media. This happens every day I think. I rarely watch TV, yet I often will see GE appear in the news reports, and even in popular TV shows.

• 3D from 2D Technology - someone pointed out this cool technology that meshes 2D photos with 3D terrain dataset and uses computervision to match the photos to the 3D. Then they overlay the photos as textures over the terrain. They also can create stereoscopic 3D views with the imagery. Watch this video from when they meshed a single 2D landscape photo to mountain terrain. I would like to see this kind of technology to automatically match Panoramio photos to where they were taken so you can view them in PhotoOverlays in GE. [UPDATE 1550 ET: The authors of this technology wrote in the comments they have posted on their blog some examples of Google Earth PhotoOverlays aligned using their system. They also have a gallery of examples (just look for the KMZ link to view in GE).
  

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:15 AM | Comments (4)

June 9, 2009

Air France Flight 447 - Google Earth Map

Yesterday I decided to check the Google Earth Community to see what kind of maps had been created for the location of the crash site of Air France Flight 447. There's an active thread on the crash in the Current Events forum. There are several useful maps like this one by 'rafaelds' which shows the approximate flight, when radar contact was lost, and the position when the last signal was received.

The map I found most useful to explaining what probably happened to Air France 447 is this image overlay of a weather map at the time of the crash (post by 'smokeonit' who is a GEB regular).

Download the maps and zoom in a bit to see the weather conditions the plane decided to go through. Dark on a radar map like this is very bad weather. The pilot of Flight 447 took the plane through the absolute worst part of a very big storm. He had radar and could have diverted. The question is, why didn't he divert around it? My condolences to the families of those lost in Flight 447. [UPDATE: GEB reader 'Alex' left a comment about some analysis of the weather system. It appears some reports did not show the bad weather, and analysis shows it developed suddenly. Further, the area the pilot flew through may have been a collapsing megacell which appeared safe up until the moment they went through. It can be hard to predict mother nature!]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:03 AM | Comments (13)

June 8, 2009

World Oceans Day, 3D Design Competition, Britain Archeological Site, New Imagery Tour Idea

• World Oceans Day - This is a good thing - the UN has declared today World Oceans Day. I like the idea of "Wear Blue Tell Two" - wear something blue and tell two people something about the oceans they don't know. Google is doing their part at least by releasing a cool collection of Google Earth files telling people about the ocean. I like the one that shows you where plastic trash would end up if you dropped it somewhere in the ocean (based on currents/winds). And, if you haven't loaded Google Earth in a while, Google Earth 5 came out in February with a wealth of information about the oceans and lets you see the oceans like never before.

  Did you know the world's coral reefs are dying? Read more from NASA here.
  

• 3D Design Competition - Today is also Frank Lloyd Wright's 142nd birthday. In honor of this, Google and the Guggenheim have announced a new 3D competition called Design It: Shelter Competition. According to Google's announcement: "...the competition is inspired by Wright's assignment for his apprentices at Taliesin: If you wanted to study to be an architect with Wright, you had to design and build a shelter in the desert outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Then you had to live and study in it." Deadline is August 23rd. Watch the video for an overview. Speaking of 3D - Google also featured another modeler who has contributed to the 3D Warehouse.

  By the way, it would be cool if someone created a collection of placemarks of locations where you can see 3D models of Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Google Earth. Here's a thread of placemarks showing locations.
  

• Britain Archeological Site - Stefan read about a new archeological find near Stonehenge, and set out to do some sleuthing to discover the location. He found it and explains how at his OgleEarth post.
  

• New Imagery Tour Idea - Last week Microsoft came out with a slick tour of some of their latest new imagery for Virtual Earth ... err I mean Live Local Maps... err I mean Bing Maps (the latest name). As soon as I saw it, I realized Google should be doing tours of their new imagery (like the one that came out Saturday). Using the new Tour mode in Google Earth, you could really show off new imagery (and 3D Terrain) in a snazzy way - you could even add some nice background music while you watch GE fly from place to place. It could be even cooler than Microsoft's! :-) Google recently started doing 3D tours for 3D models - so why not the imagery and terrain?
  

