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September 30, 2009
Loop Links, Biodiversity and the Law of the Sea
Loop Links: Rich has just posted a creative solution to a problem he was having in Google Earth. Wanting to connect two lines via a "loop", he built a spreadsheet that can generate the necessary code for you automatically. Enter your starting and ending lat/lon, and it'll calculate the rest. You can download the spreadsheet here, but you'll probably want to read the instructions on his site first.
Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield Tour: An increasingly popular way to show presentations is using the Google Earth "Tour" feature, especially via the Google Earth Plugin. Recent examples include the Copenhagen fly-through and Google's ambitious climate change tools and tours. The Biodiversity tour is another great example of how the tour mode can be used. I would have liked to see more close-ups of things they discuss, but they used the mapping and borders very effectively.
Healy 2009 Law of the Sea Mapping: Kurt has just posted a large KMZ file
showing the path that the ship "Healy" has taken as it continues it's polar mapping. The file includes the ship's path, images from each point, weather and water depth data, and a time-lapse YouTube video of the journey. You can read more about the Law of the Sea Mapping Program here. The time-lapse video can also be seen below:
Posted by mickmel at 5:12 PM
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September 25, 2009
Two More 3D Cities Added to Google Earth
Google has had a busy week. Not only did they release Google Earth version 5.1 and then release new imagery for many parts of the world, but today they added two more cities in 3D: Copenhagen, Denmark and Marseilles, France.
The addition of Copenhagen is very timely, as Google just recently released some tools in preparation for the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen. Oddly, though, the building that will house the conference (the Bella Center) was a bit too far away from downtown to get modeled.
To view these or any other 3D buildings, make sure you turn on the 3D Buildings layer inside of Google Earth.
Posted by mickmel at 3:03 PM
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September 23, 2009
New Google Earth Imagery - September 23
[Update Sept. 25: Google has just released the official list of locations, including the KML file that shows them all.]
We've just verified that there is new imagery in various places around the world. You can check out the Google LatLong Blog for hints on where some of the new imagery is located.
New and updated imagery (UPDATED 25-SEP 0615 ET)
- Antarctica - Dry Valleys (thanks 'Tom')
- Argentina - Cordoba and Mendoza
- Austria - Strip of new winter imagery near Tirol (thanks 'Jonas')
- Brazil - Florianopolis (thanks 'Tiago')
- Canada - Diavik Diamond Mine
- China - Lhasa (thanks 'jk')
- Finland - Various area (thanks 'cristi')
- Iceland - Some stripes of imagery
- Italy - Strip of winter imagery east of Rome
- Maldive Islands - Male' (thanks 'Alsay')
- Mozambique - Maputo (thanks 'Antonio')
- New Zealand - Te Anau (thanks 'dapascha'), and Central parts of the country, including places like Canterbury and Darfield
- Nigeria - Lagos (thanks 'Snakeye')
- Pakistan - Karachi (thanks 'Adil')
- Portugal - Madeira (thanks 'Samuel')
- Russia - Norilsk (thanks 'cristi')
- Saudi Arabia - Color corrections
- South Korea - Ulsan (thanks 'Munden')
- Ukraine - Sevastopol
- United States
- California - Mission Viejo and Ventura
- Connecticut - Central part of the state
- Delaware - Most (or all) of the State
- Florida - Large parts of the state, including: Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Marion County, Miami and part of Taylor County
- Maryland - Most of the state
- Massachusetts - Eastern 1/3 of the state
- Michigan - Metro Detroit area
- Washington - Various parts of the state
- Also, there appears to be new hi-res bathymetry off the east coast of the US - east of the continental shelf.
As you find others, please leave a comment and let us know. Because this imagery has not yet been added to Google Maps, you can compare any area in Google Earth against the same location in Google Maps to know for sure whether or not it's been updated.
Posted by mickmel at 9:03 PM
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Update for Google Earth 5.1 released
Google Earth 5.1 (beta) has been widely regarded as a great update, with a much faster, more responsive interface. Being a beta release, though, means it's still got a few kinks to work out. Last night, Google pushed out an update to 5.1. Presumably, this latest release fixes some of the bigger issues. See below for one we know about.
It won't auto-update to this latest release, so you'll need to go to earth.google.com and download it for yourself. Downloading it from there will get you from version 5.1.3506.3999 to 5.1.3509.4636.
