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April 30, 2011
Google releases imagery from the recent tornadoes
As Google often does after a major disaster, they've reacted quickly and have already posted some imagery (via GeoEye) of areas in Alabama that were hardest hit by the tornadoes a few days ago.
You can view the imagery a variety of different ways:
• Albums: View a before-and-after comparison of various areas inside of this Picasa album.
• Maps: This collection on Google Maps has quite a bit of information, including the new imagery.
• Earth: View the imagery directly in Google Earth using either the Tuscaloosa KML
or the Jefferson County KML. Other KML files can be found on the Maps collection page.
As with Google, our hearts go out to those affected by this disaster.
Posted by mickmel at 2:47 PM
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April 26, 2011
Ships version 1.5 is released, making a great game even better
It's been nearly two years since Paul van Dinther released the excellent "Ships" game, and it's recently been updated to be even better.
Check out what's new in this video:
The new enhancements include:
Sound system
The new "Ships" had a complete overhaul for the sound system. The new sounds are based on his new 3D sound library as demonstrated here.
Autopilot
The control panel now has a new Autopilot switch. Autopilot only engages when the ship is on a steady course (ie not turning) and the rudder is set in neutral. With the autopilot engaged it is possible to simply close the browser and come back to the page a day later to see where your ship ended up. Perfect for those long trans oceanic passages. This only works when Cookies are enabled on the browser.
Multiple ships
You can now operate multiple ships simultaneously. More ships require more PC grunt. Running all the ships may push the limits of what your browser can take.
Pause
The control panel now has a Pause switch. Pause was already accesible by pressing the "P" key but a switch makes it more obvious.
Throttles neutral
Placing your throttles in neutral was nearly impossible to do with the sliders. Now pressing "N" is all it takes to instantly place the throttles in neutral. This is handy when you want to park your ship with autopilot engaged.
Anchor
The anchor was always a gimmick. It only made sound and nothing more. Now you can drop anchor at very low speed (Less than 1 m/s) which causes the speed to hit zero instantly. The anchor will drag when the power lever is at 20% or more. Continuous full power may even break the anchor chain. With the anchor down, the ships position will now be restored when you load the page again at a later date.
Re-positioning of models
The airship "Hindenburg" has been reposition as to be moored at the "Euromast"
Various ships have been more accurately placed due to imagery changes in Google map data.
New Cruise ship
A more detailed cruise ship replaced the ugly model of the Queen Mary 2. The new cruise ship is courtesy of cleancruising.com.au. Paul build this ship as part of a big library of cruise ship models of which a small selection shown in this video.
If you've never played it before you should certainly head over to his site and try it out.
As a special bonus, Paul included Tahina (Frank's sailing catamaran) as one of the "ships" to use. Very fun!
Also, be sure to read our post about ways to work around performance issues with the Google Earth Plug-in, as the game requires some hard work from the plug-in due to everything going on with it.
Have fun!
Posted by mickmel at 8:22 AM
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Tracking tornadoes in Google Earth
With storms again ripping through the country, many of us are on the lookout for tornadoes. While it can't help you prepare for one, Tornado Paths, created by Perry Samson at the University of Michigan, is a great way to view the locations and paths of past storms.
By default it shows all of the tornadoes that have hit the United States in the past 48 hours, but it has a few other nifty features.
• View "Today in History", which shows all of the tornadoes that have struck on today's date in the past 61 years.
• Use the search box to let you see all of the tornadoes that have struck a particular zip code since 1950. Very interesting stuff! For example, I now know that a 1986 tornado came within a few hundred meters of our current house.
Of course, it makes excellent use of Google Earth too. By clicking the "View in Google Earth" link from the home page, you can view the most recent tornadoes in Google Earth.
As you can see, the tornadoes have a nice 3D semi-transparent affect, and some cows flying around nearby in an apparent homage to the classic movie "Twister".
Have you had any close calls with a tornado recently? We've had some brutal storms lately, but fortunately no tornadoes too close to home.
