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Game of Thrones in Street View and Google Earth

In celebration of the season seven premiere of popular TV series “Game of Thrones”, Google has created a Street View collection of various locations used in the filming of the series.

Although we highly recommend using Google Maps to explore Street View as the Google Maps Street View interface is better than Google Earth’s, it is also worth visiting the locations in Google Earth as it provides a better perspective of the relative locations, as well as featuring 3D imagery in some of the locations. Some locations have the old type of 3D model and some have the new 3D mesh.


Water Gardens of Dorne (Real Alcázar in Seville, Spain)


The Long Bridge of Volantis (A bridge in Córdoba, Spain)

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

Homeowner mows ‘A-hole’ message on lawn over a dispute with neighbour

A recent story in the news about a homeowner in Dungeness, Washington, USA who, as a result of a dispute with a neighbour wrote a giant message saying ‘A hole’ and an arrow pointing at his neighbour.

Find the location in Google Earth with this KML file.

The above image is from August 2016, but it is clear from historical imagery that it was created some time between 2011 and 2013 and maintained since then.

Quite often large messages seen in Google Earth imagery are intended to be seen from the ground or from passing aircraft. Writing messages specifically for Google Earth can be tricky as you never know when your area will next be photographed. If your message is not designed to last, it may never be captured. Here in Cape Town, Google Earth gets multiple images per month, but the imagery is from satellites and relatively low resolution so the writing must be much bigger. In the US, and other regions that get higher resolution aerial imagery, the frequency of updates tends to be much lower – about once every three years for the continental US. Several messages we looked at in 2015 have not yet appeared in Google Earth imagery. This message created by Hyundai was short lived and although the region has been updated since then the message is not visible. Another project consisting of graffiti on a disused runway is probably longer lasting but the region has not yet been updated. We also heard from one of our readers that he has been regularly mowing a message to his daughter in the hopes that it will one day be captured in Google Earth imagery. We keep an eye on the location, but it hasn’t been updated since 2013.

For some other rude messages in Google Earth see this post on phallic symbols.

Planet Launches 48 More Satellites

On July 14, 2017, satellite imaging company Planet launched another 48 of their small, low resolution, satellites they call ‘Doves’ into orbit. They were launched on a Soyuz rocket together with a number of other satellites. This follows a record launch of 88 Doves back in February. In addition, earlier this year they acquired Google’s Terra Bella and Rapid Eye in 2015. If our count is correct they now have 192 Doves, 5 Rapid Eye satellites and 7 SkySat satellites for a total of 204.

Planet’s large fleet means they have very good coverage, being able to image most parts of the world multiple times per day. However, the small size of the satellites means the resolutions they offer are not as good as some of the other players in the imaging business. See this post for a summary of satellite resolutions. Also keep in mind that Google Earth features aerial imagery in some locations, which is higher resolution than any satellite can provide.

The Terra Bella sale announcement states that Google will purchase imagery from Planet in a multiyear contract. Whether we will see any Planet imagery in Google Earth, however, remains to be seen. It would certainly be nice to see the global mosaic used when zoomed out updated to a higher resolution and clearer image (less cloud and ice cover).

The Future of Google Earth Voyager

Google recently added some new Voyager tours titled ‘I Am Amazon’ featuring various stories from the Amazon. These tours are exclusively for the new browser-based Google Earth and the Android app. Read more about the tours on Google’s blog. This announcement came shortly after Google added Brazilian indigenous territories to their mapping products.

At the announcement event for the ‘I am Amazon’ Google Earth Director Rebecca Moore made an interesting comment to Reuters. She mentioned that Google plans to allow the public to share their stories via the Voyager platform at some point in the future (two to three years). This has led to speculation that it may become ‘the next Great social network’. It is certainly a great idea and we have previously suggested it when Google released the new browser based Google Earth.

So while we wait, what opportunities exist for sharing today?

Since the very early days of Google Earth, there has been the Google Earth Community, a forum where Google Earth enthusiasts share interesting locations and a wealth of information about them. However, the community is not integrated into Google Earth and is independent of Google.

Sharing geolocated photos can be done via Google Maps, and although accessing those photos in Google Earth classic currently doesn’t work, they are visible in the new browser based Google Earth. Panoramio, formerly the most popular way to share panoramic photos via Google Earth, was discontinued earlier this year and the photos will likely be removed from Google Earth this November.

Google Earth used to be partially integrated with Google Maps Gallery, a site where users could easily share maps. However, Google Maps Gallery relied on another Google product, Google Maps Engine, which was discontinued in early 2016, so there is no longer a good public map sharing site linked to Google Earth.

You can, of course, share your Google Earth content via any other platform in the form of KML files, which users can download and view in Google Earth. If you want to create Voyager-like tours for the new Google Earth, then be sure to check out the tour maker by geteach that we had a look at in April. If you want to create dynamic content that changes over time, then look into KML network links.

A Panda Solar Power Plant

A recent story in the news is about a solar plant recently completed in China that was designed in the shape of a panda. However, the images initially circulated were all artists concepts and not photos of the actual plant. Eventually Snopes was able to obtain an actual photo of the plant and we decided to try and find it in Google Earth. We knew the solar plant was somewhere in the vicinity of Datong, Shanxi, China, and we found a large number of solar plants in the region, but could not find the panda. Then we found this article that features a screen shot from Google Earth and once we knew what to look for, we found it quite quickly near a solar plant we had already identified.


The panda solar plant as seen in Google Earth in an image dated May 18th, 2017. There are actually two pandas.

As we discovered when looking at floating solar, solar plants are springing up almost everywhere you look, especially in China. The plants we found in the Datong region were all built in the last few years. According to Wikipedia, China is roughly doubling its installed solar power every year. Exponential trends can’t continue forever, but it does make us wonder what the landscape will look like in ten years. It won’t be long before there is stiff competition for land between solar and agriculture – which is one reason why floating solar is becoming a popular solution. From the plants we found, mountain tops and southern facing slopes seem to be the most popular sites at present in the Datong region.


Solar plants around Datong, Shanxi, China.

Some plants like the one below, appear to have been built on dry river beds. This is presumably to avoid competition with agriculture, but it does raise the question of whether or not they will get washed away in the large rain storm.

before
after

Before and After showing how the solar plant is built in a dried out riverbed.

To find the pandas and other nearby solar plants in Google Earth, download this KML file.