Perhaps more importantly, this will also upgrade your Google Earth plugin to the latest version. Some of you had issues with Al Gore's new COP15 tour that Google released yesterday, and this latest update seems to resolve the issues.
Posted by mickmel at 7:25 AM
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September 22, 2009
Climate change tools for Google Earth
Later this year, the fifteenth Conference of the Parties ("COP15") will be meeting in Copenhagen to discuss climate change. In preparation for that, Google has released a series of layers and tours to help explain the various challenges facing our planet.
They're using data from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) to generate the visuals. You can view some of the data on their new COP15 site, and they've launched a YouTube channel to go with it. They'll be using the YouTube channel to showcase climate tours, with new topics every few weeks. The first one is an introductory piece titled "Confronting Climate Change", and is narrated by Al Gore.
In addition, they're asking you to submit your own thoughts and questions on climate change to their channel, and some of these videos will be broadcast on screens around the conference in December. The top rated video submissions will win a trip to Copenhagen, so submit your videos and see if you can win the prize.
Posted by mickmel at 6:22 PM
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Toronto goes 3D and SketchUp reaches version 7.1
It's been a great day for those of you that are into 3D models in Google Earth. Joining Vancouver, which got photorealistic 3D buildings earlier this year, Toronto is now in full 3D as well. It's a very comprehensive update, with virtually 100% coverage in the downtown area, and 3D buildings extending quite a distance out from there.
In addition to that, the latest version of Google SketchUp, version 7.1, is now available. It's only a "point" release, but it has quite a few new features including:
- Large Model Rendering Speed - Overhauled rendering engine to make managing large models much easier.
- Improved File Handling - SketchUp can now import and export COLLADA and KMZ files, making it more compatible with other pieces of software.
- Cool Contextual Tools - Grab photo textures from StreetView inside of SketchUp, or pull nearby models from the 3D warehouse to see the area around the model you're working on.
It seems to be a great release. The ability to automatically pull in StreetView imagery should help speed up the modeling process for many users. Here's a video showing the new features in action:
[UPDATE We were mistaken about Toronto. Not only was it released earlier this summer, but we even wrote about it. We apologize for the error.]
Posted by mickmel at 6:08 PM
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Fresh Update to the Ocean Expeditions layer
Google has just updated the Ocean Expeditions layer in Google Earth, and they've added some great content about expeditions around the world. To access this layer, simply check the Ocean Expeditions icon inside of the Ocean folder or you can open this kml file .
Once opened, a variety of ship icons will appear in the ocean. Ships with a yellow shaded background represent live or recent expeditions (such as the National Geographic expedition to Cocos Island), while ships with a blue shaded background represent expeditions older than six months (such as various expeditions by the Cousteau Society). As you zoom in, more details will appear. Also, if you select a placemark for a particular expedition, it will load tracks and other placemarks for more details on that expedition.
Hopefully you'll find the Tahina Expedition in this layer in the not too distant future. :-)
Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:11 PM
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September 21, 2009
Google Earth Blog Transitions
As many of you know, I'm in the final stages of preparing for a five year sailing circumnavigation called the Tahina Expedition. You will of course be able to follow my wife and I, on every stage of the trip, with Google Earth. We plan to leave at the end of the Atlantic hurricane season (in just a few weeks). At that point, it won't be practical for me to devote full time to the Google Earth Blog (GEB), so I've recruited someone to help insure the same quality of news and interesting content involving Google Earth keeps coming here to the GEB.
I've asked Mickey Mellen to join the GEB team and help with the writing. Mickey has been heavily involved in Google Earth since the day it was released, having launched Google Earth Hacks back in June 2005. In addition, he and I have worked together on a handful of projects, such as EarthSwoop. Mickey has a strong interest in Internet technologies and geo-spatial technologies in particular.
I still plan to continue posting to GEB as time allows, but it won't be on a daily basis. Over the next month or so, I'll be gradually transitioning the blog over to Mickey. If you have any Google Earth related news to share, you can reach him at mickey@gearthblog.com.
