Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


Frank Taylor

Explore Mars in Google Earth

This has been a big week for Mars with the new NASA discovery of flowing water on the red planet, and the release of a blockbuster movie “The Martian” based on the New York Times best seller of the same name by Andy Weir and starring Matt Damon. An excellent book by the way! So, this is a good time to remind everyone that Google Earth also can portray Mars just like it does for the Earth. Mars in Google Earth has a fantastic archive of data from NASA (and other sources) from orbital imaging platforms, and Mars landers including 3D terrain, global imagery, high resolution orbital imagery, lander photos, and even lander 360 panoramas. The lander locations and tracks can be viewed, as well as their last known positions. Most of the data is current showing even the latest position of Curiosity and Opportunity. Mars for Google Earth only works in the desktop application (not on Google Earth for mobile).

Mars option in Google Earth 5

To get started, you simply look for the little planet icon at the top center of Google Earth and click on it for a list of options including Mars (you’ll see there are also versions for Sky and Moon). Click on Mars, and the Earth globe will turn into Mars. Mars was released in February 2009 (see original Mars review).

See below for my original video review of what Mars for Google Earth is really like:

You can spend hours exploring Mars and the layers Google created to explore the data from the various landers and orbiters. I especially enjoy the panoramas by Opportunity and Curiosity. An important tip if you want to explore the panoramas is that you might need to expand the time slider selectors that appear in the upper left so they show the full time span. Otherwise the panoramas may load up invisible until you find the time when it was taken.

And here’s a cool trick even long-time users of Google Earth might not have discovered. Fans know that Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator (read more), well you can also use the flight simulator on Mars! Kind a fun to fly around the crater at the top of Mons Olympus, or through the huge canyon of Valleris Maneris. Just look for the menu choice “View->Flight Simulator”. I recommend the F-16 for faster flying. You’ll need to learn the flight simulator a bit to fly well. Here’s a view of flying on Mars.

Flying on Mars
Flying on Mars

I’m planning to see the movie this weekend. Can’t wait to see it!

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.

New Content for Google Earth’s 10th Anniversary

Google blogged today about Google Earth turning 10 and announced some new content in celebration. This announcement brings out some revelations about the future of Google Earth as well. So, we are very excited by the announcement here at Google Earth Blog.

New Voyager Layer

First, let’s talk about the new layer Google announced. If you start up Google Earth today, you get a new layer in the layers panel on the lower left called “Voyager” and you will soon see they are calling it “Edition 1”. Future editions will update the content and possibly add even more features. The layer is intended to help show you the locations of all the most recent imagery and data available in Google Earth in four main categories:

  1. Street View highlights
  2. EarthView landscapes – desktop background suitable pretty places
  3. 3D Cities – locations of high-resolution 3D city maps
  4. Satellite/Aerial imagery – locations with the latest imagery

The layer also has a “Highlight tour” that literally flies you around the Earth to highlight samples from each of the new layers. Just to give you a taste, I’ve created short YouTube video that demonstrates the new layer and the tour.

More Details from Google’s Post

Today’s Google blog post was by Sean Askay who has been written about many times on Google Earth Blog. In the early days after Google Earth was released, Sean used the program for his Master’s studies. He later created some amazing stories using Google Earth and he was so innovative that Google ended up hiring him. He went on to create even more content, but also created the Tour mode in Google Earth that is actually a great resource for doing self-guided demonstrations (including the new Voyager layer). My favorite was the one he did with Astronaut Buzz Aldrin for the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 2009.

In Sean’s post, he not only announced the new Google Earth Voyager layer, but also a larger collection of beautiful Earth Views for the popular Chrome extension, and a slick new Earth View web application that shows not only the views, but also a little animated globe mapping the location of each shot.

