One of the great new features in Google Earth 5.2 is the new “track” KML extension. Jason Birch and Ross Collicutt have put together an excellent example of this new feature, which you can find on Jason’s blog.
Ross was planning to run the Kusam Klimb, a killer 23km event that features a 1.5km change in elevation. Ross picked up a Garmin Forerunner 405 to track his progress during the run. The 405 is a GPS watch that can store data from your running/biking event, and it does a great job. I have one of these watches as well and I’m very pleased with it. By tracking his run with the watch and then importing it into Google Earth 5.2, the result was pretty cool.
While a basic tour is pretty neat, it’s nothing that you haven’t seen before. Where it got interesting was when they imported all of the data from the watch, including heart rate and speed. The result was a track that provided a wealth of information about the run.
I encourage you to read the full write-up on Jason’s blog, or download the final KML file
to experience the Kusam Klimb for yourself!
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
“…they imported all of the data from the watch, including heart rate and speed.”
Actually, speed is derived from the track points rather than stored separately.
Jan — You’re right, good catch!
Anyone knows, how these extra datas like heart rate ar defined in the GPX file format? Are there some fixed additional informations, which can be stored at each Trackpoint? Is it possible to define your own categories?