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February 29, 2012
Is historical imagery coming to Street View?
I really like the historical imagery feature in Google Earth. It's a very useful feature that allows you to look at some neat things, and it's a great way to visit the past in various areas around the world.
As reveled in a thread in the Google Earth Hacks message board by 'Munden', there are some signs that perhaps a "historical imagery" view is coming to Google Street View in the future.
He's found a number of areas that have multiple Street View imagery versions available online, and he cites a handful of examples such as this building that looks like a giant sheep. Here is the old image, here is the new image, and here is what they look like side-by-side:
In his testing, Munden has discovered some interesting things:
In New Zealand, old imagery isn't the default but isn't removed anymore. My old links will call up the old low resolution images, even on browsers that have never seen that URL before. I've even cleared the caches. Google definitely has the old images in their Street View database. You can switch by dragging the Pegman by a pixel or two and suddenly you'll be in the new imagery and stay there no matter how much moving around you do.
It's important to note that once you are viewing an older image if you use the SV in-picture arrows to move through the pictures, you will stay in that older imagery. You have to drag the Pegman to switch to new imagery, as I mentioned previously. This could simply be an artifact of the old URL, and they have no plans to create a history of Street View of course. I find it most interesting that you STAY in the old imagery once you're viewing it though.
Other examples include a futuro home (old image, new image), or the "Christmas decorations" location that 'sladys' found -- the new imagery is embedded on the site, but the old imagery can still be found via this URL.
Ultimately, all of this might not mean anything. Google hasn't made any announcements about anything related to historical Street View imagery and they may have other reasons for keeping the old imagery accessible. In any case, it's a neat little feature that Munden has uncovered and may be a sign of things to come. Good find, Munden!
Posted by mickmel at 7:02 AM
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February 22, 2012
Street View finally arrives in Russia
Google has just released Street View in Russia, and while it only covers two cities so far (Moscow and St. Petersburg), the coverage in those cities is quite solid.
To see the new imagery for yourself, you simply search for one of the cities in Google Earth and then drag the peg man on to the map. Here's a quick video to show how that works:
You can also check out the Russian Street View Gallery that was assembled by Keir Clarke at Google Maps Mania, as he's found some great locations to highlight in there.
(via Google Lat Long Blog)
Posted by mickmel at 7:01 AM
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February 21, 2012
Every home from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
The popular TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition recently completed its nine-season run, and user sladys over at Google Earth Hacks has posted a file with the location of virtually every home in the series. It's neat to be able to quickly fly down and view each of these remarkable homes.
What I found remarkable was the consistent spread of homes across the United States. I don't know if the producers intentionally tried to reach every corner of the country, but that's certainly what happened.
To see it for yourself, you can download this KML file
or view the details of it at Google Earth Hacks.
Posted by mickmel at 6:23 AM
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February 20, 2012
3D buildings at the University of Central Florida
As you certainly have seen by now, we love to show off awesome 3D buildings that our readers create. Recently we've shown you items such as the Evansville Central Library, the Costa Concordia and the Android statues at Google headquarters.
Today's models come from Chris Sardinas at CS3Design. They've been working on modeling the campus of the University of Central Florida and they're doing an amazing job with it.
One great example is the Health and Public Affairs Building, seen below. You can download it from the Google 3D Warehouse here.
Another excellent building is Colbourn Hall. This model already exists in Google Earth, though it's fairly crude as you can see here:
The new model from CS3Design looks far better!
Many of their buildings are not yet in the default 3D layer in Google Earth, so they've put together a Warehouse collection to make it easy to find all of them.
Nice work Chris!
Posted by mickmel at 9:20 AM
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February 17, 2012
New Google Earth Imagery - February 17
It's been roughly a month since the previous imagery update, but Google has just pushed out a fresh batch of new imagery to a variety of places around the world. Thanks to all of the readers that sent in tips.
Due to the new "Pretty Earth" imagery, it's more difficult to spot fresh imagery. Also, the imagery this month arrived in Google Maps before Google Earth, which threw us off a bit. In any case, here are some of the locations that GEB readers have identified as having fresh imagery. Many of them were made aware of the new imagery via the Follow Your World notifications, which we certainly encourage you to sign up for.