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

Improving Google Earth Base Imagery

Google Earth has been out for four years now. In June 2005, Google not only made a fantastic and invaluable resource free to the public, but since then has added amazing features and incredible data to the application. This blog usually sits in awe of the latest and greatest features added every few weeks, or even days. However, every once in a while Google goes down the wrong path with a feature or update.

Today, I'd like to make a case that Google is going down the wrong path with their base imagery. Albeit with the best of intentions. They apparently would like to make the imagery when viewed from space look more normal (like you would see it from space). Google Earth's imagery has always looked "mottled" due to the strips of satellite imagery having many different rectangular shades of brightness (since the imagery is taken at varying times of day and year). Correcting this look is something I've also pleaded for in past blog posts. But, not the way they are doing it now.

Lately, Google has been attempting to correct the view from above by fusing different colors of shading into the imagery and using color correction on the satellite imagery. For example, this was done with Australia in December, and this weekend the US has had some of the treatment. But, the problem with this approach is that the colorization sometimes messes up the quality of the imagery (painting not only vegetation green, but also buildings, roads, and everything else (see image to the right). See the example in the screenshot here in Google Earth - turn on "Historical Imagery" option of GE 5 to see the two different shots. Not only that, but the colors are actually wrong in some places (like Arizona where they painted areas green that have no substantial green color in real life) - see the Tucson Mountains for example. However, I do approve of processing the base imagery for color saturation, brightness, and contrast consistency.

If Google wants the imagery to look better from space, they can use techniques built into GE to smoothly transition from one imagery set to another when zoomed in close. I suggested this back in 2006 and put up an example file and video using NASA's Blue Marble imagery. Try it yourself here . Note that the file shows the view from space for the current month (which changes the vegetation and ice/snow according to the season - see a time animation of all 12 months). As you zoom in closer, the imagery smoothly disappears to show the base imagery. And, Google doesn't have to use the NASA Blue Marble I suggested. They can use their own desired look (such as their special colorization technique). The important part is that they can set things up so it smoothly transitions to the normal base imagery once a user zooms in closer to the Earth.

There has been debate about how best to approach the views from space. But, I think the current course of action - modifying the base imagery - is wrong. A layer you can turn on/off to change the view would be a better approach. And, the layer could offer different choices (Blue Marble, Google's favorite view, and maybe others). In addition, the same layer could have the ability to turn on/off clouds. Ironically, the new historical imagery feature in GE 5 lets you see the Blue Marble imagery in lieu of Google's base imagery if you select a time where they don't have imagery. So, Google is already making use of the concept.

Recently I was re-visiting the Microsoft Virtual Earth/Live Maps/now Bing Maps (yet another name change). Their image sets change at different zoom levels, but I really do not like the transitions (very abrupt - not smooth in the 2D - a little better in 3D). And they have several different transitions (too many I think). You don't see the better quality imagery until you are very close to the ground. Often, you don't even realize they have high resolution imagery until you zoom to house-top level.

I certainly don't want Google Earth to have lots of levels of transitions (and definitely not abrupt ones) in the imagery. But, the current approach Google has taken is certainly not acceptable (can you tell I'm not happy?). Maybe one or two levels of transition (in a user-selectable layer), would be a better approach. It could even be useful (if it showed different views according to season, weather/clouds, etc.).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:13 AM | Comments (20)

June 6, 2009

New Imagery Update - Not all good news

[UPDATE 9-June 2100 ET: Google has released details on this imagery/terrain update. As usual, GEB readers did a great job at finding places with new imagery. The only terrain added this time was for the state of Indiana.]