Posted by mickmel at 8:06 AM
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April 25, 2011
Mount Rushmore finally looks great!
It looks like Peter Olson, who has previously shown us such excellent models such as Machu Picchu, the Disney Monorail and the Tenerife disaster, is at it once again.
This time, Peter has created a very detailed model of Mount Rushmore, which looks far better than the default (terrain-based) model. Check it out:
In addition to the famous faces on the mountain, Peter also built the "Hall of Records" behind them. The Hall was never completed, but you can learn more about it on the National Parks Traveler site, as it's quite interesting.
To see it all for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file or you can view the details in the Google 3D Warehouse.
Great job Peter!
Posted by mickmel at 8:05 AM
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How good are you at Google Earth-based puzzles?
This fall, a new scavenger hunt using Google Earth will be launched, with a prize valued at €50,000 (over $70,000)! Thanks to GEB reader 'Will from the UK' for letting us know about it.
The contest will work similarly to classic puzzle book "Masquerade" in the early 1980's, which sent people hunting for (and eventually finding) a valuable prize.
According to the Telegraph, the book "will provide a series of drawings that include visual and textual puzzles described by publisher Carlton Books as 'ferociously complicated'."
The contest begins on September 1 and will end in March. All users that find the answer will be entered into a drawing for the the €50,000 prize.
We'll keep you posted on the release of the book as it gets closer. It might be a fun way to spend some time playing around in Google Earth!
Posted by mickmel at 7:28 AM
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April 22, 2011
Using Google Earth on Earth Day
Once again it's Earth Day. A time to sit back and think about our wonderful planet, and some of us will be out picking up some trash, or just enjoying nature.
While researching thoughts for this post, I had a chance to talk to David Levine from Geostellar for a few minutes yesterday. They're doing some great work in developing systems to allow you to view the solar potential of any building on earth. They generate the data using LIDAR and other techniques, then export it for viewing in Google Earth and the Google Earth Plugin. Android and iOS apps are due out later this year. To get an idea of what they do, check out the video below.
For those of you stuck inside due to weather, work, or other reasons - perhaps you might want to spend the day exploring our wonderful planet through the power of Google Earth. Here are a few links of stories from Google Earth Blog (GEB) in the past year describing environmental related content available for viewing in Google Earth:
• The Home Greenover Project -- A neat way to show off eco-friendly homes.
• Diving Deep with Richard Branson -- A new expedition to explore the "last frontiers of our own planet" at the deepest parts of the ocean.
• Visualizing the vast problem of marine debris -- Exploring the issue of trash in the world's oceans.
• Flooding Google Earth -- Visualizations of Earth if sea levels experience significant rises.
• Predict how much solar power your house could generate -- Based on your area, predict how much solar energy your home could generate.
• The WaterAid Point Mapper, helping find fresh water -- A great tool to help sub-Saharan organizations map rural water points.
• Google Earth Engine, an amazing tool for scientists and researchers -- Released at COP 16, this tool helps scientists analyze massive amounts of climate-related data.
• Sea Ice Extent Animation updated for 2010 -- An animation showing the changes in the size of the ice cap.
• A climate change tour of cold places -- NSIDC released this project to show the snowy and icy regions of the world covering sea ice, glaciers, ice shelves and permafrost.
• Tour of the proposed Belo Monte Dam Complex -- A great visualization of the high-debated proposed dam complex in the Amazon.
• New weather features in Google Earth 5.2 -- Some cool enhancements to the weather layer in Google Earth 5.2.
• Interactive multi-layered Google Earth map of 4 degree temp rise -- A map showing the potential impact of a 4 degree rise in global temperature.
• Soil Moisture Animations -- A worldwide map showing soil moisture levels, and important tool for people in a variety of fields.
For more, you can check out our post from 2010 or 2009 and read stories that go back even further.
