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May 31, 2010
Commemorate Memorial Day with Google Earth
On this Memorial Day, we offer you a few tools to help honor those who gave it all.
As we did last year, we encourage you to check out Sean Askay's Map the Fallen project. Using his KML file
, you can learn about many of the people that have lost their lives in recent US military duty.
Another neat item to check out today is the US Medal of Honor collection that we first showed you in 2008. It was created by user 'Up_The_Spurs' from the Google Earth Community. You can download the KMZ and view the birthplaces, rank, organization, location of deed and citation for each winner.
Posted by mickmel at 8:13 AM
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May 25, 2010
The Bankstown Optical Illusion
While it's not nearly as impressive as his awesome tour of the 1977 Tenerife Airport disaster, Peter Olsen has sent us another pretty neat file for Google Earth.
This time it's a model of the "Bankstown Optical Illusion". This is a two-sided building with a partial roof that was constructed near Bankstown Airport in Sydney. As you pass the building, the illusion makes it appear to be rotating in the wrong direction! You can read about the building in the Google 3D Warehouse, or download the KML to fly there yourself. If you fly there, here is how to make the illusion happen (in Peter's words):
Do not zoom in. Simply attempt to rotate the model anticlockwise (click and hold the mouse wheel and drag the mouse right). Or pan to the right (click and hold the mouse wheel and shift key and drag mouse right). Notice that the model seems to rotate the wrong way.
Notice also when attempting to rotate the model anticlockwise that the end wall will suddenly seem to becomes transparent.
If you'd rather just see the illusion, I've created this short video. It shows the illusion, then zooms closer on the building so you can see how it was actually constructed:
The Google Earth imagery in the area isn't fresh enough to show the building, but you can view it on NearMap to see what it looks like from above.
As always, nice work Peter!
Posted by mickmel at 7:36 AM
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May 24, 2010
Using SketchUp to show off future homes
We've talked recently about a few neat uses of Google SketchUp, such as using it to design a school in Guatemala and high school students using it to model their school and town.
The Google SketchUp blog has posted the story of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida (HabiJax) using SketchUp to model a new home they were going to be building.
You can read the full story on the SketchUp blog, but here's the main part of it as told by Jack Spellman, the Construction Coordinator for HabiJax:
...HabiJax decided to create a new house design, the "Jackson", and add it to the collection of plans available for selection by our home buyers.
My challenge was to provide a way for our home buyers to envision the "Jackson" without ever seeing it in person. SketchUp was the perfect solution -- it's fast and easy to learn. As a nonprofit, the affiliate always strives to maximize resources, without sacrificing the quality of our products. SketchUp helped us do just that.
It's always neat to see SketchUp used in ways like this. You can download the "Jackson" in the Google 3D warehouse if you'd like to play with it for yourself. It doesn't appear to have been added to Google Earth, but it'd be neat to see them drop that 3D model on the locations in Google Earth where the home was built.
Posted by mickmel at 6:37 AM
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May 21, 2010
Firxt Train View; it's like StreetView for Trains
We've had Street View for a while, but Andrew Gray has now brought us "Train View". By taking images from videos that have been filmed from moving trains, he's stitched together a pretty slick little program to show the images from those videos.
It's not a full 360 experience like Street View, but it's a nice piece of work nonetheless. You can try it yourself on his site, or watch the video below to see what it looks like:
Posted by mickmel at 10:08 AM
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May 20, 2010
The largest statues of Christ in the world
Google Sightseeing had a neat article a few days ago that showcased the largest Christ statues in the world. I thought I'd give a brief recap of that list for Google Earth, since 3 of the 5 statues have superb 3D models to go with them.
Cristo de la Concordia -- KML
Located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, this statue is 33.8m high and is the third largest such statue in the world.
Christ the Redeemer -- KML
Located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this is certainly the most well-recognized in this list, and we've mentioned it a few times (2008, 2009) on this site. At 38m tall (and more than 700m above sea level), it's certainly an impressive sight.
Christ the King -- KML
Located in Cali Colombia, this statue is the largest in the world at 41m tall.
Cristo-Rei de Almada -- KML
This statue in Portugal is an amazing 110m tall, but most of that is the base. The statue itself is just 28m; certainly a large statue, but not among the largest.
