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DND Game For Google Earth – Mickey at Google Earth Hacks has been working on a new game that’s played entirely within Google Earth. It’s a massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG), which he is calling GEMMO. He has announced a public beta now, so you can try it out and join those who are helping give Mickey ideas on further development. The idea is you look around on the Earth and find stores, or monsters to fight. You use the layers folders on the left of GE to execute actions like fighting, buying things at stores, or checking your inventory. You need to register with his forums to get started.
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Sky Add-on – Robert Simpson released a file for Google Sky to show astronomical observations by submillimeter camera, SCUBA, on the JCMT telelscope in Hawaii. You see imagery in 450 or 850 microns, and green hexagon placemarks showing other significant observational data in these wavelengths. Check it out
. Very nicely done! -
Microsoft Bird’s Eye Views on Sundials – Steve Lombardi at Microsoft read the GEB post about the sundials collection and shows how you can view the same collection in Virtual Earth (since VE also supports some parts of KML now). Many of the sundials can be viewed with the VE Bird’s Eye views which give you high resolution oblique (side) views allowing you to get a better idea of the shapes of the sundials.
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Nearby Data Analysis – Barry Hunter has created many useful apps for enhancing your experience with Google Earth (see his list here). With some of the applications he’s been logging statistics, and he’s created some really interesting heat maps of where people are looking at things in Google Earth (at least the ones who are using his tools).
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Virtual Earth Data Update – Microsoft released another monthly update last week adding dozens of new cities around the world with Bird’s Eye views, high resolution aerial imagery, and 3D models. The output of free new imagery and 3D models is just amazing.
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KML observations – Christopher Schmidt makes some interesting observations about how he sees KML fitting into the GeoWeb as a standard equivalent to HTML.
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Handling KML Regions – Richard Treves regularly talks about design ideas for Google Earth visualizations at his blog. He recently posts about the need to handle regionated content so that when you zoom out rather than large numbers of placemarks just disappearing, they are grouped together and an icon showing a magnifying glass is shown. See the next item for an example showing this concept put to use.
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Marine Wrecks and Obstructions Database – EarthNC is a site dedicated to sharing marine/boating related data in Google Earth that will be useful to boaters. Virgil has just released a new Google Earth file
which shows NOAA Automated Wreck and Obstruction Information System (AWOIS) data. He uses KML regions so as you zoom in you get more information. Zoomed out, you just see each zone of the dataset. Each placemark contains more information describing the wreck from the AWOIS database.
Sky
WorldWide Telescope vs Google Sky
Google Sky was introduced in August 2007 as a part of Google Earth. It takes the idea of a zoomable Earth with high resolution aerial and satellite photography and turns it inside out letting you look at the nighttime sky. But, instead of pictures of the Earth, Google gathered photography from the world’s best telescopes and the deepest pictures of the night sky. It’s a fantastic application with a rich source of data and built on a foundation of Google Earth technology which many people are comfortable with using.
For the past few weeks, rumors had been building that Microsoft would be releasing a new product called WorldWide Telescope (WWT) which would be “significantly better” than Google’s Sky. Robert Scoble stirred the rumor when he said he saw a Microsoft product that “made me cry“. TechCrunch later said they guessed it was the new product WorldWide Telescope, which Scoble has now confirmed. (What I’m wondering is if Scoble had ever even seen Google Sky before all this) As TechCrunch predicted, Microsoft did briefly demo the new product at TED this week (see video below). Unfortunately, Microsoft said the product won’t be released to the public until sometime this Spring. Microsoft has put up a web page for WWT that shows kids and notable people’s reactions to WWT. It’s definitely a real PR spin – especially when you consider the product hasn’t even been released! So far I’m not impressed with what I’ve seen of WWT. There was nothing I saw in the demonstration of WWT at TED that Google Sky doesn’t already do.
To be fair, watching a 5 minute demonstration isn’t a way to make a fair comparison. I have spoken to some folks who have seen WWT up close and asked them how it compares to Google Sky. It is said the interface of WWT is very slick and the graphics perform very well. In demonstrations it could switch databases much more quickly than Sky (but, the demos may not have been with data streaming over the network). Some of the imagery in WWT has been better processed than Sky. Google’s Sky has a problem due to it being an extension of Google Earth – the “poles” are not handled well. WWT was not built on the roots of a 3D globe, so it doesn’t have this problem. Here are some interesting comments on WWT from Alan Boyle at MSNBC. One thing I haven’t seen anyone else mention: WWT doesn’t run on anything but Windows. That’s right, no Mac OS X, no Linux. And, it has been said WWT will only run on newer computers with faster graphics cards. One of Google Earth/Sky’s greatest accomplishments is that it works on a wide range of computers and graphics cards and all three of the major OSes.
