Late last year, we told you about Google’s “Liquid Galaxy”, a semi-circle of eight 55-inch LCD screens that immerse you in Google Earth. It’s quite an amazing-looking machine.
Yesterday, Google announced that you can now build or buy one of your own!
According to End Point (one of the suppliers; via TechCrunch), the cost to have them install it is roughly $72,000 – $80,000. Of course, you could always build it yourself and save some substantial money.
While I doubt any of us will install anything like this in our homes, it’d be neat to see some businesses incorporate one into their facility. Wouldn’t it be cool to walk into the CNN building and see one of these with their latest news stories geo-referenced on the globe? Or perhaps walk into Coca-Cola headquarters and step into their Liquid Galaxy to see all of their distribution points plotted on the globe? There are a lot of potential uses for it, though the high cost would make it tough to justify the purchase for a lot of companies.
For more information on Liquid Galaxy, check out Google’s “Quick Start” page, or you can watch the video below:
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.
This takes me back to early Disneyland and the phone company’s Circlerama theater. Of course, that wasn’t interactive, but I can still remember the 360 degree flight through the Grand Canyon.
It was really easy to get two laptops synced. I se that they can separate the screens by yaw (rotating left to right), pitch (tilting forward) and roll (tilting left and right). Surely someone is going to create a complete sphere of GE.