Google has quietly released a new imagery update for Google Earth. The first report came from GEB reader Martin F. followed quickly by GEB reader Alok P. Martin found some spots in France in the department Gard, and Normandy (Omaha Beach). Alok noticed a very recent GeoEye image (May 18, 2009) for Akola, Maharashta, India. [Correction First report was from GEB reader Alsay who left comments to yesterday's drought post.] I guess we're going to see more of this more recent satellite imagery. I'm wondering how much there is in this update?

The new imagery only appears in Google Earth at the moment. Google Maps is still showing what was current before today. So, you can click on the "View in Google Maps" button in the top center of GE to compare the current GE imagery to yesterday's - this way you know whether it is new. If you find new imagery, please leave a comment to this post and I'll update the list. I may not have time to verify all inputs, but hopefully those leaving comments will use the method above to verify before leaving comments.

Updates noticed so far [UPDATED 2042 ET]:

• Saudi Arabia - Makkah thanks Alsay

• Afghanistan - large areas with medium resolution Spot Image - thanks Alsay

• France - Department of Gard, Normandy (Omaha Beach). Also: departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. - Thanks 'mortimer'; Also: Oise, Nièvre, Puy-de-Dôme, Finistère, Côtes-d'Armor Côte-d'Or, Gers, Dordogne, Lot, Corrèze, Creuse, Cher, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret, Orne, Maine-et-Loire, Corse-du-Sud, Haute-Corse, Haute-Loire - Thanks 'jib'

• India - Akola, Maharashta, Sirur, Chinchosi, Kon Goan, Utran, and other areas in the northwest. Thanks Alok.

• US - New colorization (see notes below); Tampa, Florida (Thanks 'unkj'); Puerto Rico

• Egypt - Gaza Pyramids - Thanks Ernie. (Try to ignore the current ugly 3D models for the pyramids, they'll be replaced I'm told). Also, western half of Egypt has medium resolution Spot Image. Thanks Alsay.

• Canada - Surrey, BC - thanks Daniel. Also: Québec / Bas-Saint-Laurent: Saint-Fabien and Mont-Joli and in Gaspésie: Métis-sur-Mer, Sainte-Flavie. Note: "BIG mistake fron GE team, the Rimouski region (Québec) is marked "Haute-Côte-Nord" (Upper North Coast)the Upper North Coast is located where the Saguenay River flows into it..." - Thanks to Henry Willox.

• Thailand - Prachuap Khiri Khan province, along the boundary to Myanmar. - Thanks Andy. Chiang Khong - Thanks Pete

• China - Hong Kong, Kowloon, Fuzhou - Thanks 'unkj'

• Japan - Mount Fuji - Thanks 'unkj'.

• Iran - Spot Image - thanks Thilo

• Pakistan - Spot Image - thanks Thilo

• Austria - Vienna - Thanks Ernst

• Italy - Venice, Pisa (reportedly very high resolution) - Thanks Karl

• Luxemborg - Southwestern part - Thanks Karl

• Spain - Northern part around Costa Brava - Thanks Karl

• Cambodia - Kampot & Kep - Thanks Pete

• Tajikistan - Eastern half

What I've noticed so far doesn't make me too happy. Google for a while now (see New color imagery for Australia December 2008) has been re-colorizing imagery to make the Earth look more consistent from space (instead of all the different colored strips of satellite imagery). This time, I think they've gone too far. The western US has been re-colored and is too dark and too green in some places. I noticed this particularly in and around Tucson where I just recently went backpacking and touring around. I was just about to publish today some GPS tracks and photos of the area, but I'm too mad at the moment. The Tucson mountains are NOT green. And Mt. Hopkins is so dark you can't even see the trails.

The images to the right (click for larger) are examples of what I'm talking about: The top photo shows how the southwest US now looks from space. The two lower photos show the mountains I was climbing last month - the first one is the new darker green, and the bottom one is what it looked like yesterday (much more like real life). Notice Mt. Hopkins on the left, Google even colored the roads and buildings (observatories) green. Yuck!

