Big News: New Imagery October | Fossett Crash Site | New 3D Cities

October 14, 2008

More Street View Imagery for France in Google Earth/Maps

As reported at Google Maps Mania, Google has released new Street View imagery in France. Google had already released Street View imagery in July for the Tour de France route. Now they have more complete coverage for the following cities: Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, and Lille. Most people are aware you can view the Street View imagery in Google Maps, but you can also see these new spherical panoramic photos inside Google Earth with a 3D interface.

To see the images in Google Earth, turn on the Street View layer and zoom in a bit to see the camera icons over France. You can fly to a city covered with the Street View icons to find an interesting site. Then click on a camera icon near your desired location. Click "Show Full Screen" or double click the icon to enter the Photo Viewer mode. This mode lets you look in all directions using the mouse or keyboard arrows. You can also zoom in and out with the mousewheel. See a video demonstration of the Google Earth Street View imagery.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:54 PM | Comments (2)

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October 14, 2008

Fires in California - 2008-October - Google Earth/Maps

The LA Times has posted a Google My Map of the current major fires in the San Fernando Valley. The two primary fires are the 5000 acre Marek fire which at this time is 70% contained, and the Sesnon fire which is nearly 10,000 acres is still burning strongly. The primary concern is the winds at this point which lessened a bit earlier today. You can check the LA Times Fire Map in Google Maps, or you can view it, complete with 3D terrain, in Google Earth here . The LA Times has been updating the fire map as the fire status has changed.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)

Using Google Earth at 90 MPH on a Boat

Google Earth has been used at high speeds in airplanes before. And, it's been used in racing sail boats. But, this is the first time I've heard of Google Earth being used on the water, with a laptop, in a racing motor boat at speeds up to 90 mph! Virgil Zetterlind, who produces some amazing Google Earth content for boaters at his EarthNC.com site, managed to talk his way onto a sponsored racing boat during the Sarasota Poker Run last weekend. The boat was a Formula Factory 382 FAS3 Tech Boat. He offered to provide live tracking and web cam photos from the boat during the race and the tracks were uploaded using a cell phone as Google Earth KML. You can see the tracks now (colorized by speed) along with the photos he took. Here is a post with some background information about the story, a map, and slideshow by Virgil. And, for the technically inclined, Virgil has posted a detailed case study describing the software and hardware used to accomplish this feat. A great read for those wondering how to use Google Earth for tracking applications. Only thing I wish is that I could see some video of Virgil trying to hang on to his laptop and GPS while the boat was bouncing at those speeds. Virgil gets 5 globes for most geeky and adventurous application of Google Earth this month!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:30 AM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2008

New Google Earth Imagery: 13-October-2008

[UPDATED 0645 ET 14-Oct-2008: Make sure you check "View in Google Maps" to confirm the imagery is new before leaving a comment.]

Just started getting reports of places with new or updated high resolution imagery. Keep sending in reports if you find something new. You can tell if an image is new by clicking the "View in Google Maps" link in GE to compare. Google Maps doesn't yet have the new imagery so if the imagery isn't the same - its new. Here's the list of places found so far:

• India - New medium resolution Spot Image background imagery for a big portion of India. Thanks to GEB reader Alok Patel for being the first to report new imagery.

• US - Looks like a big portion of North Carolina has new unattributed aerial imagery - or at least it is color processed differently. Big area around Salt Lake City, Utah has new imagery from the State of Utah. Fairfax County Virginia - thanks to GEB reader Ben. Spotsylvania County, Virginia - new high res. Areas of Beaumont, TX. Thanks to Munden.

• Mexico - An area in northern Mexico has new medium resolution Spot Image imagery - adding to the Spot imagery in a recent update for Mexico. A bunch of the islands around Baja have also been added with better resolution from Spot Image.

• Romania - Looks like the country of Romania has new medium resolution Spot imagery as well.

• Spain - Menorca, Mallorca - Thanks to GEB reader Rene73

• Czech Republic - the entire country has new high resolution imagery from a provider called GEODIS Brno. Very nice! Thanks to GEB reader Rene73

• More Eastern European Countries - New medium resolution Spot Image imagery in the northern part of Albania, most parts of Montenegro, Kosova, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Thanks to GEB reader Edi.

• Italy - Capri, Elba, Firenze, Urbino, Verona - Thanks to GEB reader Ezra.

• Australia - Big region in the northeast now has medium resolution Spot Image imagery. Thanks to GEB reader 'toler'. Ayer's Rock has new high res imagery.

• Norway - Trondheim. Thanks to GEB reader Esme Cowles.

• Canary Islands - Futureventura, Tenerife - The SS American Star wreck has has almost disappeared beneath the water now. The imagery date for the Canaries says 2008! Thanks to James at GoogleSightseeing.com for this find. See his post for more details and a link to the ship location.

• South Africa - Areas around Johannesburg

• Guinea Bissau - New highres patch near Bafata. Thanks to Snakeye.

