Animating historical imagery using the Google Earth plugin

Earlier this month we showed you a gif animation of the historical imagery of Europe. It was created by taking screenshots of Google Earth then combining them into an animated gif. However, doing that for every continent would be tedious, so instead we have decided to do it using the Google Earth plugin.

Although we have expressed concern about the future of the GE plugin, and a number of sites that used to use the plugin are starting to move to alternatives, it is, nevertheless, still a very useful tool.

If you have a browser that supports the Google Earth plugin you should see the Earth below. Rotate it to your favorite continent and click start. You should see the historical imagery toolbar in the top left corner of the plugin. If nothing happens, try refreshing the page and clicking start again.

The animation starts in this year. Each step will be a decade:
When this year is reached each following step will be a year:
When this year is reached each following step will be a month:
Length of each step in milliseconds:
Start Stop

 

For most parts of the world, the above settings will work fine, but we included them in case you wish to tweak them a bit for specific locations. Also try zooming in to see effects reminiscent of Google’s Timelapse.

If your browser does not support the plugin then you can see the results in the YouTube video below.