Interesting Hints at the Future of Google Earth

Google made it very plain in their blog post, and in the new layer, that they look forward to seeing Google Earth for another ten years. Considering our fears of the possible demise of our favorite app, for the last couple of years, this is really good news. But, it gets even better. According to a recent interview on Wired, Sean is now the lead engineer overseeing future work on Google Earth. That’s particularly good news since two of the most important guys that built the original Google Earth have recently left Google (Michael Jones is now CEO of Wearality, and Brian McClendon is now going to Uber). In the Wired interview, Sean, and Google Earth Outreach manager Rebecca Moore, made some interesting comments about future plans for Google Earth which indicate a lot of thinking about leveraging the vast array of data Google has developed to create even more dynamic databases for new versions of Google Earth. And hints at uses of VR and AI technologies.

So, for the millions of fans of Google Earth out there, this really is a good cause for celebration. The future looks much brighter for Google Earth. Thank you Google for maintaining your commitment behind one of your greatest products!

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.

Ten Years of Amazing Google Earth Visualizations

Google Earth was first released on June 28, 2005. Now, in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Google Earth’s release, we would like to share just a few examples of the best user applications of Google Earth over the years. As any regular reader of this blog can tell you, Google Earth is a fantastic way to share content and tell stories about the Earth (and other planets and places). The desktop versions of Google Earth (GE) include a lot of features for annotating the map including basic placemarks, GPS tracks, image overlays (for maps, weather satellite photos and more), photo placemarks, time animations, 3D models, and much more. After over a billion downloads of Google Earth, millions of people have shared a vast array of content, and continue to do so after 10 years of the world’s most accurate 3D globe. Google also added many powerful features to GE over the years to allow people to create applications via their browser-based plugin and API, time animations, and even a scripting tour mode inside Google Earth.

Millions of people have found all kinds of strange and interesting sights when viewing Google Earth imagery. A few examples include: marriage proposals on roofs, heart-shaped lakes, guitar-shaped pools, African animals, bizarre hidden military objects, and many more. Thousands of people have found planes in flight and there’s a huge collection curated by the Google Earth Community.

Unique sights
Unique sights

Google Earth is a great way to tell stories in a geo-spatial context. Want to read about the harrowing tale, and see the locations, of explorers in the early 1900s whose ship was trapped in ice in Antarctica and the successful rescue by their daring captain who managed to get help from thousands of miles away? Want to see and hear the places and stories from a famous book called “Sailing Alone Around the World” by Joshua Slocum?

Shackleton and Slocum
Shackleton and Slocum

Did you know Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator? Very few people realize just how fluid you can move inside the program. You can fly while looking at the world’s most complete and current model of the Earth. In fact, back in 2007 when I produced a cool demonstration of the first detailed terrain model of the Swiss Alps, by mimicing a video of a Swiss Figher Jet through the mountains, it impressed Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt (now Chairman) so much that Google decided to produce the flight simulator mode. An even better way to fly in Google Earth is with a 3D mouse called SpaceNavigator which gives you the ultimate control.

Flying in GE
Flying in GE

The time animation feature, which Google added a year after it was first released, empowered all sorts of dynamic content and data visualizations. For example, one guy produced an animation of the clouds of Jupiter in motion. Another classic example was a visualization of Hurricane Katrina showing just when it grew the strongest and shows satellites views as it approached and struck New Orleans.

Animations

The advent of the browser plugin version of Google Earth enabled developers to create applications using Google Earth. One of my favorite scientific applications is one that helps you visualize eclipses when the Moon and Earth dance with the Sun. Google produced a cool demonstration of the plugin with Monster Milktruck. But, my favorite is a game which lets you play like you are doing a lunar landing of the NASA Apollo 11 Eagle on Tranquility Base – complete with sound (see video).

Plugins

One of the most important uses of Google Earth has been to help raise awareness of issues facing humanity and the Earth’s environment. Google formed Google Earth Outreach with a team of top Google engineers to help organizations use Google Earth to create tools and visualizations to highlight issues such as environmentally destructive coal mining, effects of massive deforestation, dangers and conditions of coral reefs, and human genocide. In 2009 Google introduced the Google Earth Ocean layers to help raise awareness and explore the Ocean and highlight issues like overfishing, climate change, and pollution.