Of course, you can still turn back the clock with "Historical Imagery" and see the previous imagery. So, all is not lost. But, degrading the imagery and making it look false on the ground in the base imagery is not a good thing in my opinion.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:45 AM | Comments (52)

June 5, 2009

US Drought Conditions in Google Earth by NOAA

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (better known as NOAA) has been producing a number of useful KML files which can be viewed in Google Earth. Today I'm highlighting a collection of updated drought maps which can be viewed with the time animation feature in Google Earth. NOAA has several collections at this web page which cover the year 2000 through to the present. The maps highlight the regions of drought conditions with colored contours which indicate the severity of drought (Dark red is the most severe). I recommend only loading a single year at a time unless you have a lot of memory. (The one covering the full ten year range is recommended to only be used with GE Pro because it only seems to work with Pro.) To illustrate (and save you the time to load), I've created a video showing the 2005 to present animation:

Other examples of NOAA data available in Google Earth:

• Numerous Weather Data Collections from NOAA
• Great Lakes Bathymetry in Google Earth
• NOAA Coral Reef Data
• Right Whales Sightings

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:56 AM | Comments (5)

June 4, 2009

Major Street View Upgrade - 3D Features

Google has just released an update to their Street View application - as viewed in the browser-based Google Maps (not yet available in Google Earth). The update has not yet been announced, and the new features may not be deployed to all country versions of Google Maps yet (based on reports I've had from GEB readers). [UPDATE: Announced by Google here]. When you move your mouse around the view in Street View, you now get a "3D" rectangle or ellipse "icon" indicating the position of a view available on the sides of buildings (and other structures), or to move you further down the street. When you double-click you get this animated motion-blur effect as you zoom over to that location and the camera turns to face the location you've picked (turns and tilts). This is a very intuitive, and much more useful, way to move within the Street View imagery. Plus, it looks really cool!

Here is the introductory video from Google:

Or, you can try it out right here:

View Larger Map

Sometimes the view you pick may or may not accurately point the camera at the place you pick. Not sure if this is an algorithm problem or what. But, for the most part it gives a much more pleasing experience compared to the previous interface.

Keir Clarke points out this could mean new business opportunities within the Street View. We already have ways to search our maps, taking it to the dynamic level of moving your mouse over a view of a building and getting a hyperlink to the business will surely happen. It is inevitable. I believe the same thing will happen in Google Earth - in some ways it already happens - if you turn on the 3D Buildings layer you can often select a building and get information about the building. But, there needs to be even more database integration to tie the location of buildings to the businesses located there. I'm sure Google is working on it.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:44 AM | Comments (8)

Making 3D for Google Earth, Google Seeking Help, KML Regions, OpenStreetMap in Google Earth

• Making 3D for Google Earth - Google has produced this video on how to use SketchUp to make a 3D building for Google Earth. You can also get some good tips from the "Acceptance Criteria" for models uploaded to the 3D Warehouse in order to be added to the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer.

• Google Seeking Help from Governments - Google continues to ask for help from official government sources to help improve their data in Google Maps and Google Earth. They want the data shown in these products to be as accurate and authoritative as possible. So, if you work for a governmental organization with authoritative data, and want to see your country's data better represented, you should contact Google.
  

• KML Regions - GeoWeb Guru has posted an article about an advanced feature of KML called "Regions". The article was written by Geospatial Training Services which also offers Google Earth courses. Definitely worth a read. (Disclaimer: Geospatial Training Services currently advertises on GEB).
  

• OpenStreetMap in Google Earth - Mapperz points out that you can not only view OpenStreetMap tiles as an overlay in Google Earth , but you can also put OpenStreetMap into GE on your browser using the Google Maps and Google Earth APIs. See his version here . A nice extra feature would be to enable a transparency slider so you can compare the two versions. You can do transparency with the overlay link above, in Google Earth itself, by selecting the loaded KML and using the transparency slider below the Places pane.
  