Christ of Copoya -- KML
When completed, this statue will reach 62m tall and will become the largest in the world.
Considering the vast number of 3D models being added to Google Earth each week, I'd expect the other two to have 3D models before too long.
What are some of your favorite statues/monuments in Google Earth?
Posted by mickmel at 8:48 AM
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May 19, 2010
Helicopers has been released!
As promised back in April, PlanetInAction has released their "Helicopters" game just in time for Google I/O.
The game features a very nice tutorial mode to teach you the controls, then allows you to fly on various missions in San Francisco to earn money. At this point all of the missions are simply taxi services, but they have some cool missions planned. According to them:
At this stage "Helicopters only contains 2 mission types. One is your flight training and the other is Taxi services. But stay tuned. We have a long list of very cool missions lined up for you that we will release every month. You will be chasing cars into town, locating lost boats in the bay. Night-time, rain, fog. You get it all. You may even be send down-under where you help to drive cattle on a ranch or shoot deer in the mountains of New Zealand. How about ski helitours or testing low level radar detection systems. The list of planned missions is long.
All in all, this is certainly one of the most impressive Google Earth games I've ever seen. You can read more and see some video clips in our previous post about it, but you'd be better off to simply go give it a try right now at planetinaction.com/helicopters.
Posted by mickmel at 6:56 AM
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May 18, 2010
Following the Plastiki
The "Plastiki" is a pretty cool boat. It's a catamaran that was constructed using 12,000 plastic two-liter bottles, and it uses solar and wind energy to help power the boat. Their goal with the boat is to raise awareness of plastic waste and to encourage recycling. Case in point, the 12,500 bottles used to help construct the Plastiki is the same amount that is consumed in the United States every 8.3 seconds! You can learn a lot more about the vessel on their website.
Zach Moore, with some help from Peter Rubin, constructed a high-quality 3D model of the boat and he's been updating its location each week.
You can currently find the boat at 1N, 159W in Google Earth, though it won't be there for long. Your best bet is to download the model from the 3D Warehouse so you can quickly find the current location.
The Plastiki is in the same general area as Frank right now (he's currently at Hiva Oa, French Polynesia), though it's unlikely they'll bump into each other. While there aren't many people between them, they're nearly 1500 miles apart. They're both heading toward Australia, but it seems that Plastiki will get their first (Frank has a number of other stops before he gets there). I'm sure Frank will cover it in-depth on his blog if he ever crosses paths with them.
The Plastiki is a creative way to raise awareness about recycling, and Zach's excellent 3D model gives us a great way to track the journey.
Posted by mickmel at 7:22 AM
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May 17, 2010
Drive the A-Team van in Google Earth
To help promote the upcoming A-Team movie, Fox and Google decided to enlist the help of Paul van Dinther from PlanetInAction and the result is very impressive. Paul is the man behind the very cool Ships game from last year, and the Helicopters game that is due out in a few days.
By visiting the official Drive the A-Team Van YouTube channel, you can take control of the van.
As you drive around, you can unlock extra video clips from the movie by performing specific tasks such as reaching (and holding) 100+ Mph, performing a variety of jumps, traveling over 6 miles or crashing the van enough times. The collision detection with the 3D buildings is very impressive and makes it pretty easy to crash.
To try it yourself, simply head out to their YouTube page and start driving!
Below is a bit of gameplay footage so you can see what it's like:
Posted by mickmel at 6:54 AM
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May 14, 2010
Google announces the winner of their "Model Your Town" competition
Back in December, we told you about Google's first-ever "Model Your Town" competition. Today they've announced the winner.
The winning town is Barranco - Lima, Peru! Jorge de Albertis Bettocchi modeled the Barranco district of Lima and took home the prize. We featured his work late last year, and it's certainly worthy of winning this competition.
For more about Barranco, you can view the model in the 3D warehouse, read Jorge's blog, read the full article on Google's Lat Long Blog, or watch this short video:
Posted by mickmel at 2:18 PM
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Comparing the Gulf oil spill to other historic spills
We've posted a few resources about the Gulf oil spill, including an overlay of the first imagery of the spill and a neat size comparison tool that Paul Rademacher built.