Please join me in welcoming Mickey to the team, and be sure to follow my sailing adventures on the Tahina Expedition Blog.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:58 PM
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New Korea Tourism Layer in Google Earth
It's been a while since there have been significant new layers added to Google Earth. Late last week, Google published a new tourism layer. You find this layer under the Gallery layer folder (near the bottom) in the Travel and Tourism layer folder. There you find: Korea Tourism:
You need to either "Fly To" Korea, or double-click the Korea Tourism layer item to start viewing the placemarks. As you zoom in closer to Korea, more placemarks should appear. After opening a placemark, you get a picture and some description of the location. If you want to read more, you click on the language of your choice. I'd like to see more dynamic content (videos, links between placemarks, and links to 3D models of the temples and other sights).
Interestingly, this layer doesn't appear in alphabetical order. Not sure why that is. One of the weakest areas of Google Earth is its layer interface. Mostly due to the fact that it is not easy to find layers without opening lots of folders. If Google would just add "search" to the layers pane things would get much better. An option to memorize certain favorite layer sets would be another improvement. There's so much information available in the layers, but my perception is that few people discover whats hidden there.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 6:57 AM
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September 18, 2009
Adding Audio to Google Earth Tours
Richard Treves writes the Google Earth Design blog where he often analyzes various Google Earth content and provides critiques and suggestions with the intent to help people understand how to improve the user experience. Richard works at the School of Geography at the University of Southampton.
Richard has been exploring how to make use of the new Record Tour functionality introduced in Google Earth 5 last February. I've mentioned many times that the GE 5 Tour functionality has great potential and have written about some amazing tours produced if you have programming skills (see for example the Apollo 11 tour). However, you can develop some pretty nice tours without coding.
Check out Richard's tutorial on how to add audio to a recorded tour. As he points out, it is best to record your visualizations first, and then play it back and record your audio in synch with the playback.
Richard also has written two other "howto" articles on Tours: 1) Simple Tour; and 2) Adding elements.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:40 AM
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September 17, 2009
SketchUp Bridge Competition Winners
Google's SketchUp team has announced the winners of the 3D Student Bridge Modeling Competition. The three winners won cash prizes - first prize was $5000!
Jason Wong was the first prize winner. You can view his bridge models at the 3D Warehouse and view the models in Google Earth by clicking on the links there. Here is one of Jason's models in Google Earth:
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:59 AM
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September 16, 2009
Google Makes Crop Circles Popular
Google has raised awareness of crop circles due to an unannounced Google doodle which showed a UFO flying over crop circles this week. See here:
Alex Chitu believes the mysterious doodle and other hints are in celebration of HG Well's birthday on September 21.
Google searches having to do with Google Earth and crop circles was very high yesterday. Previously GEB has written about crop circles in Google Earth and shared the very cool collection of placemarks showing crop circles around the world. This and similar posts were popular yesterday. For example, see this one:
If you like crop circles, you might be wondering about more common circles seen around the world in crop fields.
Not only that, but there is another popular crop use called "crop mazes" which are often visible in Google Earth.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:55 AM
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September 15, 2009
Augmented Reality with Google Earth
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have been experimenting with using 3D Google Earth imagery to add live video to the scenery. Adding real events to computer generated scenes by merging video and other forms of visual media is a type of technology known as augmented reality. The researches are in the process of presenting a paper on their new work, but have released a video on YouTube showing some of the results. Adding moving traffic, football teams at play, and people walking in the Google Earth scenery is a pretty amazing thing to watch. In the video, they show how they take multiple views to generate moving 3D renderings which are merged with Google Earth 3D scenes. Check it out here:
This is still the results of academic research, but it demonstrates some possible future visualizations we are likely to see as Google Earth (and related technologies) progress.
via Anything GeoSpatial
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:12 AM
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September 14, 2009
More 3D Cities Appearing in Google Earth
Over the past two weeks, I've had a series of reports of new 3D cities added in Google Earth. Not all the new cities have photo-realistic textures. Some of them are have the 3D architecture, but have plain gray surfaces. But, even so, its always impressive to see shape of a city take form in Google Earth. To see the cities, makes sure you turn on the 3D Buildings layer. You can choose whether to view just "Photorealistic" or "Gray buildings" (sub-layers).
