Links: Games, KML, Data, and more

DND Game For Google Earth – Mickey at Google Earth Hacks has been working on a new game that’s played entirely within Google Earth. It’s a massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG), which he is calling GEMMO. He has announced a public beta now, so you can try it out and join those who are helping give Mickey ideas on further development. The idea is you look around on the Earth and find stores, or monsters to fight. You use the layers folders on the left of GE to execute actions like fighting, buying things at stores, or checking your inventory. You need to register with his forums to get started.

Sky Add-on – Robert Simpson released a file for Google Sky to show astronomical observations by submillimeter camera, SCUBA, on the JCMT telelscope in Hawaii. You see imagery in 450 or 850 microns, and green hexagon placemarks showing other significant observational data in these wavelengths. Check it out . Very nicely done!

Microsoft Bird’s Eye Views on Sundials – Steve Lombardi at Microsoft read the GEB post about the sundials collection and shows how you can view the same collection in Virtual Earth (since VE also supports some parts of KML now). Many of the sundials can be viewed with the VE Bird’s Eye views which give you high resolution oblique (side) views allowing you to get a better idea of the shapes of the sundials.

Nearby Data Analysis – Barry Hunter has created many useful apps for enhancing your experience with Google Earth (see his list here). With some of the applications he’s been logging statistics, and he’s created some really interesting heat maps of where people are looking at things in Google Earth (at least the ones who are using his tools).

Virtual Earth Data Update – Microsoft released another monthly update last week adding dozens of new cities around the world with Bird’s Eye views, high resolution aerial imagery, and 3D models. The output of free new imagery and 3D models is just amazing.

KML observations – Christopher Schmidt makes some interesting observations about how he sees KML fitting into the GeoWeb as a standard equivalent to HTML.

Handling KML Regions – Richard Treves regularly talks about design ideas for Google Earth visualizations at his blog. He recently posts about the need to handle regionated content so that when you zoom out rather than large numbers of placemarks just disappearing, they are grouped together and an icon showing a magnifying glass is shown. See the next item for an example showing this concept put to use.

Marine Wrecks and Obstructions Database – EarthNC is a site dedicated to sharing marine/boating related data in Google Earth that will be useful to boaters. Virgil has just released a new Google Earth file which shows NOAA Automated Wreck and Obstruction Information System (AWOIS) data. He uses KML regions so as you zoom in you get more information. Zoomed out, you just see each zone of the dataset. Each placemark contains more information describing the wreck from the AWOIS database.