Prompted by our series showcasing uses of the Google Earth plugin, Gary Grimm of Mountain Visions has shared with us some Google Earth tours that they have created. You can find a complete gallery of their tours here which includes a mixture of tours to download and view in Google Earth, tours to watch using the Google Earth plugin, and tours that have been recorded and can be viewed as an online video.
Although we generally prefer to download tours and view them in Google Earth, using the plugin to display tours can have a number of advantages:
- You can place descriptive information in the web page around it, including links to further content – although most of this can be done within the tour.
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To some degree it protects your content from copying.
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It is easier for the user as they do not have to download the tour and open Google Earth.
Below are some of the best tours from the Mountain Visions collection presented using the Google Earth plugin. To view them using the plugin, you will need the plugin installed and a compatible browser. It may take some time to load the tours, so be patient and wait for the ‘play’ button to appear in the bottom left hand corner of the plugin.
Tour of Potential CuMO Mine – May 2012
(or download the KMZ
to view it in Google Earth.)
Prince of Wales Island Watershed Restoration Projects, 2006-2011
(or download the KMZ to view it in Google Earth.)
Tour of Mores Creek Watershed Tour, October 2013
(or download the KMZ to view it in Google Earth.)
Boise River at High Water June 3, 2011
(or download the KMZ to view it in Google Earth.)
A screenshot from the CuMo mine tour.
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
I viewed the Moses Creek tour as an example of the “best”, but, whilst clearly full of information, it flew too fast to allow the topography to be fully appreciated or the annotations to be read, and the musical soundtrack is a distraction. Also the pop up ‘slides’ were malfunctioning, flickering on and off. The tour seemed to fall between a straightforward movie style introduction and an interactive ‘map’ for more intensive study.
A general point about the GE plug-in is that, for example, Safari carries a warning that the plug-in does not have the highest level of security, and that sites may be able to exploit the plug-in to extract personal data. Also the active management of all plug-ins under normal security settings is required (other browsers may be similar), and this is not going to encourage casual use of the GE plug-in while browsing.
Google has supplied information about the status of different browsers and how the GE plug-in works until December 12, 2015.
http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/announcing-deprecation-of-google-earth.html
Thank you Google Earth Blog for mentioning these tours. As you have noted in the past the functionality of the Google Earth plug-in tours will be coming to an end this next December. All of us who have made tours like these are very interested in how we might retrofit the information and functionality of the tours we have made in the future as the Google Earth effort evolves. We look forward to any information you can provide about how we might plan for the transition during this year.