Posted by mickmel at 10:57 AM
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The beautiful interior of Allen Fieldhouse (University of Kansas)
While checking out the vendors at Where 2.0, I stopped to play with the Liquid Galaxy that was set-up in Google's booth. Up there at the time happened to be Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering at Google and a huge Kansas Jayhawks fan. He was very excited to show me the new 3D model of Allen Fieldhouse, and for good reason -- it's stunning!
Like some other models we've shown you recently (such as Cowboys Stadium in Dallas), the real beauty of this model is the inside.
The level of detail inside of this stadium is amazing! Scoreboards, banners, hoops, rafters, seats, etc. It's really like being there. Brian has expressed dismay that he wasn't able to add another Championship banner to the stadium model this season, but there's always next year.
Go check it out for yourself. Just use this KML file to fly down to Lawrence, Kansas to see just how impressive it is.
Posted by mickmel at 8:34 AM
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April 21, 2011
Great new way to view photos in Google Earth
For more than five years, since we first learned of Panoramio, photos have been a big part of Google Earth. Being able to fly around and view geo-referenced photos in Google Earth is a great experience. Today, that experience got better.
Google has just enhanced the photos layer with clusters, making it much easier to find and browse photos on the map. To get started, make sure that you've enabled the Photos layer in the left layers panel, and then zoom in anywhere on earth. As you get closer, you'll see icons begin to appear; click one, and you'll see a screen similar to this:
You can then click any item int he filmstrip to quickly view it, or use the left/right arrows on your keyboard to browse through them.
As always, you can add your own photos to Google Earth by simply uploading them at Panoramio.com.
Posted by mickmel at 4:23 PM
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More about Google Earth Builder
We mentioned Google's new "Google Earth Builder" in our wrap-up post yesterday, but decided that it deserved a bit more attention.
In a nutshell, Google Earth Builder is a new way for companies to share their vast repositories of geo data. Rather than needing to configure servers and support a local infrastructure, they can simply upload their data to Google Earth Builder and share it that way. It uses a sharing model quite similar to Google Docs (private, individual access, or public), and the data streams extremely quickly.
The implications of this could be huge. Not only will it be a great solution for large corporations and government entities, but provides a way for any company to generate data for a specific client (such as custom 3D buildings) without necessarily having to post them for the world to see.
An interesting point that Google made is that this data will be easily accessible to anyone (with permission) from their desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc. That makes sense, but currently the tablet and smartphone clients for Google Earth likely can't handle this kind of data. Either their comments have been misinterpreted by everyone (including cnet and others), or we're hopefully looking at some nice updates to their mobile products in the coming months.
They keys that Google seems to be pushing with this is that it's easy and fast. Both of this seemed clearly evident in the live demo that they provided on stage yesterday. You can watch that video demonstration below:
There were a few fun facts in that video: There have been more than 700 million downloads of Google Earth and that people use Maps and Earth for more than one million hours every day. Wow!
The fact that Google Earth Builder isn't due out for a few months (some sites say July, Google says Q3), means that it will only be getting faster and smoother. This could be a brilliant tool to help large entities deal with their vast amounts of data, and we'll find out once it launches later this year.
Posted by mickmel at 9:57 AM
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April 20, 2011
Where 2.0 2011 -- Day Two
It's been a busy morning at Where 2.0 day two. Some highlights:
Dennis Crowley of Foursquare was interviewed by Robert Scoble about the past and future of Foursquare, and what's made it so popular. Patrick Meier of Ushahidi talked about the recent crisis in Japan and Libya and how Ushahidi has been used in those cases. Everyscape launched a slick new iPhone app called UScapeIt that allows anyone to very easily create a 3D panorama using only their iPhone. An Android version will be released later this year.
Marissa Mayer of Google talked about the recent release of Map Maker into the US, then introduced Dylan Lorimerwho unveiled "Google Earth Builder", Enterprise mapping platform powered by Google's cloud technology. You can read all about it on the LatLong Blog, or watch this short video below:
After that we heard from a variety of other companies, including Michael Halbherr of Nokia showing off the new 3D maps product at maps.ovi.com/3d. It's a very cool product, though a bit rough around the edges. It's certainly worth your time to check it out.
