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Sightseeing

Phallic symbols in Google Earth

April 20, 2016

A recent story in the news is about a school in Sydney Australia where someone drew some phallic symbols and a rude message on their lawn. They apparently managed to remove the unwanted graffiti within hours, but not before it was captured in aerial imagery, which has since been added to Google Earth.


The offending image in Google Earth. Clancy Catholic College, Sydney Australia

It turns out this sort of thing is quite common and especially common in schools.


Bellemoor School, Southampton.


Harman-Geist Stadium, Hazleton, Pennsylvania.


Yarm School, Teesside, United Kingdom.


Fairfield College, New Zealand.


Koonung Secondary College, Melbourne, Australia.


A field on the Isle of Wight

There are probably many more that we have not come across.

It is not a new idea, with the Cerne Abbas Giant dating from at least the 17th century


Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset, United Kingdom.

There are also many examples of unintentional phallic symbols.


Newmarket Health Centre, Ontario, Canada.


A park in Des Moines, Iowa.


A housing estate in Hoylake, Wirral, United Kingdom.


A peninsula on New Providence Island, Bahamas


A Church in Dixon, Illinois.

For the locations featured in this post download this KML file.

Filed Under: Sightseeing, Site News

Watching land reclamation with Google Earth

April 19, 2016

Last month we did a couple of posts showing the growth of artificial islands in Google Earth:

  • Persion Gulf region
  • Rest of the world

Today we are looking at large land reclamation projects. As before, we have only selected projects that show significant change within the range of Google Earth imagery.

South Korea has several land reclamation projects. Songdo International Business District is a ‘smart city’ built on 600 hectares of reclaimed land on Incheon’s waterfront. It is still in development, but already has many sky scrapers, including South Korea’s tallest building, the Northeast Asia Trade Tower.

Songdo International Business District, South Korea.

Saemangeum is an estuarine tidal flat which has been dammed by the Saemangeum Seawall Project, which is now the longest man-made sea barrier in the world. Filling in the land behind the wall is still in ongoing, as construction of the wall and subsequent land reclamation has been slowed by court cases over the environmental impact it is having.

Saemangeum, South Korea.

Next we look at Jakarta, Indonesia. What we are looking at is a tiny part of a much bigger planed project seen here. The project is controversial as can be seen in this article

Jakarta, Indonesia.

Singapore has a lot of reclaimed land. We look at an extension to Coral Island. There is no imagery showing the land itself being reclaimed from the sea, but we can see it being developed.

Coral Island, Singapore.

Next we move to Bohai Bay, China, which is also the site of the Tianjin explosion we have previously featured.

Bohai Bay, China.

Next we look at Colombo harbour, Sri Lanka. Colombo harbour was expanded and now there are plans to add Colombo Port City on reclaimed land adjacent to the harbour.

Colombo harbour, Sri Lanka.

Copenhagen, Denmark, shows some land reclamation taking place:

Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Khazar Islands, Azerbaijan, is a land reclamation project in the Caspian Sea. The Azerbaijan Tower may be built on it, and when completed may be the tallest building in the world.

Khazar Islands, Azerbaijan.

To find the above locations in Google Earth download this KML file.

Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: land reclamation

Watching artificial islands grow in Google Earth – Part 2

March 25, 2016

Yesterday we had a look at some artificial islands in the Persian Gulf region. Today we are looking at artificial islands in other parts of the world. We have chosen only islands that have been created or substantially modified within the time span of available Google Earth imagery (typically the last fifteen years or so).

Japan is mountainous and most of the available land on the coasts has been used. As a result, many of its airports are on artificial islands.

Haneda Airport, Japan, on an island itself, had an extra runway added that is on a new artificial island.

Kobe Airport, Japan.

Kitakyushu Airport, Japan.

Island City, Fukuoka, Japan. This is the only artificial island in Japan that we are featuring that is not an airport.