• UK - Lundy Island high res now. Thanks to Munden. Also, Aberdeen, Hampshire, North Lincolnshire, part of Derbyshire. Thanks to James.

• Portugal - New high resolution strip of imagery near Nazaré. Thanks to Snakeye.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 01:23 PM | Comments (38)

Links: Panoramio Heat Maps, See Russia?, 1m LiDAR, Airship

There was no post on Friday because I was attending the Annapolis Boat Show in Maryland. Given all the terrible news about the economy and stock market, I was thinking the boat show attendance would be down. But, people were there in droves. The weather was fantastic for one thing. But, American optimism is just amazing. I heard boats were still selling, and lots of boat accessories were selling as well.

• Panoramio Heat Maps - Alexander Tchaikin sent me an E-mail to share a project he's been working. Using the Panoramio API he has been creating useful statistical maps showing the density of photos from Google's Panoramio photo site. In his blog post, he provides details on what he's been doing, and lots of screenshots and example KML files.

• See Russia? - In response to Palin's comments about her foreign policy experience based on being able to see Russia from Alaska, Michael Koswowsky has set up a special map using his "HeyWhatsThat" tools. Looks like there are only 4 very hard to reach spots where you can see Russia in Alaska.

• 1m LiDAR - The USGS has released a KML file that lets you see very high resolution (1m per pixel) LiDAR terrain imagery for the Norther California mountain ranges. You can download the KML file here , then make sure you zoom into an area outlined in green and wait for the imagery for that area to load. You have to be zoomed in close. The LiDAR data shows the terrain in shades of gray. This will give you an idea of what Google Earth's terrain could look like if they boosted the 3D terrain detail to 1 meter. Wow!

• Airship - A few days ago I got an E-mail from some folks flying a real live Zeppelin Airship from Europe to California. They created a Google Maps airship tracking map so you could watch it travel along. The ship should be leaving Texas soon to travel to California. Even better news: Airship Ventures is setting up for tours at Moffett Field in California (one of the few remaining locations with large airship hangars - and right next door to the Google Headquarters). I actually met the husband and wife team which started this venture at the X Prize Cup last fall. Hopefully they'll be setting up some Google Earth files for tracking their tours as they fly over the San Francisco sights. We should get some excellent Panoramio aerial photos in the coming months.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:30 AM | Comments (4)

October 13, 2008

Interior 3D Building Tour With Google Earth Plugin

A Singapore-based company called Peekspy has used Google Earth technology in an innovative way. Instead of just showing the normal Earth map or an exterior 3D building, they are instead using Google Earth technology to provide a 3D architectural walkthrough of the inside of a building. Really, its like a 3D tour guide of the interior of a building. They chose to use the new Google Earth plugin to present their building tour which lets you present 3D content in a browser window and put your own interface around the Google Earth window.

The building shown is the National University of Singapore (NUS) library and the 3D model is quite detailed with all kinds of photo textures to add realism. Click here to view the NUS library 3D Tour This application might be a bit slow on older computers (or with slow video cards) because it is 3D intensive. They "blank out" the Earth view in Google Earth and all you see is a 3D model of one level/floor of the library. Give it a moment or two to load. The first view is level 4 of the library, if you click "Level 4" on the list on the right, you'll get a list of places you can view on that floor. Click on one and it will fly you to that part of the floor. This is using Google Earth's built-in touring capabilities to help conduct a "walkthrough". You can also use the Google Earth navigational controls to move around, but it can be awkward with the current setup. I think if they scaled up the building size you could use the controls to "walk around" better.

Google Earth wasn't designed to provide 3D tours of the insides of buildings. One reason it takes a moment to load the library model is that Google Earth is still loading the background 3D terrain and imagery (even though you can't see it). But, Peekspy has shown GE can be used for this. And, I think it works pretty well. Tools like the 3D modeling software Google SketchUp were designed to provide 3D building tours. However, I would guess there are more people familiar with Google Earth than any other 3D mainstream application. I'm always amazed at the multitude of different applications of GE technology. A real 3D tour of the inside of a building is pretty slick!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:38 AM | Comments (2)

October 12, 2008

Newly Discovered Buried Peruvian Pyramid Visible in Google Earth

Researchers recently discovered a buried pyramid in the Peruvian desert using satellite imagery and "special algorithms". The buried pyramid is about a mile from the Cahuachi's archeological site. But, if you use the satellite photo released by the researchers you can find the location in Google Earth. You can easily see evidence of the site yourself in GE's imagery. It turns out the structure is underneath a crop field - and the underlying structure has changed the color of the soil such that shapes are visible in the DigitalGlobe satellite photo. GEB reader Markus Mehring told me about this discovery and after seeing the satellite image shown in news reports, he matched the location in Google Earth. See it yourself here . Markus thinks the data the researchers used was possibly the same DigitalGlobe image used in Google Earth (he says it matches very closely). According to the researchers, this is a large pyramid with a base of 300 feet on each side and with seven levels similar to another pyramid they are already excavating.