Lastly we had a chance to hear from Blaise Agüera y Arcas of Microsoft introduced their new Read/Write World project. You can read more about that at readwriteworld.net.
There's a bit more to come this afternoon, so check this post later in the day for more updates.
Posted by mickmel at 4:24 PM
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April 19, 2011
New Google Earth Imagery - April 19
Just in time for Where 2.0, Google has pushed out some fresh imagery! Thanks to GEB reader 'Munden' for pointing it out. I'm not able to dig into it too much right now while I'm at the conference, so the extent of it is unknown. Dig in and see what you can find.
As is usually 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 - 19-April, 9:54pm EST]
- Germany: Various areas -- thanks 'sladys'
- Japan: Ishinomaki -- thanks 'Munden'
- United States: Arizona (Phoenix, Tucson), Kansas (Wichita), Massachusetts (Cape Cod), New Mexico (Albuquerque) and Texas (Amarillo, Austin) -- thanks 'ChrisK', 'ChrisZ', 'GT' and 'Jonahrf'
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
Posted by mickmel at 2:48 PM
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Where 2.0 2011 -- Day One
I've attended a few sessions so far at Where 2.0 today, with more to come. I'll keep this posted updated throughout the day.
While most of the information today is focused more on location-based services like Foursquare, there is certainly some interesting stuff being shared.
The first session was "Mining the Geo Needles in the Social Haystack" by Matthew Russell
He showed off some interesting tools, such as the ability to turn a list of locations (like this one) through the tool at microform.at to generate a KML file like this one. Very slick.
He then covered ways to use mine geo data from various services such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. As an example, you can see how oAuth works with Facebook on this sample page.
Finally, he showed some ways to extract location data from natural language for cases where geo-coded data isn't available. Considering this is the vast majority of data out there (text on websites, text messages, etc), it's a valuable tool to develop. For some tools that work on that, check out www.datasciencetoolkit.org.
Next I checked out "Why Data Collection Must Extend Beyond the Check-in", presented by Scott Hotes and Mohit Gupta from Location Labs.
They worked on showing a detailed breakdown of what "check-in" really is, covered the growing issue of fragmented place databases and how they all differ, and some ways to track phones (with consent) in various scenarios such as check-ins, parent/child tracking, etc.
Next was "Hands on Map Scripting" by Adam DuVander (@adamd) of ProgrammableWeb.
He spoke a bit about the new changes we've seen over the last few years in regards to mapping APIs (more mobile, etc), but spent most of the time walking us through Mapstraction. Mapstraction is a very cool way to write code for a single map that will work acorss a variety of mapping APIs (Google, Bing, etc). If you write any mapping code for a site, it's something you need to check out.
Next was "Getting Started with Google Maps and Fusion Tables" by Kathryn Hurley and Mano Marks. After Mano gave us an overview of Fusion Tables, then Kathryn walked us through creating a basic Fusion Table ourselves. Even better, they've provided the full tutorial if you'd like to walk through it yourself! There's quite a lot of power in this feature, and the tutorial is a great way to get started.
Later this evening I'll check out the various "Ignite" sessions, where many groups will be quickly showing off their ideas.
Posted by mickmel at 2:34 PM
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April 18, 2011
Where 2.0 2011 kicks off tomorrow
I'm flying out to California late today for the annual O'reilly Where 2.0 conference. I'll be posting many updates on the site throughout the week, and I'll try to keep the @gearthblog Twitter account updated even more often. There are once again a ton of great presenters that will be there, so I'll keep you posted on everything noteworthy that they have to say.
I'm also bringing back a tradition that Frank had and I'll be giving away a SpaceNavigator while I'm there! I'll be using Frank's system from a few years ago, as it worked pretty well:
Here's how it will work: if you are a Google Earth Blog reader and you see me at Where 2.0, make sure to give me your business card (one card per person!). On Wednesday afternoon, I will randomly draw a card and will post the winner on the blog. If you're still at the show when you find out, I'll give it to you there. Otherwise, I'll mail it to you later. Anyway, I'm hoping to meet lots of GEB readers during the trip.