The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge is, as its name suggests, a bridge connecting the three cities of Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macau. The route consists of several long bridges and an undersea tunnel with artificial islands for the two entrances to the tunnel and a third island at the Zhuhai/Macau end of the bridge. As we have mentioned in the past, when satellite imagery extends into the oceans, Google Earth does not show it in high resolution. Sadly the Hong Kong end of the tunnel is, according to Google Earth, in the ocean and as a result the imagery showing it being constructed is out of focus.

The Zhuhai/Macau terminus.

The tunnel entrance in the Zhuhai/Macau direction.

The Maldives are a group of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean. Several of the atolls have been converted into more substantial islands.

Hulhumalé, Maldives.

Thilafushi (left) and Gulhi Falhu (right), Maldives.

We move on to Malaysia and its first man-made island – Marina Island.

Marina Island, Malaysia.

And finally we have Singapore, a small nation with a desperate need for more space.

Jurong Island, Singapore.

To see the above locations in Google Earth download this KML file.

Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: artificial island

Looking at the growth of artificial Islands in Google Earth

March 24, 2016

There are quite a lot of artificial islands being built around the world. For example, last year we had a look at the islands that China is building in the Spratleys. Today we are looking at artificial islands in the Persian Gulf, where shallow seas and oil wealth create perfect conditions. In a later post we will have a look at artificial islands in other parts of the world.

We tried gif animations but the gif format has limited colours so we decided to create jpg animations with JavaScript. If they do not show correctly in your browser, please let us know in the comments.

We start with Bahrain, a small island nation that clearly feels the need to expand:

Amwaj Islands and Diyar Al Muharraq, Bahrain.

Durrat Al Bahrain, Bahrain.

Sitra, Bahrain.

Reef Island, Bahrain.

Next is the UAE, which is sprouting islands all along its coast:

The Palm Jebel Ali, Dubai.

Palm Jumeirah, Dubai.

The World, Dubai.

Then we have Qatar whose capital Doha is spreading into the ocean:

The Pearl, Qatar.

Lusail, Qatar.

To find the above locations in Google Earth download this KML file.

Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: artificial island, bahrain, qatar, uae

Space Engine – to Infinity and Beyond

February 17, 2016

I still remember the first time I used Google Earth and how my sense of wonder grew as I realized the amazing capabilities of the program to portray our planet Earth at new levels of detail with a huge source of data both in aerial imagery, but also in 3D. It has been a long time since I found a program which generated the same sense of wonder. Until now.

Space Engine
Space Engine

I recently ran across an application called Space Engine which was reported to produce amazing visualizations of space and let you tour not only our solar system and nearby stars, but also stars throughout the Milky Way. Even better, the developer uses an algorithm to create planets, moons, asteroids and comets for as many star systems as astronomers currently believe exist, throughout our galaxy. Beyond that, Space Engine generates them for galaxies throughout the universe as we know it. So, you can literally visit trillions upon trillions of stars and planets (if you had enough time!) for endless galaxies. When you visit a planet, moon or asteroid’s surface, the program procedurally creates 3D terrain and textures to make the surface appear more realistic. To put this in perspective, this program lets you have an entire Universe to explore inside your own computer. Wow! However, it does require a relatively powerful desktop computer (or gaming laptop) with a beefy video card to run well (see the minimum specs in the download link at his web site).

My feeling was just as enthusiastic viewing Space Engine as the first time I saw Google Earth. What really amazed me was seeing the beauty of our universe when portrayed using more current graphics technology, and the endless sense of exploration to discover new worlds. Space Engine allows you to experience the awe and wonder of the Universe and capture your memories to share with others.

binary

Space Engine uses data from dozens of astronomical databases to accurately portray the physical characteristics for all the known systems. It also extrapolates the characteristics for stars and planets beyond to fill our galaxy and other galaxies based on theoretical compositions. You can easily see the physical characteristics (size, mass, gravity, atmosphere, temperature extremes, and whether a planet could support life). In a sense it is more of a sandbox simulation, or a game, than a mirror of our universe.