Here is the list of updated areas we know about so far:
- Canada: Villeneuve
- Italy: Vernazza
- Romania: Deva
- Spain: Villacariedo
- United Arab Emirates: Dubai
- United States: California (Chino, Eureka), Illinois (Decatur), Louisiana (Alexandria), North Dakota (Minot), Tennessee (Johnson City, Kingsport)
If you know of any others, please contact us and let us know. Thanks!
Posted by mickmel at 8:14 AM
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February 16, 2012
The Google Earth Community is moving to Google Groups
The Google Earth Community, formed in 2002 when Google Earth was still an independent product called "Keyhole", has been an excellent resource for Google Earth users. Not only was the community a great place to post new files that you create/discover, but you could get answers to almost any Google Earth-related question in there.
They even added a Google Earth Community layer to Google Earth back in 2005 to show off the great files that users have added, which you can still find under the [Gallery] section of your Layers.
Recently, the GEC had had some stability issues. Because it was based off of an older BBS technology, it was having increasing amounts of trouble under an ever-growing load. To fix that, Google is now moving it over to a Google Groups-based system which should help with those issues tremendously.
Right now Google is in the process of moving all of the posts and attachments to the new system. With more than 1.2 million posts on there, it'll take some time. They're hoping to have the data ported over by next week, and we'll certainly let you know when it goes live.
If you have any questions or problems in the meantime, you can use the Google Earth forums already in place in Google Groups. For more information about the status of the Google Earth Community, this thread is your best source for information.
Posted by mickmel at 7:59 AM
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February 15, 2012
You won't believe these SketchUp renderings aren't real photos
If you've used Google SketchUp before, you've likely heard of Maxwell -- a photo renderer that works inside of SketchUp and makes your models photo-realistic. We have talked about Maxwell before, as the resulting images can be stunningly realistic.
They recently held a contest to see who could create the best render and the results were amazing! The winner of the "Licensed Category" was Brodie Geers with this image:
The winner of the "Free Category" was Arcen Dockx with this image:
The images are all unbelievable, and it gives us some idea of how great the models in Google Earth may look some day. I encourage you to view the full results on the Google SketchUp blog, as all of the submissions were truly amazing.
Posted by mickmel at 7:39 AM
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February 14, 2012
Celebrate Valentine's Day with Google Earth
Happy Valentine's Day! In honor of this day, we'll show you some of the best romantic placemarks in Google Earth.
To start, we again show this collection of hearts in Google Earth, which can also been seen in the video below:
If you want to show off the collection on your own site, you can embed it from this page.
To help promote their "indoor maps" with a Valentine's Day angle, Google has created this cute romantic video to show how that new feature works:
Lastly, be sure to check out a Valentine's Day message from Google Earth Blog, powered by GeoGreeting.com. Have a fun and happy Valentine's Day 2012!
Posted by mickmel at 8:15 AM
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February 13, 2012
Google Earth updated to version 6.2.1.6014 with some nice improvements
Over the last few days, Google has been rolling out an update to Google Earth. If you were already on Google Earth 6.2, this update should have been applied to your software automatically.
The main change is a nice improvement to how the Google+ sharing feature works. In the initial version of 6.2, shared items on Google+ would appear as a small thumbnail and link to a larger version. Now it shows a larger photo in your stream, and clicking on it brings up the full-size version in the Google+ lightbox photo viewer.
As an added bonus, this means that your photos can be manipulated in the Google+ "creative kit" for easy cropping, resizing, etc. The one missing piece is an easy way for users to view that imagery for themselves in Google Earth. Perhaps the share button could generate (and link to) a KML file of that location, similar to sites like EarthURL.org do (as mentioned in the comments on this Google+ post).
In addition, there are some changes to the "pretty earth" imagery as part of this update. The most important change is how it renders the transitions to the high resolution imagery as you get closer to the ground. They have lifted the final transition to a mucher higher altitude. This was important because too much valuable information was not visible which was a waste to the high resolution data available.