If you're attending, be sure to track me down via email, Twitter, or just find me during the day.
Also, the video player below will be live streaming the keynotes on Wednesday and Thursday, so keep an eye on it for more great content from Where.
Posted by mickmel at 7:53 AM
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April 15, 2011
The Home Greenover Project
We've shown you some neat use of the Google Earth Plugin from EarthvisionZ in the past, such as the ATP World Tour site last November, but their latest site is certainly their best yet.
Fox 31 News in Denver is now running its Home Green-Over Project, a contest offering $75,000 worth of renewable energy products and services. This contest is especially cool because of the great use of the Google Earth Plug-in on the site, which gives users seven interactive 3D tours of an energy efficient home.
Along with the wide view of the home, many of the tours feature cut-away looks so that you can see the products and services offered inside of the home as well.
All in all, it's presented very well and it's a great way to show off this kind of content. Be sure to go check it out for yourself. EarthvisionZ will also be launching their new website on Earth Day next week, with a ton of great new features for both visitors and businesses.
Kudos to EarthvisionZ for a job well done.
Posted by mickmel at 7:47 AM
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Nice updates to the Blue Marble
Google Earth provides some amazing imagery of the earth, but as most of you know, the wide view of earth isn't the greatest due to the patchwork of imagery across the globe. Fortunately, back in 2006 Frank released the Blue Marble, which uses beautiful imagery from NASA to show off the earth. NASA imagery shows a different image for each month of the year so you see a cloudless representation of the earth with vegetation colors and snow/ice as seen from space for that month, and the file below shows the current month.
The Blue Marble allows Earth to look more realistic when viewed from space, but the file automatically hides itself as you zoom in so that you can still see the sharp satellite imagery on the ground.
Due to some issues with the file locations, Frank recently had to update the file. While he was in there he made some nice tweaks to it, including removing the old cloud images. The result is a great-looking, lightweight file to make Google Earth look excellent! Frank had hopes Google would someday add such a feature into Google Earth, but there's no sign of that yet. Best viewed if you turn off other layers like the Borders layer so it looks more like the view from space. You can also turn on the Weather->Clouds layer and the View->Sun menu option to add realism.
To try it for yourself, simply download this KML file and that's it! Thanks to Frank for continuing to maintain such a great add-on.
You can also view a Blue Marble time animation Frank created that shows all 12 months of the Blue Marble in Google Earth.
Posted by mickmel at 7:01 AM
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April 14, 2011
The Battle of Fort Sumter in Google Earth
Over the years, we've covered a few Civil War related projects, such as the Pennsylvania Civil War Trails, but there really haven't been too many that have caught our attention. Darian Robbins is changing that.
His blog showcases a variety of 3D models from civil war times (including many buildings which are still around today), but his latest piece is something to see -- the Battle of Fort Sumter.
The KMZ file, which can be found in the 3D Warehouse, contains a ton of information including:
- 3D version of Fort Sumter before it was attacked.
- 3D version of the Floating Battery of Charleston that was used to fire on Fort Sumter.
- Historical map overlays of the locations of various Confederate Batteries that fired on Fort Sumter.
- Geo-located Civil War Era photos of the damage Fort Sumter endured and the locations of the Confederate batteries.
- Twitter Feeds of the Washington Post's twitter campaign of the Civil War.
- Links to Qwiki and Wikipedia articles and media about the Battle and various locations.
His inspiration for this model was the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Battle, which took place April 12-13, 1861.
Great work Darian!
Posted by mickmel at 7:17 AM
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April 13, 2011
Google Earth in even better stereo 3D
Nearly five years ago, Frank first told you about the TriDef Visualizer, which allows you to explore Google Earth in true 3D stereo with anaglyph glasses.
