Colin Hazlehurst has contributed some excellent tours to Google Earth over the years. His most impressive is likely the recreation of Captain James Cook’s circumnavigation of New Zealand, but he’s also covered items such as the 1825 Greek Independence battle.
He recently came across a great model of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis airplane in the 3D Warehouse, read up more about him on Wikipedia, and then decided to recreate the famous flight in Google Earth.
The result is a very impressive tour, part of which can be seen in this video:
His plan is to present the 33.5 hour journey in about 335 minutes of animation, in other words, flying the model at 600 knots instead of the 100 knots at which the Spirit of St. Louis travelled.
He’s created this KMZ file,
generated using a variant of the TourMaker tool that he’s developed for this kind of Google Earth animation. It still has some way to go, but is quite impressive already.
Great work, Colin!
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.
Mickey,
I don’t want to take credit for something I didn’t do; the 1825 Greek independence battle is not one of mine.
Prior to the Lindbergh flight, I concentrated on sea voyages like Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Ga1rLPDxw) and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s epic rescue mission in the James Caird (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV-tuIwmn6FDk0W0qfYloATDoGONQfSfN).
Regards,
Colin
I was disappointed that the plane didn’t have to barely make it over a row of trees at the end of the runway, as in the Jimmy Stuart version! 😉