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:24 AM | Comments (1)

June 3, 2009

Exoplanet Astronomy Star Trek Style

I stumbled upon a cool site that tells you some basic facts about known exoplanets. But, rather than a boring web page, it pretends you are on the bridge of a Star Trek ship using the computer. The underlying planet view comes from a Google Earth plugin using the Sky mode. Yet another fun example of using the GE API and plugin in innovative ways with an educational twist.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:53 AM | Comments (2)

June 2, 2009

Huge Waste of Energy Visible in Google Earth

Recently I happened upon a thread of posts at the Google Earth Community entitled "The largest waste of energy in history". I was initially skeptical, and still am not convinced yet it is the largest, however this is indeed a serious issue. A by-product of getting oil out of the ground is often a huge amount of toxic natural gasses. These gasses can be harmful to the oil mining process, so the oil manufacturers burn the gasses to get rid of them in a process known as "gas flares". These are usually giant chimneys with scorching flames shooting many meters into the sky and burning toxic gas residues into our atmosphere. It turns out that BILLIONs of cubic meters of natural gas have been burned continuously around the world for decades simply because the oil manufacturers find it easier to just get the oil to make their money. The real travesty is that while trying to get to the oil, the oil industry is burning away huge amounts of energy (and polluting the atmosphere on a gigantic scale), that could be used to help provide energy (instead of using up all the oil!).

GEC member 'spotter2' began by posting some placemarks where you can see the flares burning in the satellite imagery in Google Earth in the Persian Gulf . But, he later started compiling examples for many countries around the globe. And, he and others have pointed out some other interesting facts.

It turns out the World Bank has an initiative called the "Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership
" to try to find a way to reduce this terrible waste of energy. They have even helped promote some data from NOAA which shows the locations of global gas flares based on night-time satellite imagery. Watch this video:

You can examine this data yourself inside Google Earth with this network link which lets you zoom in on the NOAA data. Once you locate a flare, you can turn off the link and check the underlying satellite imagery to see if you can find the flares yourself.

The best solution would be to put the natural gas to use as another energy source and properly process the energy without damaging our atmosphere (as much). There's a company which was featured in Scientific American called Synfuels which is attempting this.

There is some data analysis from the DOE on how much energy is being wasted through gas flares. However, some GEC members have pointed out the data is based on oil industry data which is most likely using the lowest possible theoretical figures in their estimates. It would be interesting to see more scientific studies on what the environmental impact and natural gas energy waste has been through this process.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:40 AM | Comments (8)

June 1, 2009

Links: North Korea, Network Links, National Geographic

• North Korea - The news about another atomic test in North Korea has prompted some to use Google Earth to help analyze and provide maps on where the testing occurred. See an excellent summary of the recent test and Google Earth maps by Stefan Geens at OgleEarth. Another KML file for Google Earth made big news last week. This one posted by Curtis Melvin is called "North Korea Uncovered " on the Google Earth Community and was featured in a Wall Street Journal article. The file has been downloaded over 45,000 times - and contains a vast amount of placemarks resulting from painstaking analysis of satellite imagery and other information to understand North Korea's infrastructure. I recommend reading the WSJ article to understand the background on what has been accomplished.

• Network Links Explained - Matt Fox at the Google Earth Library site has written this nice explanation of how Google Earth network links work. This serves as a nice compliment to the more basic overview of GE Network Links written in 2007 here on the GEB. For other basic information about Google Earth - read the "Basics" page here at GEB.

• National Geographic - Last week I visited the headquarters of the National Geographic Society. National Geographic has long been one of my favorite publishers - and possibly one of the main reasons why I love geography and Google Earth so much. While there, I spoke to Ford Cochran who writes National Gegraphic's "BlogWILD". Ford wrote about one of the Google Earth files I thought he would be interested in seeing: the collection of placemarks which categorizes animals found in the National Geographic Megaflyover images found in Google Earth. Definitely worth checking out... a lot of people don't realize you can see so many animals in the Google Earth aerial imagery.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:34 AM | Comments (0)

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