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New Google Earth Imagery – July 2009 – Good and Bad Part 2

Google has made yet another weekend update to the Google Earth imagery. I’m expecting a lot of GEB readers will start reporting new imagery they find during the weekend. Please leave a comment here if you find new imagery – which you can confirm by clicking on the “View in Google Maps” for a close-zoomed level, since Google Maps imagery does not yet have the update [UPDATE: Google Maps now has the new imagery, so you can’t confirm now.]. For this update, there are some significant changes which I immediately noticed – some really good news, and some bad. Comments on the significant changes will appear below the list of new imagery noticed. By the way, I immediately noticed the new Spot Image imagery for Oman and Yemen.
New and updated imagery:

  • Oman – Medium resolution Spot Image.

  • Yemen – Medium resolution Spot Image.

  • Guadaloupe – Not sure if this is new this month, but Isle des Saintes in Guadaloupe now has 3D terrain (previously the islands were flat).

  • Romania – Constanţa (Thanks ‘twist3r’)

  • Sri Lanka – Kataragama Peak (Thanks Martin)

  • France – Largentiere (Ardeche) (Thanks Maarten), Departments of Aisne, Ardennes, Eure, Eure-et-Loire, Lot-et-Garonne, Ariege, Haute-Garonne, Ardeche, Alpes-Maritime,
    Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Ain, Rhone, Allier, Doubs (Thanks Andreas)

  • Bulgaria – Entire country – Medium resolution Spot Image (Thanks Thilo)

  • Greece – “Lots of areas” have new high res (Thanks ‘psx’) – confirmed in Larissa, Kythira, Kamari

  • Niger – Dirkou (thanks ‘ACarvalho’)

  • Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia – new medium Spot Image (Thanks Neli)

  • Poland – Ciechanów (southern part), Kołobrzeg, Łask (winter photo) – Thanks ‘m_k’

  • India – Bina, Madhya Pradesh – (Thanks ‘Alok P.’)

  • Republic of Congo – Loubomo (Thanks ACarvalho)

  • Spain – Ferrol, Monte Coya (Thanks Vranton)

  • USA – Southwestern States colorization removed (see below); Contra Costa County, CA has new high res (Thanks Munden); Niagara Falls has been ruined with low resolution imagery! (Thanks Munden);

  • Chile – Castro and Chilo´e; Island hi-res (Thanks JP)

  • Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq – these countries has been color processed to look consistent (Thanks Munden, Steven)

  • Libya – Some new Geoeye (May) just south of Sert (Thanks Munden)

  • Saudi Arabia – Riyadh got some GeoEye (Thanks Munden)

  • Canary Islands – Grand Canaria – new high res (thanks Ben)

  • Faroe Islands – New high res terrain (thanks Frank)

  • Maldives – Kudahuvadhoo (thanks Alsay)

  • Ghana – Tumu (Thanks Trevor)

  • Philippines – El Nido (thanks Eugene)

  • Mexico – Acapulco (thanks Mcmaster_de)

  • Egypt – Alexandria (thanks Mcmaster_de)