It’s important to note that your movement in Space Engine isn’t limited by silly physical laws like the speed of light, so you are able to travel to other systems throughout the Universe in very reasonable amounts of time. If you were limited to our current technological and scientific abilities, and our understanding of physics (not being able to travel faster than the speed of light), it would take decades or centuries to even reach the nearest star systems to Earth.

I had plans for creating my own video demonstration of this application. But, I keep getting engrossed in the program. So, I’m sharing one of several YouTube videos about Space Engine to give you a taste of the experience. If you have dreamed of space flight, like I have, then you will most likely have the same reaction of awe and wonder that I do every time I use Space Engine. Watch this video demonstration by a gamer called Obsidian Ant who is just as amazed:

To make Space Engine more like a game, the developer has chosen to allow its users to add space ships and controls so you can fly through space as if you were an explorer and visit places. You can really get a sense of dimension when you compare objects next to a spaceship. The developer has even added support for virtual reality by supporting the Oculus Rift – so you can really immerse yourself in this universe.

Spacecraft near a moon
Spacecraft near a moon

Like with Google Earth, Space Engine lets you click at a place (a star or other object you see in the background) and see information about it. Then, you can click a button and choose to simply fly to that location and get a closer view. Using various controls (including that Space Navigator, mouse, keyboard, joystick or even flight sim controls) you can easily move around the various astronomical objects and get better views. You can even land on them. I find myself regularly taking screenshots (like photographs) of the amazing views I see in this program! I have long used space art as a desktop background on my computers, and now I have an endless supply of views that are as good or better than those I’ve used before. If you search Google Images, you can find many thousands of screenshots from this program on the Internet.

Also like Google Earth, you can save a place you are viewing like a placemark and visit again at a later time, or share it with your friends. So, in many ways, Space Engine has abilities like Google Earth, but extrapolates its range to the whole universe, not just our home planet. But, Google Earth remains the king when it comes to portraying our home planet (both in terms of realism, but also in terms of the amount of data about Earth). Google Earth’s Mars and Moon modes also have far more data than Space Engine about those bodies. Space Engine has prettier views though, because it uses more recent graphics technologies and isn’t limited to near-surface viewing like Google Earth.

What’s really amazing about Space Engine, is that it was created, and continues to be developed, by a single person. Vladimir Romanyuk is a software engineer who lives in Russia. He has not only developed this application, but also architected his own universe using his knowledge of software and astrophysics. He does get help from an active community for space ship models, feedback, and contributions towards planetary models and textures. His software is not officially released yet – latest beta version is 0.9.7.4. But, judging by his fans, and my experiences, this freely available program is getting close to ready for broader use. According to his community forums he is planning to release a version of Space Engine for the Steam game platform soon which will greatly increase its exposure.

I should mention that there are some comparable commercial space games out there which already have a more robust gaming architecture for space travel with thousands of active users. The most popular and comparable one I’ve seen is Elite: Dangerous. Space Engine exists, in part, because of the much older pioneer in this genre of a free program called Celestia which also let you explore space and even allows people to create educational tours. I used Celestia many years ago as well and mentioned it in early days of Google Earth Blog posts, but the application has not been worked on for a long time. If you don’t have a fast enough computer for Space Engine, you can probably download and run Celestia (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and enjoy its more limited capabilities.

Many thanks to Vladimir for his fantastic work with Space Engine. He has done something I always thought would be the next step after Google Earth and even discussed with Google. I wish Vladimir the best success as he introduces his universe to a wider audience and continues to astound us with future features and data. His application right now is a real joy to experience. It may be a little tricky to learn the more advanced features, but the Space Engine forums can help you figure things out. Space Engine only runs on Windows right now, but he’s asking for donations to help him add new features and versions for Mac and Linux. He has recently uploaded his latest version to 0.9.7.4 RC1 (release candidate 1). Download here (note the file size shown on the page).

All of the screenshots in this post came from Space Engine with permission from it’s developer.

Purple Nebula Backdrop
Purple Nebula Backdrop

Filed Under: 3D Models, Applications, Sightseeing

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