Now we have a very detailed KML file from GEB reader 'David' that gives great detail about the oil spill in the Gulf, in addition to info for more than 70 other noteworthy oil spills.
You can use the file to view data about all of the old spills and it gives quite a lot of information about the current (and growing) spill in the Gulf, including a pop-up balloon that gives you a live counter of the estimated size of the spill.
As you browse around the globe you can see the locations of the other major spills, and click them to read about what happened, as well as view photos and stats from them.
You can download the KMZ file here and check it out for yourself.
Posted by mickmel at 10:20 AM
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May 13, 2010
New Kite Aerial Imagery of BBQ Island
The San Blas islands are a beautiful archipelago of mostly pristine Caribbean tropical islands located off the northern coast of Panama. There are hundreds of little islands in this area, many of which are occupied, and managed, by the Kuna Indians. A couple of months ago, we spent three weeks exploring the lovely San Blas islands in our sailboat Tahina as part of our five-year expedition around the world. Unfortunately, Google Earth has had no high resolution imagery for the San Blas islands. So, we had to resort to only charts and guide books to learn about the islands.
While visiting the islands, we had one good day where the winds and weather were perfect for flying our kite to take aerial photos. We were near an island used by sailors who cruise these waters to meet on Monday nights and have barbeques or pot luck dinners and socialize. The island is aptly called "BBQ Island" by cruisers and they even keep the island clean by picking up trash and broken palm fronds on a regular basis. Although all the other islands are a low-resolution blur still in Google Earth, this one little island is now available in ultra-high resolution. If you zoom out, you'll see BBQ island is just a tiny dot surrounded by blurry low-resolution imagery of some of the larger islands. But, zoom in and you'll see details like our dinghy on the beach, individual palm fronds on the trees, and even coconuts!
You can watch a slideshow of photos showing how we took the photos and some sample photos from the kite in the photo album below. We had to walk around the edges of the island to keep the string from getting caught in the trees, and even walk out into the reefs and through the water. Ultimately, we even took the dinghy out with the string to get the kite over the upwind side of the island.
View full-sized slideshow
If you want to see some more details of some of the islands, we made a map of a few of the islands we visited with GPS.
I want to thank David Tryse, who helped me with the kite and took photos of me while I was on the island. And, I want to thank Stewart Long, who did a lot of work to stitch together and process the photos before they were delivered to Google. Stewart is currently involved with Grass Roots Mapping, which is documenting the big oil spill with balloon and kite photography. You can see another example of kite aerial photos taken by the Tahina Expedition of Petite Tabac.
Lastly, and most importantly, I would like to thank Google for supporting our efforts to bring interesting high resolution aerial imagery into Google Earth and sharing it with the world!
Posted by FrankTaylor at 1:12 PM
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Soil Moisture Animations
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has put out some pretty interesting Google Earth data in the past year. Among other things, they brought us the Wilkins Ice Shelf and the "Climate Change Tour of Cold Places".
Now they've released a variety of animations regarding global soil moisture levels. Using data from the AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer) satellite, they've released KML files showing the the past 30, 60 and 90 days of soil moisture levels for the entire planet.
Not only is this display of data pretty neat to look at, it can be very useful for people in a variety of fields. According to the NSIDC site, "soil moisture and other land surface variables are key variables in understanding land surface hydrology and in modeling ecosystems, weather, and climate."
You can read more on the NSIDC Virtual Globes site, or download the KML files here: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.
Posted by mickmel at 8:22 AM
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May 12, 2010
Updated Google Maps on Android and Installing the Google Earth Plug-in without administrative rights
A couple of fun notes for today:
Updated Google Maps on Android: Google has updated Google Maps on Android with a few nice features, including the biking directions that were added to the desktop Google Maps a few months ago. Details on the Android News Blog or the official Google Mobile blog.
Installing the Google Earth Plug-in without administrative rights: If you don't have administrative rights on your PC but you want to install the Google Earth Plug-in, reader 'redderzooming' has a workaround. We obviously don't condone you breaking the rules at your workplace, but if you have a legitimate need to install the plug-in without administrative rights, here's how it's done.
