• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • About
  • Basics
  • Links
  • Tips
  • 3D Models
  • Sightseeing
  • Videos

Animating historical imagery using Google Earth Tours

July 30, 2015

Last year we showed you how to animate Google Earth historical imagery using the Google Earth plugin. However, the Google Earth plugin has been deprecated and is set to stop working on December 12th, 2015. In addition, Google Chrome and other browsers are making it harder to use the plugin.

So, we have decided to try and achieve the same thing using Google Earth Tours. In a Google Earth Tour it is possible to specify particular views that include not just the position and angle, but also whether or not to show ‘historical imagery’ and when in ‘historical imagery’ what exact date to show. It is, however, not easy to create a Tour to animate historical imagery using just the built in functionality of Google Earth, so instead we have decided to do it via JavaScript.

To use it, the first step is to decide what view you want in Google Earth. Create a Placemark in Google Earth then save it as a KML file. Do make sure it is KML not KMZ, as our script cannot read KMZ. Next, decide on your settings below and and upload the Placemark file. Then click on the “Create Tour” link to download the generated KML tour for you to view in Google Earth.

It has been tested in Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 11.

Start: (yyyy-mm-dd)
End: (yyyy-mm-dd)
Step:
Pause: (seconds)
Placemark KML:
Create Tour

Try adjusting the settings to get the best results for a given location. Remember that the functionality works whether you want to see whole continents or zoom right in, but you will want to choose your settings depending on the availability of imagery. Although it is possible to make the pause between steps shorter than 1 second, we found that Google Earth could not keep up and simply did not refresh the screen on every step. It seemed to work alright with the 1 second setting, but if you have a slow computer or slow internet you may want to make it longer. For best results run the tour through a few times depending on the speed of your internet to cache the imagery.

We have created a few tours which you can download here to give you an idea of what is possible.


The historical imagery for Europe in the YouTube video above appears to come in waves from the top downwards. We believe this has more to do with how Google Earth refreshes the screen during the tour than the actual dates that the imagery was added.

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.

  • Google+
  • |
  • More Posts (754)

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: animation, historical imagery

Reader Interactions






PLEASE NOTE: Google Earth Blog is no longer writing regular posts. As a result, we are not accepting new comments or questions about Google Earth. If you have a question, use the official Google Earth and Maps Forums or the Google Earth Community Forums.

Comments

  1. Kris says

    July 30, 2015 at 10:06 am

    That’s a cool feature, thanks for the Javascript implementation!
    I wish we could access historic imagery in via a Google Maps API too… that would be great!



PLEASE NOTE: Google Earth Blog is no longer writing regular posts. As a result, we are not accepting new comments or questions about Google Earth. If you have a question, use the official Google Earth and Maps Forums or the Google Earth Community Forums.

Primary Sidebar




Categories

  • 3D Models (792)
  • Applications (708)
  • Business (288)
  • Environment (353)
  • Flying (208)
  • GE Plugin (282)
  • Google Earth News (1,763)
  • Google Earth Tips (592)
  • GPS (136)
  • Navigation (227)
  • Network Links (214)
  • Sailing (121)
  • Science (499)
  • Sightseeing (1,903)
  • Site News (587)
  • Sky (67)
  • Sports (154)
  • Street View (50)
  • Tours (117)
  • Video (421)
  • Weather (180)
Google Earth Satellites

Copyright 2005-© 2021 Frank Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

This blog and its author are not an official source of information from Google that produces and owns Google Earth Google and Google Earth are trademarks of Google Inc.. All image screenshots from Google Earth are Copyright Google. All other trademarks appearing here are the trademarks of their respective owners.