By the way, the Cahuachi site is just south of the famous Nazca Lines. And, here is a good Google Earth Community post showing a tour of the Nazca lines in Google Earth (with image overlays).

Google Earth imagery is definitely good enough to discover archeological sites - if you have a eye trained to look at the imagery properly. In fact, there have been a number of discoveries made with Google Earth. A long-time friend of mine, by the name of Scott Madry is a professor at the University of North Carolina, and has used Google Earth to discover dozens of sites in France thanks to Google Earth. But, Scott has been using aerial imagery for archeology for decades. Read a National Geographic story about Scott's Google Earth work. About.com has written a nice article about using Google Earth for archeology as well. And, if you're really fascinated about seeing archeological sites in Google Earth, make sure to check out JQ Jacobs ancient monuments site which shows all kinds of locations in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:10 AM | Comments (1)

October 11, 2008

Budapest 3D Tour in Google Earth

I just noticed a nice 3D Tour of some notable sites in Budapest, Hungary over at EarthSwoop. EarthSwoop lets anyone create tours of places in Google Earth using the Earth API and plugin - which right now only runs on Windows (Google is over due on their promise made in May to deliver a Mac version by August). Click on the different links below the EarthSwoop window to see a flying tour to several locations. A description appears to the right of each site. The Budapest EarthSwoop was created by someone called Greg Rose.

What's interesting about this collection to me is that there are a bunch of really nice 3D models in Budapest I hadn't seen before. Even more interesting is that the models do not have any attributes. Normally, when 3D models come from the Google 3D Warehouse, when you put your mouse over a 3D model in Google Earth it highlights the model in a blue/purple color. When you click with the mouse, a window pops up telling you more about the model from the 3D Warehouse. But, Google has started putting thousands of 3D Models which are coming from some unannounced source. Normally these have appeared in cities where the entire city has been modeled with some new technique. This is the first time I've found just select models in a city without the attribution. [UPDATE: However, this may just be an error in processing which somehow prevented the 3D Warehouse connection/attribution to be made. Some of the models in Budapest appear to match ones in the 3D Warehouse.

Disclaimer: EarthSwoop was created by myself and Mickey Mellen over at Google Earth Hacks as an experiment with the Earth API and to make it easy for people to make 3D sightseeing tours.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:24 AM | Comments (2)

October 09, 2008

New Satellite Imagery Galore Coming

Those of you regularly reading this blog, already know there is a wave of new satellite imagery coming to Google Earth (and other mapping tools) in the coming months. Both DigitalGlobe and GeoEye have launched new satellites in the last year, and more satellites are going up soon. Google has an exclusive contract for online use from the new GeoEye satellite. And, the first image from the GeoEye satellite has just been released, of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. This image probably won't find its way into Google Earth for several weeks, but they wanted to show off the new image capability. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see a larger version. The new GeoEye satellite can capture up to 0.41 meters per pixel resolution, but because of US laws can only release up to 0.5 m/pixel imagery to Google (the best stuff is for the intelligence agencies and military). The imagery is essentially black and white, but they process the photos with color from other imagery to add color. You can see this imagery is very nice. Story on new GeoEye imagery via CNET.

Google for the past three years had a similar exclusive contract with DigitalGlobe - where only Google could use DigitalGlobe imagery online. However, their renewed contract was no longer exclusive, and Microsoft has announced they will now be using DigitalGlobe imagery on Virtual Earth. This makes it possible for Microsoft to have much more global imagery than they currently have in Virtual Earth (although, nothing Google doesn't already have). While we're talking about Microsoft, I just found out they also added stars in the background of Virtual Earth 3D. Google Earth has had real stars from the beginning, but the new Virtual Earth ones have color and size (based on brightness) - which I think is better looking than Google Earth's stars (and something I've suggested to Google for years).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:19 AM | Comments (13)

October 08, 2008

Google Looks for More 3D Cities

On October 1, Google quietly added 10 new US cities to the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer. Each of the cities has up to hundreds of new photorealistic buildings. The 10 new cities join another nearly 20 other cities around the world in Google Earth which have a large percentage of the buildings completed with photorealistic textures. There are also a couple of dozen cities which have untextured 3D buildings. There are hundreds of other cities in Google Earth which have notable buildings completed which have been submitted to the Google 3D Warehouse by people around the world. And, you can find 3D renderings of many other notable structures around the world like the Golden Gate Bridge, Stonehenge, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Pyramids of Giza, and much more. I pretty much fly around in Google Earth with the 3D Buildings layer turned on all the time now.

Google has just posted more details about their 3D buildings layers and details on how you can get your city included in Google Earth's 3D layer. There is even a special Cities in 3D program which encourages city planners to share their data with Google so they can help render your city in photorealistic detail.

I was surprised Google didn't mention the ten new cities they added on October 1st. There still not been an official recognition of the new additions. Why are they waiting I wonder?

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:51 AM | Comments (5)

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