Google Earth Tips Archives

June 24, 2007

Cómo agregar un cielo en Google Earth

James Stafford, conocido en la Comunidad de GE como "Barnabu", ha escrito en el Barnabu blog una nota buenísima sobre cómo crear un cielo 3D para Google Earth. Lo llama "Domo del Cielo". Básicamente ha creado una semiesfera (o hemisferio) usando Google SketchUp, y luego agregó, proyectado apropiadamente, un cielo lleno de nubes al interior de la semi-esfera 3D. Tomó uno de sus modelos 3D, el Edificio Torso Retorcido, y creó un video mostrando cómo se vé dentro de SketchUp. Véanlo aquí:

Yo dí un paso más. Bajé su Edificio Torso Retorcido , y luego bajé su ejemplo de "Domo del Cielo" en SketchUp. Luego, importé la Vista Actual desde GE (simplemente seleccionando "Herramientas->Google Earth->Obtener vista Actual"). Luego exporté el Domo del Cielo a GE, seleccionando "Herramientas->Google Earth->Colocar Modelo"). Nota: También hay 2 íconos en la Barra de Herramientas de SketchUp para facilitar esta tarea.

Pueden ver el resultado bajando esto modelo de domo que mostrará el modelo de cielo y, si ya lo tenías descargado, el Edificio Torso Retorcido dentro de GE. Sólo ahora tienes un cielo alrededor del edificio. Puedes editar las Propiedades del Domo dentro de GE "Modelo" y arrastrar para mover el cielo a una nueva posición. Inclusive puedes cambiar el tamaño también. Puedes mirar hacia el cielo si tienes un SpaceNavigator (Navegador Espacial). Esta historia de Barnabu explica cómo puedes aplicar diferentes imágenes de cielos al Domo, usando SketchUp. Gracias Barnabu!

Otras cosas excepcionales de 'barnabu':

• Tierra Rebotando
• Edificio Torso Retorcido
• Nubes de Júpiter en Movimiento.
• Animación de Edificios de Londres creciendo.
• Saturno en GE
• Capilla "Kings College" en Cambridge.
• Cuartel General del MI6.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 20, 2007

News Roundup: GE 4.1 Stuff, Plotting a Trail, Business Reviews, More Second Earth

• GE 4.1 Stuff - The Google Earth 4.1 beta has been out for more than a month. There are a couple little features I haven't mentioned. First, they fixed a bug which prevented you from looking straight up in Google Earth. And, when using the SpaceNavigator you can look up at a 3D Building and when you let go the view stays looking up (pre-4.1 would pop the view back to the horizon). In addition, during time animation, the background star field animates according to the passage of time (see a post about this at Barnabu's site). There is an annoying bug in 4.1 which prevents the compass in the upper right from automatically disappearing like it is supposed to. There are also a number of subtle rendering bugs which are annoying. I hope a new beta will come out soon.

• Plotting a Trail - Googler John Gardiner posts about his hobby of helping plan trails. He uses topo map overlays, a GPS track and placemarks to help communicate a planned trail. See an example trail near South Yuba River in Northern California.

• Business Reviews - Google has added a new feature to Google Maps which lets you review and rate a business you find in a map search. Maps already showed ratings and reviews from other web sites, but it also now allows you to give your own reviews and ratings. Simply search for a business and choose "More Info". Then choose "Write a review". You have to be logged in to a Google account. Very simple and straight-forward. A couple of suggestions I have: Allow folks to just give it a rating without writing a review, and allow people to use anonymous as a reviewer name (but, limit them to one review per establishment).

• More Second Earth - Avi Bar-Ze’ev, former Keyhole developer of the application which became Google Earth, shares his thoughts about the recent article by MIT Technology Review called Second Earth. Avi goes into depth about the possibilities / impossibilities of Google Earth and Second Life being combined as a mashup. Definitely a worthy read if you liked the Second Earth article. Wade Roush (author of the Second Earth article) even commented he really liked Avi's article.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 15, 2007

Photo Finding in Google Earth - Just for Fun

I do a bit of mountain biking now and then, and happened to notice an article on the New York Times today. The article is called "Where Mountain Bikers Carved Their Dream Terrain" and is about a remote place in western Colorado near a town called Fruita, Colorado. I decided I would like to find this place in Google Earth. There were some nice photos in the article, so I thought I would try finding an exact spot. I noticed the name of a trail in one photo was "Zippety Trail". My first thought was to try Garmin's MotionBased.com site which lets people upload GPS tracks of their favorite outdoor activities. A simple search for "Zippety" and I got four results (like this one) - all listed as being near Fuita. I loaded up this trail in Google Earth (Motionbased supports GE for all tracks). It didn't take me long to find the place on the trail where the photo was taken in the satellite photos. This placemark tries to duplicate the same viewing angle as in the camera (as seen in the screenshot).