TriDef has recently released version 4.5 of their product which can do some fun stuff with Google Earth, so I decided to give it a try.
The Good
• 14 day fully functional trial version.
• Only requires normal anaglyph glasses (very inexpensive).
• Works in all modes of Google Earth, including Street View.
The Bad
• Being anaglyphic 3D, it's not as sharp as what you see in new 3D movies.
• It simply refuses to work if you have multiple monitors on your system. Rather than mess with those settings, I ran it on my laptop instead.
That being said, it's worth giving it a shot. If you need to get some glasses, you can find them on Amazon for virtually nothing and then go download the 14-day free trial of TriDef.
I certainly won't use Google Earth like this very often, but it's a fun trick!
Posted by mickmel at 6:24 AM
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April 12, 2011
Google Earth Plug-in running slow? Here's a few tips
Ever since the Google Earth Plug-in was released almost three years ago we've been amazed by the great applications that have been built around it, including such things as an emergency response map, games and even a way to track Santa Claus.
It's always worked well on Firefox 3.x, but it's never performed as well when using Google Chrome because of the way that Chrome handles plugins. However, Firefox 4 was recently released and has the same issue that Chrome has, meaning both browsers perform very poorly when running the Google Earth Plug-in.
To help visualize the difference between various browsers, Paul van Dinther at PlanetInAction has created a slick Speed Test where you can check your relative frame rate on various browsers. Here's how it works:
I build a simple test framework that animates 50 screen overlays. The animation addresses position, size and rotation. The animation is performed for each 3D frame drawn which means a total of 200 API calls are made per frame. At 60 fps that would be 12000 API calls per second. Not bad for a bit of Javascript.
Fortunately, there is a workaround for Firefox 4 that helps quite a bit. If you type "about:config" into your address bar, you'll get to a page with a lot of settings. Find the line for "dom.ipc.plugins.enabled = true" and toggle it to "false". Restart your browser and things should run much better. Sadly, it's set to "true" for new users by default, meaning that the performance of the Google Earth Plug-in for millions of users will be quite poor.
The Google Earth team is aware of the issue and they're certainly looking for ways to resolve it. Because it's a core browser issue, and not an issue specific to the Google Earth, it will likely be difficult to resolve, but just know that they're working on it. You can track the issue using this page in the Chromium bug tracker. Be sure to "star" the bug to help this issue get the attention it deserves.
So what kind of numbers are you seeing with Paul's speed test? Here are a few we've found:
Frank - MacBook Pro with 4GB of memory
Firefox 3: 40-45 FPS
Chrome 10: 4FPS
Me - Windows 7 Netbook with 2GB of memory
Chrome 11: 6 FPS
Firefox 4: 9 FPS
Firefox 4 with the about:config tweak: 28 FPS
Internet Explorer 8: 28 FPS
The difference in speed can be quite shocking. It's not as bad for me on my desktop PC, which is more powerful, but the netbook really shows off the difference between various browsers.
How about you?
Posted by mickmel at 7:52 AM
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April 11, 2011
Great enhancements to the mountains in Google Earth
While Google continues to add great new features and tons of new imagery to Google Earth, they want to be clear that they're not forgetting about some of the basic layers such as the Mountains and Water bodies.
A few days ago they pushed out an update to the Mountains layer which includes some powerful new features, including a detailed information window, Panoramio photos, cross-section views of the mountain and tours that they've created for every mountain. For example, here is a video showing the tour of the Matterhorn:
For this feature to work, you need to enable the "Mountains" layer on the left-hand panel in Google Earth. Of course, an increasingly difficult challenge is finding the proper layers as Google continues to add more of them. For the Mountains, you'll find it under "Borders and Labels" --> "Labels" --> "Mountains", as shown here:
In addition to the mountain layer changes, they've added thousands of new labels to the "Water Bodies" layer, which can be found just below the "Mountains" layer in the image above.
Hopefully Google will continue to finesse the organization of the layers section and make it easier to find the hidden gems like this one.