In the photo-realistic side, we just recently saw Dublin and Cardiff added. Now, according to DigitalUrban, Birmingham, England has been released. And it looks really well done. Here's a short video showing the new 3D city there:
In the gray-building category, I've heard rumors there are several new cities. Here's a list of cities I've heard have been added. (If you know of other new cities, please report them as a comment to this post):
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Mexico City, Mexico
- São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
- Caracas, Venezuela
- Santiago, Chile
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:03 AM
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September 11, 2009
Google Earth 5.1 Really Improved
Google Earth 5.1 was released this week (download here). Thanks to feedback from many GEB readers, and my finally having a chance to really fly Google Earth 5.1 for a while this morning, I've got a few observations to make about the latest release:
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Speed Improvements - As Google stated in their announcement post, 5.1 really does have some speed enhancements. The loading time is much improved, and the graphics performance is also much better. I did some tests on both Windows XP and Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). GE 5.1 was much more likely to hold faster frame rates while moving over the Earth than previous versions. Alex Chitu at Google Operating System did some speed measurements that also supports these points. On my MacBook Pro, the speed improvements seem much more dramatic. If you love the GE flight simulator, these performance enhancements really make a big difference. The flight simulator is even more smooth and fun to fly than ever. In general, I think the speed enhancements are quite dramatic considering the many previous speed improvements Google has made in the past 4 years.
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MacBook Pro with Anti-aliasing - for the first time on my 1.5 year-old MacBook Pro, Google Earth has anti-aliasing working! This may be due to the upgrade of the OS to Snow Leopard. But, I'm really glad to see Google Earth without the jaggies. It makes the views - particularly with 3D scenes - look so much better. Now I won't have to switch to Windows to take 3D screenshots!
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Bug fixes - Lots of reports from readers about fixes to various bugs in 5.1 verses 5.0. Probably the most popular is that viewing Panoramio photos is much better on the Mac thanks to a bug fix. But, many other issues have been fixed as well. Of course, new problems are already being found as well. But, this is the first beta release for 5.1, expect an update to address the worst problems in the coming weeks or days.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:09 AM
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September 9, 2009
Google Earth 5.1 Released
Google has released a new version of Google Earth - version 5.1 (beta). This version is mostly dedicated to improving performance. They have improved memory utilization, graphics performance, and even bandwidth related enhancements. They also reduced the start-up time by 25% in most cases. For the Windows version they have included the Google Earth plugin as part of the installation so most users will automatically have the plugin ready when they visit a web site requiring the plugin.
Another thing Google doesn't mention in their post today, is that I'm sure they have addressed many other issues since the release of 5.0 back in early February to help more people have a pleasant experience with the application. So, try downloading Google Earth today for a faster and, hopefully, even more reliable experience! But, notice that there is a "beta" attached to this release. Google normally releases a beta version first - then if there are issues with the release they will release a final (non-beta) version fixing as many issues as possible.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:21 PM
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Real World Math Using Google Earth
I have long believed Google Earth is an excellent platform for education. Recently, I discovered a new web site called RealWorldMath.org, which uses Google Earth as a platform for teaching basic math concepts. The site is run by Thomas Petra, and includes a number of lesson plans with helpful GE KML files to help get the process started.
As an example, I tried out the Volume of Solids lesson, which uses real world objects to add some interesting geographic perspectives to basic shapes for learning how to measure volumes. The lesson KML file shows a variety of basic geometric shapes by leveraging the 3D Buildings layer and picking locations with buildings (or other objects) for each shape. For example, the Reunion Tower in Dallas for a sphere.
I like this concept of combining geography learning with math, and real-world applications. There are several other lessons on the site with equally interesting applications and I think will captivate the minds of students.
Related:
Educational Uses for Google Earth
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:40 AM
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September 8, 2009
US College Football
Google has released a Google Earth file which lets you see the football stadiums of the 246 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) teams. Make sure you turn on the 3D Buildings layer since some of the stadiums are available in 3D. Google released a comprehensive collection of placemarks and includes logos, team names, links to Wikipedia pages, and links to news about each team as well. You can download the KML file to see yourself.
As Mickey points out at the DigitalEarthBlog, he did a similar collection on both college and professional football teams for Google Earth at EarthSwoop. See his post for links to the different league stadiums he collected.