First, I’m very pleased because Google has removed some of the bad coloration they introduced to the southwestern US imagery back in early June. Many people complained (see the comments) about the way the new colorization process actually destroyed color information and made places in the southwest (which are normally desert brown), have a green cast on them. Thank you Google for listening!
Second, Google has introduced a new “coastline-cutting” tool to make the edges of the imagery conform to the shape of the coastlines. This is a pretty significant move as it effects imagery all over the planet. And, I have mixed feelings about this decision. On the one hand, it does make the land verses sea/bathymetry distinction more clear and pleasing to the eye. I’m impressed with how accurately the “cutting” has been done (so far, I haven’t checked everywhere yet 🙂 ). The previous technique has always showed aerial or satellite imagery rectangles as a patchwork of irregular shapes along the coastlines. Which did in fact make it a bit harder to distinguish land from water.
However, imagery of the areas of ports, bays, harbors, shallow waters (especially in the Bahamas), etc. have now been cut out in favor of the bathymetry. The base level imagery of Google Earth (and Google Maps after this update migrates there), will now have lost some very valuable information. The former technique formerly showed ships, aircraft flying in the area, water conditions, sub-sea surface conditions (shipwrecks, coral reefs, sea life, oil rigs, buoys, dive sites, and (very importantly to the boating world) anchorage sites. The new technique has in one fell swoop reduced availability of a great deal of valuable information to the boating world, marine biologists, economists, shipping industry, oil industry, coast guards, and more. (Oh, I should mention those of us who look for planes in flight have also lost many planes found over water). In Google Earth, you can still turn to the historical imagery mode and see imagery without the coastline cutting. So, all is not lost. But, you can’t turn on historical imagery (currently) with Google Maps. And, many people won’t realize the historical imagery will show the “missing” information. Let’s just hope Google doesn’t start cutting the imagery they get before they put it in the historical imagery database! [Update Oops, I’ve already found evidence of coastline cutting happening in the historical imagery!]
Another footnote: In most cases, anchorages are near the shore – so hopefully the new coastline cutting will not eliminate most anchorages from the imagery. But, passages across bays and harbors between anchorages may now only show the bathymetry instead of the imagery. A sense of ship traffic, and what the water looks like will only be available (maybe) in the historical imagery. UPDATE: Another positive note – the coast cutting does not appear to cut out the imagery for the lagoons for atolls I found in the Tuamotus. Just the outside of the coasts. That’s good!
What I can’t understand is why Google is trying so hard to balance making the planet look good in the “base” imagery layer of Google Earth at the risk of losing valuable information. While at the same time, they have built-in features that could easily give the users the best of both worlds. There’s a feature in KML that lets you fade-in/out different overlays of imagery based on zoom levels. So, with Google Earth it is possible to present a very nice looking earth while at the same time presenting as much imagery as possible. In Google Maps, they already present a different view until you zoom in close. Plus Google can easily add options to load a different tile-set just like they already do between say “Satellite” vs. adding “Labels”. How about “Full imagery”, or “Historical Imagery”, or “Uncut Coastline” options for Google Maps?

Links: New GE Enterprise, My Location, Fossett Crash Report, Bridge Winners

  • New Google Earth Enterprise – Google has updated the Enterprise version of Google Earth to support version 5.0 features (the version designed for internal use where you can run your own custom data for the globe). The GE Enterprise version is called version 3.2. Follow the link for more details.

  • My Location – Those of you with an iPhone know how useful it is to push the “blue dot” in the Maps application to find your current location. Now, if you are using the latest browsers (Firefox 3.5, or Google Chrome – which support Gears), Google Maps will have a new “dot” gadget near the zoom controls which will give you a blue dot showing your position. You have to agree to “Share Location” with Google Maps (to give it permission to search for you). My first thought was this ought to appear in Google Earth as well. It should be trivial to implement with the GE Plugin (UPDATE – Googler Roman Nurik made this GE Plugin Location example). Geo hacker Barry Hunter wrote a quick little proof of concept app where he used the browser, and Google Maps API, to generate a link to a placemark to show your position in GE using the location feature. I also suggested to Google they ought to create a feature for making it work in Google Earth (they probably had already thought of it).

  • Fossett Crash Report – The NTSB has released its report on Steve Fossett’s crash. As expected, the cause is believed to be air turbulence (downdrafts) which caused the plane to be unable to avoid hitting a mountain. Air turbulence in mountain areas can be sudden, and treacherous. Read the story about the location of the crash and view the terrain in the area using Google Earth.

  • 3D Bridge Winners – Google has announced the winners of their build a 3D bridge contest. Watch an HD Video of the winning bridges.