He's created a step-by-step guide on his site that shows how to do it. At one point you have the option of downloading a specific file from him. My system shows that this file is virus-free, but always proceed with caution. If you're concerned, he also shows you how you can generate the necessary files yourself so you don't need to download anything suspicious.
If you want to give this a try, leave us a comment and let us know how it works out for you.
Posted by mickmel at 8:51 AM
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May 11, 2010
New Google Earth Imagery - May 11
Google has just released new imagery for Google Earth. We don't know the full extent of the update yet, but we've found some of it. Some of the imagery is very fresh -- Atlanta's imagery is from April 9, and Tulsa has imagery from March 29.
[Update, 18-May -- The official KML file has been released.]
As is often 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 -- 11-May, 10:06am EST]
- Brazil: Parnamirim,Nisia Floresta and Sao Jose do Mipibu -- thanks 'George'
- England: North Yorkshire -- thanks 'Hefin'
- Netherlands: Amersfoort -- thanks 'Andreas'
- Romania: Otopeni, Tunari -- thanks 'Cristian'
- United States: Georgia (Atlanta), Oklahoma (Tulsa) and Texas (Waco) -- thanks 'Andreas'
- Uruguay: Montevideo -- thanks 'enrique'
Also, more of Frank's kite imagery has arrived, this time at BBQ island. Fly there with this KML and check it out.
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
Posted by mickmel at 9:03 AM
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A beaver dam that's visible from space
It was long-believed that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made creation that could be seen from space, but that's simply not true. Viewed from above, the wall looks similar to a road, and is no more significant from space than other roads around the world.
However, some beavers may have pulled it off. According to an article on Treehugger (and originally found by Jean Thie in the Google Earth Community), a massive beaver dam in Alberta, Canada can be seen from space. At 2,790 feet long (more than twice the size of the Hoover Dam), this beaver dam is quite impressive.
While it's possible it could be viewed from space, it'd probably be tough to pick out. A small brown blob from that altitude could really blend in pretty well. Still, it's a very impressive bit of engineering by those beavers. You can read more about it on Treehugger, or fly there yourself using this KML file.
Posted by mickmel at 7:13 AM
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May 10, 2010
SketchUp goes back to school
The past week has brought us a few examples of high school students using Google SketchUp to model their school and town.
The first comes from Paragould High School in Paragould, Arkansas. A few students there have been working with SketchUp to model some of the buildings on their campus. They've only done two so far, they but they have plans for more. You can fly there using this KML file or read this story on the KAIT website. The article is not very well-written (it almost looks like it was auto-translated from English to a foreign language and back again), but the subject of the story is pretty neat.
The second comes from Hartford High School in Hartford, Vermont. Teacher Michael Hathorn introduced his class to SketchUp and they've now added more than 75 models from their city to the 3D Warehouse; over 50 of them have already been added to Google Earth!
For more, you can read their story on the Google SketchUp blog, fly to Hartford using this KML file, or watch the video below:
Posted by mickmel at 7:13 AM
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May 7, 2010
Lisbon in 3D and a great oil spill visualization tool
A couple of neat things that just came out this afternoon...
Lisbon, Portugal in 3D: Google has just pushed out 14,000+ models in Lisbon to really make the city come to life.
You can fly there yourself using this KML file.
How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?: Paul Rademacher has build a neat tool with the Google Earth Plug-in that allows you to overlay the oil spill on major cities, to help you get an idea of just how large it is. Telling people that it's 2500 square miles is one thing, but to see it overwhelm major cities gives you a whole new perspective.
It's a very simple tool, but it's very useful. The one addition I'd like to see is road overlays to help give a better sense of scale. In most major cities, the interstates are a vital part of the aerial landscape and could help with perspective. In any case, though, this is quite a cool tool!
Posted by mickmel at 4:02 PM
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Your 3D buildings will now update their location automatically
As Google refines the accuracy of their maps, they sometimes have to shift the base imagery a little bit to have it line up properly. If a 3D model is on that imagery, it will suddenly be misaligned relative to the ground below it.
In the past, you've had to go back in and fix those manually. For some users, this was a lot of work on a lot of buildings. Google has recognized this challenge, and is about ready to release a solution to handle it automatically.