For more about the enhancements to the Mountains layer, check out this entry in the Google Lat Long Blog.
Posted by mickmel at 6:30 AM
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April 8, 2011
Five Universities with great maps
Over the years we've shown you a variety of Universities around the world that are making great use of Google Earth and Google Maps, including 3D models at Bowling Green and Boston University, a 3D virtual campus at Northeastern, and a variety of great tools at the University of Exeter. The Google Geo Developers Blog recently took at five Universities that are making great use of geo tools, and it's a great list.
Many of the schools they show are simply using 2D maps, but they do a great job with them, such as the University of Washington, shown here:
The five featured schools are Northeastern University, the University of Washington, the University of Ottawa, the University of California - San Diego and the University of Notre Dame. Check out the full blog post for more info.
If you're a college student, how does your school stack up?
Posted by mickmel at 7:39 AM
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April 7, 2011
Great collection of resources for the Fukushima power plant
We've shown you a wide variety of resources related to the disaster in Japan, including the recent feature from Hidenori Watanave and his great collection of photo overlays.
Today's feature is focused squarely on the Fukushima power plant, and it's a single network link from Valery Hronusov. However, the file is packed with information about the plant -- photo overlays, 3D buildings, photos, videos and more. It's essentially everything you'd want to know about the plant in one nice little package.
To view it all yourself, check out the info on Valery's site, or you can download the KMZ file directly here.
Posted by mickmel at 8:26 AM
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Tracking the new Boeing 747-8
The new, larger 747 passenger version (747-8 Intercontinental) made its first flight a few weeks ago, and Jon Ostrower at FlightBlogger showed off a video that shows the first hour of the test flight in Google Earth. The video was apparently captured by @lesmond of PlaneFinder.net.
You can track future flights of this plane by using this page on FlightAware, or by using this KML file to see it in Google Earth.
Thanks to GEB reader 'Ron', a retired Boeing mathematician, for sending this in to us.
Posted by mickmel at 8:16 AM
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April 6, 2011
Diving deep with Richard Branson
We've mentioned Richard Branson on GEB a few times in the past, such as his "Project Virgle" a few years ago, but I believe this is the first time he's put together an official venture with Google Earth.
Yesterday he announced the launch of Virgin Oceanic, to explore "the last frontiers of our own Blue Planet: the very bottom of our seas". Over the next few years they'll be traveling to the very deepest points of the ocean, including a planned venture to the bottom of the Mariana Trench -- 36,201 feet below sea level!
They'll be traveling in an 18ft long, $17 million sub that resembles an aircraft:
Even better, data from the dives will be captured and added to Google Earth. Details haven't been released, but I would certainly expect new imagery and videos, and perhaps more additional detailed terrain relief for those deep areas. (Frank Taylor adds: 3D tracks of their dives could be shown in GE too!)
For more, check out this article or watch the short teaser video below:
Posted by mickmel at 8:26 AM
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No more German Street View cities?
Based on a story from T-Online, Germany's largest internet provider, Google won't be capturing any more Street View imagery in Germany. In addition, they won't be updating any of the imagery that is already there.
While we haven't found much confirmation of that story yet, T-Online is a major source of information and the decision by Google makes sense. Given the vast issues they've had with Germany regarding Street View, they'd likely be better off to focus their efforts elsewhere.
Interestingly, this announcement came right at the same time that their previous imagery was ruled to be legal, so it was a bit of a surprise.
It'll be interesting to see how this works out over the next few years.
Thanks to GEB reader 'Andreas' for pointing us to this story.
Posted by mickmel at 7:36 AM
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April 5, 2011
New Google Earth Imagery - April 5
It's been just a few days since the last (minor) update, but it appears that Google has just loaded some more fresh imagery into Google Earth. Thanks to GEB reader 'ChrisZ' for spotting it first!
UPDATE: The updated areas KML file is out, and this seems to have been a pretty substantial update. View the file to see it all.
UPDATE #2: Google has finally posted about this update, providing even more detail about it.