GE Outreach

Google Earth has been a fantastic tool used throughout the world for a multitude of purposes. It has been used in schools countless times to help teachers educate the minds of the young about the Earth. And Google Earth is the best way to explore and learn about places you may never reach otherwise, or to help you plan your own travels to those places. Google Earth has been one of the most popular applications on Earth. We hope Google will continue to develop and further advance this fantastic tool for everyone.

Google Earth 2015
Google Earth 2015

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.

Tahina Circumnavigates the Earth

My name is Frank Taylor, and I am the founder and publisher of Google Earth Blog. I also recently completed an expedition to sail around the world. One of the many reasons I was immediately attracted to Google Earth in 2005 was that my wife Karen and I had for many years planned to circumnavigate the real Earth by sailboat. Google Earth provided a fantastic way to explore the places we planned to visit. We finally departed in 2009, and we have just completed (on June 11, 2015) our journey after sailing for over 5 years, more than 44,000 nautical miles, and visiting more than 30 countries. We used Google Earth to help share our experiences, and plan further explorations.

Frank and Karen Taylor and Tahina

We spent years preparing for the trip, and in 2008 bought a beautiful catamaran we named Tahina, sold our house and cars and many other belongings, got our kids started in universities, and prepared to depart in November 2009. You can see the route of our circumnavigation in the screenshot of a map below. If you click this link, you can use Google Earth to zoom in to parts of the route in the Atlantic and Pacific and it will load detailed GPS tracks and maps of significant places, and geo-tagged photos of the places we visited (zoom in to New Zealand for example). You can also see many of the 360 panoramas I photographed along the way (a sort of mini-Street View of exotic places). The detailed maps have so far only been completed through the Pacific to New Caledonia, but I will update the rest later.

Tahina Full route

We thoroughly documented our adventures, with our TahinaExpedition.com web site and blog. We took nearly 100,000 photos and videos along the way, the best of which were shared on our site, Panoramio and Google Earth, and Google Picasa Web Albums. Google Earth and Maps were used extensively to map and show the places we visited including GPS tracks of our passages over water, and sometimes our trips on land. And the locations where our photographs were taken were mapped as well. We even used Google Earth on numerous occasions to help guide us to some of the more dangerous approaches to passes and bays where we visited. The satellite and aerial imagery of these locations proved invaluable to improving our situational awareness to both the land, the waters, and other hazards (sunken ships, reefs, and more) of the areas. [Read tips for sailors using Google Earth]

I have to thank many businesses who partnered with us to help share our experiences using many devices along the way. In particular, I want to give special thanks to Google who was very supportive in my crazy schemes to use Google Earth to share the places we visited. For example, I would sometimes fly a kite with a special camera rig (this was before drones became popular) to capture aerial photography of unique places and then Google would process and include the imagery in Google Earth (see example). The 360 photography I took sometimes involved setting up with a tripod on the edges of cliffs or buildings while turning around in circles to capture full spherical imagery. We also took video with an underwater remote operated vehicle (ROV – or drone in today’s terminology) of many places we visited (the ROV was made by our partner VideoRay).

Kite Aerial Photography

We tried to raise awareness of many issues we saw facing our oceans and the marine life we witnessed along the way. Everything from trash in the oceans, overfishing, and many dying coral reefs were experienced by us on numerous occasions throughout our travels. We are greatly worried that our own children will find environmental devastation if they visit these same places in just a few years from now, or even worse when our grandchildren attempt it.

We stayed in contact with family and friends, and shared our experiences through a variety of means – primarily the Internet of course. On long passages we had both long-range radio communications (which we could use E-mail to get weather and share position reports over the Internet), and we also could use onboard satellite communications to do more Internet when needed (although quite expensive). When near land, we could sometimes get SIM cards for unlocked phones and use shore-based cell service for Internet. Other times we could find WIFI to use from our boat, other times we would have to find hotels or restaurants with WIFI service. In some locations there was no Internet, or even people, to be found at all.