NASA Doing Robotic Recon with Google Earth

NASA K10 RobotNASA is conducting research from their Ames Research Center in California with a robot called “K10″, located in northern Arizona, to simulate tele-operations for exploring the moon. They are using Google Earth extensively for both planning, visualization, and operations. In other words, Google Earth is a visualization tool for telepresence. NASA uses a black and white higher res image of their target area overlayed in GE (maybe the black and white makes it look more like the moon?). They look at the imagery to determine reconnaissance objectives and plan routes. They have developed a planning tool that works interactively with Google Earth (using network links and overlays) to develop and assign tasks for the robot and put placemarks and routes on the map. Then the task plans are sent to the robot. The robot sends back photos to NASA which are also placed in placemarks in Google Earth, and a track of the robots path is also updated continously. You can read more details and see more screenshots at the Robotic Recon web site. I’d like to get my hands on a sample KML file to see what it looks like. There is a large team of engineers involved in the Robotic Recon project, including folks from different NASA centers and several universities. And, the Robotic Recon blog shows lots of screenshots of Google Earth in use.

NASA Robotic Recon with Google Earth

By the way, this story is particularly interesting to me because more than 15 years ago I developed similar tele-presence simulation software at NASA Johnson Space Center to visualize remote-operations over the Internet using a Silicon Graphics workstations. I developed the 3D software for the visualization parts, and the Internet client/server communications. In 1992, while at International Space University in Japan, I used a workstation to control a robot arm NASA had back in Houston over an Internet connection using a crude frame-grab camera (single-frame webcam) to verify position. This is so déjà vu! Part of the reason I was instantly attracted to Google Earth when it first came out, was its similarity to the software I had written. Full circle.

Links: Michael Jackson Neverland, Amnesty International, New Placenames, GE Outreach

  • Michael Jackson Neverland – Yesterday the King of Pop passed away. People will remember him in many ways, but mostly for his amazing musical and performance talents. Google Sightseeing recalled their post about Michael’s Neverland Ranch and updated it with new information. You can see the Neverland Ranch in Google Earth here .

  • Amnesty International – Sri Lanka War – Thanks to some help from Stefan Geens of OgleEarth, Amnesty International has produced an excellent Google Earth file which highlights the aftermath of the Sri Lankan War. The file includes more updated aerial imagery, and many placemarks providing details to the human and physical costs to the war. Stefan has more details about the project at his blog.

  • New Multi-lingual Placenames – Google has proudly announced improvements to their database of populated places names. This way you can see names in the local language for places, or in the language of your choice used by Google Earth. By default, you’ll see both local and your language. In the English version of Google Earth, the names are found under the “Borders and Labels” layer folder. The normal placenames in your language are under Populated Places, and the local language placenames are under Alternative Place Names. Part of the data has come from the Google Map Maker project where people anywhere can contribute map information. They even have names in unusual scripts as well – like Chinese, Arabic, etc. I love the new data, but the naming of the layers is a little strange and somewhat confusing. How about: “Local Placenames”, “English Placenames” (replacing “English” with your language)? Also, I still really miss the cool feature the placenames used to have that when you clicked on the label it gave your three links to automatically search Google for that place, images from Google Images, and news from Google News. Google: please bring that back!

  • GE Outreach Birthday – Today is the second anniversary of Google announcing their Google Earth Outreach program (see GEB post of the 2007 announcement). I’m expecting Google will roll out a few layers today from Outreach.

Google MapMaker – 64 New Countries Google Maps and Google Earth

Google announced today the release of 64 new countries with map data thanks to the efforts of hundreds of people around the world contributing map data for countries which until now had little or no map data online. Last year, Google released Google Map Maker to make it easier for people to contribute, and moderate, the introduction of map data which would ultimately be included in Google Maps and Google Earth. One thing the announcement didn’t say is that the new road data is not only visible in Google Maps, but also Google Earth (if you turn on the Roads layer). Other data in the maps (points of interest marks in the new maps such as schools, museums, etc. – don’t appear to have been moved to the Google Earth “Places of Interest” layer yet). Here’s the list of 64 countries with new roads in Google Earth:
American Samoa, Anguilla, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Malawi, Martinique, Mauritania, Mongolia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Pakistan, Reunion, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Wallis and Futuna, Zambia.
Don’t forget to try other cool layers in Google Earth such as Street View, Geographic Web, and really cool stuff under the Gallery layer folder.