The solution is quite complex below the surface, but very simple for us; your buildings will automatically realign if the imagery shifts! In the event that happens, Google will notify you in the 3D Warehouse with a note like this:
Based on the comments to Google's blog entry, this is a very welcome addition. Some users have a lot of buildings that are misaligned and this feature will be quite useful.
How about you? Will this feature be a big help to the work you've done?
Posted by mickmel at 6:43 AM
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May 6, 2010
11 more cities added to Building Maker
It's been a few months since Google has added any new cities to Building Maker, but now they've come through big with 11 new ones.
The new cities are:
South Africa
- Bloemfontein
- Cape Town
- Durban
- Johannesburg
- Nelspruit
- Phokeng
- Polokwane
- Port Elizabeth
- Pretoria
California
- Oakland
- Berkeley
- San Francisco (extended coverage)
- Redwood city (extended coverage)
The addition of these cities brings the total up to 99 cities across five different continents. Google continues to build their 3D library with models created from this tool, and it's only going to keep expanding.
Go try the new cities for yourself, and leave a comment if any of your buildings make it into Google Earth.
Posted by mickmel at 8:29 AM
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Google offers a ton of info about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill
We've posted a few times (April 28, April 30) with imagery from the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now Google has published an official "crisis response" page for the oil spill, highlighting a lot of different resources and information.
These resources include a variety of satellite images, boom placement, fishing closures and all of kinds of other information about the spill. In addition, they offer a variety of links to places where you can offer your time or resources to aid in the effort.
Check it all out on the Google crisis response - Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill site.
Posted by mickmel at 7:48 AM
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May 5, 2010
Real-time 3D air traffic
We've talked about a few real-time flight tracking apps for Google Earth before, and now we've got another one - and this one is pretty slick.
Using data from an ADS-B receiver (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) on one of the buildings at ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, School of Engineering (in Winterthur, Switzerland), Albert Steiner has put together a rather nice representation of the aircraft over parts of Switzerland and Central Europe.
Items in the display (including the information overlay in the sidebar) are updated every 10 seconds. The paths of the planes are colored to indicate height when viewed from above, and the planes themselves are nicely rendered 3D models, though all are labeled with the generic "Air Traffic in 3D" logo.
For more, you can download the KML to play with it, read more on the institute website, or check out Albert's personal site.
Posted by mickmel at 8:54 AM
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May 4, 2010
Using SketchUp to build a third world school
The Google SketchUp Blog has the neat story of Jim Fanjoy and how he used SketchUp to help the Peace Corps build a school in Guatemala.
The complexities of building a two-level, 8,000 square foot school are quite large. The craftsmen they used would have had a difficult time with a standard set of plans, sections and elevations, and the language barrier was something to contend with.
Using Google SketchUp (along with LayOut), he was able to produce a wide variety of drawing and models to help everyone do their job as effectively as possible. Here are just a few of the things he did:
• Modeled the building in much more detail than I normally would for design visualization.
• Made drawings that show how the building would look during different phases of construction.
• Complex systems are presented in perspective for easier visualization.
• Modeled the decorative "Mayan stairs" in more detail and dimensioned all the critical masonry measurements
It's quite a remarkable project, and an excellent use of SketchUp. For more information, check out the SketchUp blog, the website for this project, or Jim's Peace Corps blog.
Posted by mickmel at 8:10 AM
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May 3, 2010
General Motors Education Project
General Motors has released a project called the "GM Education Google Earth Project". As they describe it, you can "Travel the world and uncover the types of energy people use to fuel their cars, homes, and electronics."
It's a fairly simple Google Earth file, but there is a lot of content packed into it. There are hundreds of placemarks on the globe, covering things such as:
• Nonrenewable Energy sources, such as oil, natural gas and coal.
• Renewable Energy sources, such as Geothermal and Hydropower.
• Secondary Energy sources, such as hydrogen.
All in all, it's a neat project. There are a few small things that bother me, such as all of the placemarks using the default yellow pin. Why not create different pins for the different types of energy? That being said, it's quite well done overall.
The GM education site is quite robust, and this new tool serves to compliment it very nicely.
You can visit their site for more information, or download the KML right here.
Posted by mickmel at 7:18 AM
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