One other thing to point out is the rendering of the shallow waters of the Bahamas. The Bahamas waters are a big feature you can see from space. In the past, Google showed the darker blue bathymetry instead of the actual satellite imagery of the turquoise waters. It now looks much more authentic as seen from space with actual satellite imagery of the turquoise waters seen instead.
All in all, it's a nice little update. It fixes some of the issues with the initial sharing features in 6.2, and it continues to improve the high-level imagery of the earth. Good job Google!
Posted by mickmel at 7:33 AM
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February 10, 2012
Awesome 3D Building: The Evansville Central Library
As Google Earth continues to get more realistic with improvements such as new imagery, new ocean bathymetry and 3D trees, 3D buildings remain a huge part of what makes Google Earth feel so real.
While it might not be exciting, the buildings around your town are what help bring it to life. The new 3D model for the Evansville Central Library (created by della) is a perfect example of that. It's a well constructed model with excellent textured images on every surface of the building.
Della even took the time to carve out the covered entrance area, which looks great!
The model hasn't yet landed in the base 3D buildings layer in Google Earth, though I expect it will soon. In the meantime you can download the model from its page in the 3D Warehouse.
We love to share high-quality 3D buildings, so if you've built a great model that you'd like for us to show off, just contact us and let us know!
Posted by mickmel at 7:16 AM
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February 9, 2012
Stay connected with Google Earth Blog
We've just crossed the 10,000 "like" milestone on our Facebook page, so thanks to all of you that follow us there!
Of course, we try to make it easy to stay informed no matter how you prefer to connect.
If you're a Twitter fan, you can follow us @gearthblog. You can also follow Mickey (@mickmel), Frank (@franktaylor) or follow Frank's sailing adventures (@GoTahina). I've also created a list of other geo-related people to follow on Twitter that you might want to check out.
If Google+ is your thing, come connect with Google Earth Blog over there. You can also connect with Mickey, Frank, Tahina Expedition, the Official Google Earth page or check out this shared circle of other geo folks.
Of course, we also push out a daily email of new posts or you can grab our RSS feed.
However you prefer to stay in touch, we try to offer a solution for you. If you'd like to see our content available in other formats, just let us know!
Posted by mickmel at 8:49 AM
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February 8, 2012
The Costa Concordia 3D tour is now stunningly realistic
A few weeks ago we showed you Peter Olsen's 3D tour of the Costa Concordia. It was a very impressive file, showing a 3D model of the ship as it progressed through its fateful voyage.
Peter has been hard at work since then, and we simply had to show you the file with his latest updates. He has rebuilt the ship model from scratch, added much more data to the timeline, built 3D lifeboats (which slowly descend into the water), and even a 3D helicopter to show how the rescue operation unfolded!
As you may recall from Peter's work on Stone Mountain and the MLK Memorial, his attention to detail is incredibly high. If you're curious where he got some of the data used in this animation, here is a list:
• The general conversation between ship and harbour master and times is from here.
• The specific conversation between the captain and coastguard is here. (his version is slightly abridged)
• Some of the timeline is from here.
•The AIS track data is from here.
• The list of dead and missing came from here, which is now a dead link, as well as here.
•The chaotic way the lifeboats departed is from here.
• The helicopter is an exact replica of the real one used in the rescue - call sign VF-57. It is an Agusta Bell ab412SP Air Ambulance, based on the Bell 412. It was manufactured under license by Agusta for the Italian Rescue Service. The photo at the end just before the list of names shows the actual helicopter hovering over the ship. The general line of Bell helicopters of the family, including the Agusta's is here.
• The Bell 412, with size specifications, is here.
• The shape of the helicopter is here.
• The actual VF-57 helicopter is here.
• A video of an identical model (call sign VF-67) is here.
To see it for yourself, you can download the file from the 3D warehouse or watch the video below:
Posted by mickmel at 8:53 AM
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February 7, 2012
The tales of the Arctic Tern and the Sea Grapes
Last fall we showed you a great file from the people at Encyclopedia of Life that tracked Bluefin Tuna across the Atlantic. They're back with a few new files that show how a type of sea algae (known as "sea grapes") and Arctic Terns travel across the world as part of their annual migrations.