One thing that really helped me find the location is that Google just recently updated the terrain resolution for the western US (see coverage area) and this area now has 10 meter resolution data. Another way I found the location was by simply searching in Google Earth for "Zippety Trail". This returned a "Web result" for "Zippety Trailhead" that also showed me the location.

For a really cool example of photos matched to places in Google Earth, check out this article about a book called "Earth From Above" and the cool collection of placemarks people created trying to duplicate each view for 500 of the beautiful photos from the book in GE. The photos were so beautiful in this book, I just had to buy it. It's my favorite coffee table book.

On a related note: check out Googler John Gardner's post about a Google mountain biking team's plan for a race.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 11, 2007

London Eye Animation with Shadows for Google Earth

Barnabu is at it again adding more realism to an animated ferris wheel. Previously Barnabu was shown with a 4D animation of the London Eye where he used a modified ground image to remove the projected image of the ferris wheel from the ground (from the satellite photo). Now he has also added the shadow from the ferris wheel as it animates by using a feature in Google SketchUp (a 3D modeling tool) for projecting shadows. You can view the London Eye with shadows animation (860 KBytes) directly in Google Earth.

Follow these instructions (from Barnabu):

• After the file loads look for the time slider control at the top of the screen
• Access the time control options via the white clock face to the left of this
• Set the repeat mode to ‘wrap’
• Ensure that ‘clamp beginning of time window’ is off
• Click OK
• Hit the play button (the triangular right arrow).
• If need be, the speed can be varied via the time control options
• GE takes a little while to load in all the separate parts of the animation, resulting in flickering for a few cycles

An animating 3D model like this is best viewed with the view tilted so you can see both the moving ferris wheel and the shadow. It's even better if you move around while it is animating with something like the SpaceNavigator. See the link below for a video showing what this looks like.

Related:

• 4D London Eye Animation (with video)
• Barnabu's post about his first London Eye
• First Ferris Wheel Animation (Vienna)

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 10, 2007

Huge Imagery Update Now Available in Google Maps

The huge imagery update which came out for Google Earth on June 2nd is now available in Google Maps. There are Digital Globe satellite photos for random places all over the world, most of England is now at high resolution (50 cm/pixel), and many other places as well. Google mentioned during a conference last week that there was more data added in this update than existed in all of Google Earth before a year ago. Read below for the details on the imagery from Google.

New high resolution:

Canada: Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and Fort Saskatchewan, AB England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country, and Avon Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude Austria: Villach region France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen Spain: Valencia Andorra US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama

Large Digital Globe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.

Updated Imagery:

Americas: Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US) EU: Dublin, Ireland Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippine

Updated 3D Terrain (Google Earth only):

Western US 10m, Canary Islands 10m

Related:

• Google Announces Google Maps Street View

• Coverage Area for New 3D Terrain

Posted by FrankTaylor at 02:14 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

---

More entries for this category:

6. Google Earth More Realistic with Better Terrain - June 06, 2007
7. Google Transit in Google Earth - June 05, 2007
8. Google StreetView Sightseeing - May 30, 2007
9. Mini-News Roundup: SpaceNavigator Drawing, New York in 3D - May 29, 2007
10. US Township and Range Land Survey Info for Google Earth - May 22, 2007
11. New Layer for German Google Earth - May 21, 2007
12. FlickrVision - And Now for Google Earth - May 15, 2007
13. Google Earth in Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Korean, Arabic, and Czech - May 11, 2007
14. Google Earth 4.1 (beta) Released! SpaceNavigator for the Mac! - May 09, 2007
15. Multilingual Global Place Names for Google Earth - May 08, 2007
16. The Google Earth Network Link - April 19, 2007
17. Continuous Flow of New 3D Buildings - April 17, 2007
18. About.com on Google Earth Archaeaology - April 09, 2007
19. Directions from Google: "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean" - March 29, 2007
20. Image Gallery of Google Earth Blog - March 25, 2007
21. Google Supports GeoRSS, KML in Maps API - March 22, 2007
22. Skype + Unype = Multi-User Google Earth - March 10, 2007
23. Google Earth Links Page Updated - March 06, 2007
24. Google Earth Tutorials - Making 3D Poloygons, GE Pro Movie Making - February 21, 2007
25. 3D Video Inside Google Earth - February 07, 2007
26. News Roundup - India Censorship, SightSeer, Plazes, Education - February 05, 2007
27. Google Street Maps Overlay for Google Earth - February 02, 2007
28. Navigation Tricks with Google Earth 4 - January 31, 2007
29. Video Tutorials for SketchUp to Google Earth - January 30, 2007
30. Discovery Sunrise on Google Earth - January 29, 2007
31. Google Earth Data Error Compendium - January 24, 2007
32. Google Earth Save Image Option - January 23, 2007
33. Setting Up Google Earth Options - January 16, 2007
34. News Roundup - KML indexing, GPS tools, SketchUp PhotoMatch Tutorial, GE Blogs - January 13, 2007
35. Google Earth Layers - January 11, 2007
36. Play Tour Mode in Google Earth - January 10, 2007
37. Google Releases New 3D Buildings Layer for Google Earth - January 07, 2007
38. Overview Map in Google Earth - January 06, 2007
39. Important Basics for Google Earth - January 03, 2007
40. Using GPS in Real-time with Google Earth - January 02, 2007
41. Shipwreck - A Historical Documentary Including 3D in Google Earth - December 08, 2006
42. Animating 3D Models - New Examples - November 20, 2006
43. Enhanced Graphics Settings for Google Earth - November 18, 2006
44. New Google Earth 4 Tutorials - November 14, 2006
45. Google Supports Geography Awareness Week - November 13, 2006
46. Jupiter Clouds in Motion in Google Earth - November 12, 2006
47. Geotagged Photos from X PRIZE Cup, GPS Track too - October 25, 2006
48. News Roundup: AGU, Superoverlay tools, Marijuana bust, Sensor web update, Burning Man - October 24, 2006
49. New US Elections 2006 Layer, Larry Page visit - October 22, 2006
50. Google Earth Biographies: Hank Williams, Bob Marley, AC Gilbert - September 29, 2006
51. Google Earth as a "Flight Simulator" - September 15, 2006
52. Google Earth 4 Time Feature Example - September 14, 2006
53. How to Make a Google Earth Panorama - September 06, 2006
54. Back to School - Educational Uses with Google Earth - August 29, 2006
55. Google Earth 4 Visual Guides - August 21, 2006
56. Travels of Odysseus in Google Earth - August 12, 2006
57. Make Picasa Web Album into a Google Earth File - August 11, 2006
58. Goggles - Google Maps Flight Simulator, Also: Google Earth Flying - August 08, 2006
59. Update to Ping Pong Ball Interface for Google Earth - Video - August 03, 2006
60. ReefBase - Status of the World's Coral Reefs - July 25, 2006
61. News Roundup - July 15, 2006
62. Transportation Layer Improvements for Google Earth - July 14, 2006
63. Google Earth V4 - New Terrain Detail Option - June 20, 2006
64. GE-Path, GE-Graph - Useful Freeware for Google Earth - May 04, 2006
65. Using the New 3D Warehouse Network Link - April 28, 2006
66. New Search Feature in Placenames - Cool! - April 21, 2006
67. Tutorials for Google Earth and GE Community - April 10, 2006
68. Colored Description Bubbles in KML for Google Earth - April 07, 2006
69. Google Earth Visual Guides - March 22, 2006
70. Tutorials for Google Earth - March 18, 2006
71. Street-Level Driving in Google Earth - March 01, 2006
72. Image Overlay Creator for Google Earth - February 27, 2006
73. Touch and Gos - February 22, 2006
74. Why Google Earth and Prime Meridian Don't Line Up - February 11, 2006
75. BatchGeoCode - Convert Addresses into Placemarks for Google Earth - February 01, 2006
76. Important Basics for Google Earth - January 10, 2006
77. FAQ: "Weird Circles" Seen From Space - December 26, 2005
78. Enhanced Google Search Integration in Google Earth - December 20, 2005
79. Need for Standardization for Referring to Google Earth Files - December 10, 2005
80. Funky Buildings, Haunted Boats in Google Earth - December 07, 2005
81. Jamaica Me Krazy in Google Earth - November 29, 2005
82. Matching Photos to Google Earth - November 17, 2005
83. Fantastic Google Earth Documentary on Sir Ernest Shackleton - November 14, 2005
84. New Version of Google Earth (3.0.0739) - November 04, 2005
85. Setting Up Google Earth Options - November 03, 2005
86. Nice Global Cloud Map - September 26, 2005
87. Hurricane Rita - Using Google Earth to Track - September 23, 2005
88. Google Earth Files - KML/KMZ - September 15, 2005
89. Link Google Earth to Online Maps - September 07, 2005
90. Popular 3D Structures - September 06, 2005
91. Offline Google Earth Use - August 31, 2005
92. Ogle Earth Blog - August 27, 2005
93. Overview Map - August 26, 2005
94. Play Tour (aka Fly Mode) - August 25, 2005
95. 3D Buildings in Google Earth - August 23, 2005
96. Google Earth Uncensors - August 17, 2005
97. New Cities Added - August 16, 2005
98. Flying - Keeping a Flight Log - August 05, 2005
99. Controlling Google Earth Pan/Tilt - August 04, 2005
100. Geotagged Flickr photos on the fly... - August 03, 2005

Google Earth Blog Copyright © 2005-2007 Frank Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

All image screenshots from Google Earth are Copyright Google