As is usually 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 - 5-April, 3:23pm EST]
- Canada: Quebec (Lac-Simon) -- thanks 'patrice'
- China: Beijing and Guangzhou -- thanks 'Cristobal' and 'LiuX'
- New Zealand: Christchurch (new historical imagery)
- Romania: Constanta -- thanks 'ChrisZ'
- United States: Georgia (Columbus)
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
Posted by mickmel at 12:28 PM
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Photo overlays of Japan from the New York Times; new views for Sendai
Last week we mentioned a great map from Hidenori Watanave that showed various information from Japan including flooding regions, power plant locations and other items.
They've just released a new map, and I think it's even more impressive! They're calling it the Photo-Overlays of "The Aftermath in Japan" from New York Times, which places 30 different images from the New York Times as photo overlays in Google Earth. The photos were selected from this feature on the NYT, "The Big Picture" at Boston.com, Oregon Live, and more are being added all the time. However, as you can see in the image below, they've taken their time to line up the photos very carefully and the result is quite immersive:
It also has a series of tools at the top of the screen to allow you to view some of the GeoEye imagery, turn on/off 3D buildings, view imagery from different dates, and to simply fly back out to the overview (quite useful while viewing an image).
While this is a fairly simple map to use, it's been well-polished and is a great way to view the photos from this disaster.
Also of note is a new map from SigActs that shows before and after imagery in Sendai. The interface is quite similar to the one from AnotherEarth that we showed you a few weeks ago, but this has been updated to show some great before/after shots.
Browsing around in there really shows the devastation and how much has changed in the area since the disaster struck.
Posted by mickmel at 7:34 AM
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April 4, 2011
Following Freya Stark's 1968 excursion in Afghanistan
We've mentioned Stefan Geens, who writes Ogle Earth - another blog that often writes about Google Earth, many times here on GEB. Stefan occasionally produces some amazing in-depth content using Google Earth. For example, last September he wrote an excellent piece on Kashgar, a town in west China being demolished by the government.
His latest post came about after a visit to a gift shop in London, where he discovered the book "The Minaret of Djam - An Excursion in Afghanistan" by Freya Stark. Being the avid armchair archeologist that he is, Stefan dug in deep to try to reconstruct her trip using Google Earth.
After quite a bit of work using Google Earth, GeoNames and Panoramio he was able to largely piece it back together.
To see if for yourself, you can use this KMZ file or go read Stefan's full post to learn all about how he was able to track down the details.
As always, great job Stefan!
Posted by mickmel at 8:38 AM
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The imagery update a few days ago was more than just Japan
A couple of days ago, we told you about some fresh imagery from Japan that Google had added to the base layer of Google Earth. At the time we assumed that the Japanese updates were the extent of it, but thanks to sharp-eyed GEB reader 'Munden' (and confirmation from the updated KML file), it turns out there was a bit more.
It wasn't a major update, but there is also new imagery in parts of Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ireland, New Zealand, Paraguay, Spain and Tanzania. It was the New Zealand imagery that caught Munden's eye, as the update captured construction on the set of the upcoming movie "The Hobbit". Details on that can be found over at Google Earth Hacks.
To see all of the areas that were updated, just grab the updated areas KML file and look for the red outlines.
Posted by mickmel at 8:27 AM
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April 1, 2011
The World's Nuclear Reactors in Google Earth
Over the years, Declan Butler has built some pretty good tools for Google Earth, including things such as the Avian Flu Outbreak Map and the Global Hunger Map.
Now he's created a map that shows all of the nuclear reactors on earth, color-coded by size and type.
The map has a ton of information, but some of the images don't load correct in the plug-in version linked above. To best use the map, download this KMZ file and load it up in Google Earth.
For more, check out his full post with more info about the map and data, or check out our post from yesterday that shows you how to see day-by-day imagery of the Fukushima plant after the earthquake struck.
Nice work, Declan!
Posted by mickmel at 6:33 AM
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