Ari Daniel Shapiro has worked with others, including Marie Studer and Eduardo Garcia Milagros, to put together some remarkable new tours. Ari's background is in radio, so the audio narrative on the tours is excellent. Combine that with the images, video and Google Earth content and you've got a very engrossing and educational result.
The tours are available below, both in KMZ format and also as embedded YouTube videos for you to enjoy:
Sea Grapes Tour | KMZ
Arctic Tern Tour | KMZ
For more, you can view all of their tours on the Encyclopedia of Life site.
Posted by mickmel at 7:44 AM
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February 6, 2012
All Streets: Highlighting terrain by only showing the roads
What if someone were to create a map that showed every street in the country and nothing else? Fathom Information Design did just that, and the results are amazing!
It feels kind of like the city lights of Earth that we recently wrote about, as you can clearly see cities form without any kind of borders or other overlays in there.
What's even more remarkable about the "All Streets" map is how clearly the mountain ranges are defined. Simply by drawing in the roads, you can see them without any difficulty. A great example is the Appalachian Mountains, seen here:
You can view and/or purchase the map over on the Fathom website.
(via +Adrienne St. Aubin)
Posted by mickmel at 8:39 AM
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February 3, 2012
Improved imagery of the Google Earth seafloor
To celebrate the three year anniversary of the release of the 3D Ocean in Google Earth, they've just released a major update to their bathymetry (underwater terrain) and it looks great!
Similar to their recent update "Pretty Earth" update, this one does quite a lot to help clean up stray artifacts and images visible in the ocean. A great example of that is Guam, seen here alongside the Marianas Trench, the deepest trench in the world:
Another noteworthy change is that "Atlantis" is now gone. A few years ago some people thought they had found the lost city of Atlantis, but it turned out to simply be sonar tracks from a ship. While that was a reasonable and accurate explanation, the sonar tracks were still pretty ugly on the surface of the ocean. They're now cleaned up as part of this update and the area looks as clear as it should:
To see more of what's changed, Google has created this short video to give you a tour:
Combined with the new patchless imagery, the earth is suddenly looking remarkably better all the way around. For more, check out this entry in the Google Lat Long Blog.
Posted by mickmel at 6:46 AM
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February 2, 2012
The city lights of Earth
First released in 2007, the "Earth at Night" layer remains a very unique way to view the earth. Captured on the "dark side" of the planet, depending on the time of day, the images are a striking visual of the more urbanized areas of the planet.
However, the images were not easy to capture. For years, astronauts would try to capture the bright lights and only have blurry photographs to show for it, as the earth travels beneath them at 4.4 miles/second.
In 2003, Don Pettit developed an innovative system for capturing these images and he went on to capture over 2,500 photos, with thousands more captured in subsequent missions. You can read more about Don and his technique in this article at Air & Space Magazine.
To see the lights for yourself, simply click on the [Layers] in Google Earth, open [NASA], then [Earth City Lights] and click the button in there.. For the best results, disable your other layers and places to get a nice clean view of the earth. You should likely disable the atmosphere as well (under [View] --> [Atmosphere]), but I kind of like the glow it gives. It's a neat effect.
A big thanks to Don for pioneering this amazing technique, and hopefully as time goes on this imagery will become even higher-quality and more striking.
Posted by mickmel at 8:08 AM
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February 1, 2012
Monster Milktruck is a great way to play in Google Earth
We first showed you the Monster Milktruck API demo nearly four years ago, but thanks to a reminder from the Google Earth page on Google+, I went back and played it a bit more. What a fun little game!
If you're not familiar with it, it's difficult to call it a "game" because it's actually just a tech demo; there is no objective, no scoring, and no way to lose a life. That said, it's remarkably fun to drive around various places in the world with just a few presses of your keypad. As long as you have the Google Earth Plug-in installed (which you most likely do), you can play the game here.
If you enjoy driving around in the milktruck, you'll really enjoy Paul van Dinther's Drive the A-Team van" game from a few years ago. It's the same basic idea, but with 3D trees, collision detection on the buildings, and missions to accomplish.
This is one of the great things about Google Earth; old games/files will automatically improve over time as better imagery and new 3D buildings are released!
Posted by mickmel at 7:45 AM
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