Although our boat was far from home for many years, we would sometimes fly home to visit with family and friends back in the United States, usually once a year. And some friends and family would fly out to join us for a few days or weeks along the way. Even so, we missed many events in the lives of our friends and families, and sadly even the loss of a few. But, our lives were forever enriched by the the amazing experiences we had on this trip of a lifetime. We saw so many places, met so many wonderful people from the countries we visited, and shared our travels with many new and old friends along the way. There are a vast number of stories told of some of the more exciting or even terrifying moments on the Tahina site. We hope you’ll spend some time and explore our experiences some day.

Although our trip is now over, we plan to still share a few of the continuing experiences as we try to figure out what we are going to do next with our lives. We have a lot of reconnecting to do, and a lot of work unloading our boat and reorganizing our lives again. And, of course, I plan to update our maps with even more details of the entire trip and share them with Google Earth in the coming months. But, the real question we are asking ourselves is what will we do next? The answer to that question right now is that we will decide that when the time is right. Right now, we’re just going to enjoy being back home and we’ll decide when its time to pull the anchor up and move on to our next destination.

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.

Panoramio Gets Reprieve from Google

In 2006, Google bought Panoramio – a fast growing user community with geo-tagged photos from around the world to add to Google Earth and Maps so people could better identify locations through photos people had taken. Google hired all three of its developers and they helped them scale up the system to handle a much larger load of users and photos.

The Panoramio site grew at a much more rapid pace and the resulting photos have been a fantastic resource for people throughout the world. Many of the original Panoramio members are professional or enthusiast photographers who have enjoyed the online community associated with Panoramio. Google helped add many more community features and contests were held for the best photos. Panoramio had a very happy and growing community for several years, myself included. I have contributed thousands of photos to Panoramio over the years while traveling to the far corners of the world.

As most people know, in subsequent years Google has grown a lot, and in the process they have been getting a more corporate, and less community-friendly attitude. They have been closing down (or using the most common Google word: “deprecating”) products on a frequent basis. Shutting down products sometimes is necessary with technological progress, but there are better ways to help communities surrounding the products to transition to alternatives. Google could be doing a better job.

Last September, Google announced they would migrate users off Panoramio and have them use a new Google Maps based photography site they had built called Google Views. Google said everyone would be moved off Panoramio in the next year (2015), and they assured the Panoramio community they would not lose key features. But, the new Views site did not have many of the same community features Panoramio had developed, and the community did not at all like the new site. Google’s Brian McClendon tried to address the concerns. But, a petition was created by the Panoramio community and over 10,000 users signed the petition within a few weeks. However, Google said little in response to the petition even after several months.

Suddenly, this week, Google announced: “After listening to community feedback about the future of the platform, we’re pleased to let you know that there won’t be any immediate changes to Panoramio. Instead of aligning the community with Views, we’ve gone back to the drawing board to work on a more integrated solution that supports you and your content directly within Google Maps.” So, they aren’t going to immediately kill off Panoramio after all. But, this probably doesn’t mean Google will repair features that have been broken with Panoramio for months. It’s apparent this supposed reprieve has more to do with the new Google Photos platform and the fact Google is now going to close down Google Maps Views (according to this post) and putting panoramic photos into the Street View platform. Meanwhile, Google has to continue to rely on Panoramio for its huge archive of geo-referenced photos.

So, although Google won’t be killing off Panoramio as planned this summer, there is no guarantee the stay of execution will be held off indefinitely (unlikely even). Let’s hope the additional time will give Googlers the opportunity to think of innovative ways to capture the essence of Panoramio – maybe even re-use the name – in the transition to their next photo mapping product. An even better step would be to at least address some of the problems with the current Panoramio product that has been plaguing the community in the meantime.

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.