For those of you interested in football in the rest of the world (aka Soccer), there's also a collection of that brand of football stadiums worldwide.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 6:11 AM
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September 4, 2009
Two New 3D Cities in Google Earth: Dublin and Cardiff
Google has released two new cities in 3D for Google Earth: Cardiff, Wales and Dublin, Ireland. Google has been gradually adding more cities around the world with auto-generated 3D buildings covering a large percentage of the city. They do not replace user-generated models already present for these cities, but they do make the cities more complete when a city is added in this way. Google has still not revealed what process, or providers, they are using to produce these auto-generated models. But, it's still a nice thing to see and really gives you a closer representation to reality when viewing in Google Earth. Here's a video fly-through of the two new cities (I recommend clicking the "HD" button and selecting the full screen gadget to get the full video quality):
via Google Lat Long
Related:
- New Cities from June: Warsaw, Prague, Oslo, Toronto, Indianapolis; and Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto
- Round-up of other 3D Cities
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:36 AM
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September 3, 2009
Capsized Container Ship in Historical Imagery
In March of 2007, a container ship called the M/V Republica di Genoa capsized while docked in Antwerp, Belgium. Thanks to the Google Earth "Historical Imagery" feature you can see an aerial photo which was captured while the ship still laid on its side. GEC member 'fjk' posted this find which you can load into Google Earth here . Make sure you click on the little clock icon in the top center of Google Earth 5 (or select the "View->Historical Imagery" menu option) so you can view the image dated April 29, 2007 which shows the ship. There are lots of pictures and more details on the incident on this web page (scroll down).
This isn't the first find of a capsized ship in Google Earth. In 2006, someone found a capsized cruise ship in Google Earth's satellite imagery. You can also see that ship with Google Earth's historical imagery (I updated the placemark today).
Also, make sure you check out the collection of shipwrecks around the world.
See also:
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:50 AM
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September 2, 2009
Preparing for the Big Trip
Those of you who are regular readers of GEB are probably familiar that last year I announced a plan to depart on a 5-year sailing circumnavigation. I've spun the Google Earth globe many times, but never managed to go around the real Earth myself. For most of my life, I've held the dream of circumnavigating by sailboat. Google Earth has definitely helped already in planning our destinations, but my plan is to help share our experience with GE in many unique ways. Google has even partnered with our expedition, which we call the Tahina Expedition. You'll not only be able to use GE to follow our path, see our route, and check our position, but you will also be able see our geotagged photos and videos. Some of the photos and video will be unique perspectives such as aerial photos taken with a kite, and underwater video taken with a remote operated vehicle (ROV) from VideoRay.
We are in the midst of final preparations for our planned departure after hurricane season (hopefully around the end of October or early November). We're hoping our house will sell before we leave - and that has kept us extremely busy.
There may be days when I miss making blog posts in the next few weeks. Once we leave, I won't be able to post every day. However, I'm in the process of arranging for someone to keep GEB posts coming. If you're interested in keeping track of our preparations and our trip, make sure to bookmark/save the RSS feed for the Tahina Expedition Blog. Also, expect a few progress reports leading to Tahina's departure, as well as more partnership announcements.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:52 PM
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September 1, 2009
Links: New Earth API Docs, Fire Shot, Where 2.0, Panoramio Winners, New SketchUp, Belgrade News
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New Earth API Docs - Google has updated the documentation for Earth API developers. Definitely worth checking out.
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Fire Shot - NASA's MODIS RapidFire gallery is now supporting KML file overlays of their daily satellite images. Today's image is a shot from yesterday showing the Station Fire - see in Google Earth
(see more on GE content on the fires).
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Where 2.0 - O'Reilly's 2010 Where 2.0 conference will be held earlier than usual next year (March 30 - April 1 - normally its in May), but still in San Jose, California. The call for participation is now open. Submit your proposal here.
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Panoramio Winners - Winners of the June contest of Panoramio photos have been announced.
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New SketchUp - Google has actually posted about an upcoming release of a product (they almost never do that!). The next major release of SketchUp is coming, and they wanted to talk about planned changes between the free and Pro versions. Access to some of the model conversion tools will be changing. From the number of comments they got, I guess they made the right decision posting early about this.
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Belgrade News - a SketchUp modeler who created a number of 3D buildings for the 3D Warehouse which are now in Google Earth, recently made the front page news in a local paper.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:30 AM
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