The real test will be how well people will be able to annotate and extend WWT. Google Sky has had many people adding content to make it an even better project. Check out this planetary orrey, this real-time horizon, lunar eclipse predictor, and there’s a lot more. Already, Sky is available to the millions upon millions of people who have installed Google Earth (over 350 million installations at last count according to Google). Also, comparisons have been made between Sky and Stellarium (an open source planetarium program). I think Stellarium is a very slick and nice program. But, it’s more of a complement to Sky, not a direct competition. Stellarium doesn’t have the rich database of online server with terabytes of astronomy data like Sky (and like WWT will have). I suspect WWT will have some elements like Stellarium – more planetarium-like features. But, WWT is obviously more of a competition for Sky.
(Keep reading for the TED WWT video and conclusions)
Predict Tonight’s Lunar Eclipse with Google Earth
Tonight there will be a total lunar eclipse. A great opportunity for those of you with new digital cameras to try your hand at some basic astrophotography (read some tips on photographing a lunar eclipse). For those in the American continents it should be well above the horizon when the eclipse occurs. Thanks to a some nice work by Michael Kosowsky of HeyWhatsThat.com, you can download a simple KML file that will let you use Google Earth Sky to view when and where tonight’s lunar eclipse will occur for your location. Fast, simple, and free! The KML file for Google Sky is simple to load , and it will automatically guess your location on the Earth by guessing the location of your IP address. Make sure you select the “Switch to Sky” mode when Google Earth prompts you. Double click on the “HeyWhat’s That.com” placemark to position your view on the moon. Based on your location, you will see the green lines of a “planisphere” which represents your horizon in Google Sky; cardinal points showing north, south, east, west; the positions of the moon and planets; and a special symbol representing the Earth’s shadow relative to the position of the moon. Not only that, but the time slider will be visible and you can drag the slider to determine precisely when the eclipse will occur. A full animation of the full sequence of the moon’s eclipse. Very cool! When the moon falls within the darker circle of the shadow, the moon is in the total eclipse (as shown in the screenshot). Look at the time below the slider to determine what time it will occur.
Note: if the KML file doesn’t properly guess your location (look at the lat/long coordinates shown in the KML that downloads), then use the Advanced Planisphere page at Michael’s site to set your position with a map, then select “February lunar eclipse” and hit “Submit”. You’ll get a new KML with the proper coordinates.
Michael also has developed a Google Maps mashup called Cosmic Visibility which uses the Sky data and shows the lunar eclipse with a browser. Click on the link on the left which says “February lunar eclipse” to see the event there. Great work Michael!
Related: Release of HeyWhatsThat planisphere for Google Sky
Links: Star Viewer, Green Screen, World Hockey, European Pollution, Golden Shadow
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Star Viewer – Last week Mike at GoogleMapsMania pointed to me to a cool Sky/Google Maps mashup called Star Viewer. It has a nice tour with YouTube videos mixed in the placemarks. What I didn’t realize at the time is that they also have a KML file
so you can view the placemarks in Google Earth. And, the Google Earth version looks really nice with the videos (Windows only – because Google Earth only supports video in Windows). Also, the mashup was done by the guys at Virtual Tourism. -
Green Screen – Last August Stefan Geens at OgleEarth showed how you could use some software and video camera to create your own green screen overlay of Google Earth to mix with a video. Stefan has discovered that Hans Rosling has used a similar technique to produce a truly interesting video called Bangladesh Miracle. It’s worth watching!
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World Hockey – A Google Earth Community (GEC) member called Sam034, who is a big Ice Hockey fan, has been documenting the sport in Google Earth for some time. Recently he has substantially updated his World Hockey Arenas collection
which includes not only the locations of Hockey arenas, but also birthplaces of Hockey legends, world Hockey headquarters and halls of fame. Well done! -
European Pollution – Another GEC member called tegandrew has posted a pollution visualization
using data from the European Pollutant Emission Register showing information on the annual emissions of 11,099 industrial facilities in the 25 Member States of the EU for the year 2004. Read the post for more details and screenshots. -
Golden Shadow – There were a lot of reports last week about InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters). Since Google Earth is an excellent 3D visualization tool and has already been used in emergency situations (like Hurricane Katrina), it’s only natural an organization like this would use GE. Last fall, InSTEDD conducted a simulated emergency called “Golden Shadow” in Menlo Park, California with emergency workers and volunteers and used Google Earth to monitor the situation. Read more about what they did. This is just to serve as a testbed for technologies and techniques which they hope to share with emergency workers all around the world.
Links: KML Wrap-up, New Orrery, Zip Scribble, South China Sea
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KML Wrap-up – Google writes up a nice summary of the progress made in the development of KML (the file format used by Google Earth. I particularly liked the links to a variety of useful KML documentation. For a basic overview of the KML format read: What is KML/KMZ?
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New Orrery – James has released an update to his Orrery for Sky at his Barnabu blog. The Orrery shows the relative positions of the planets as they orbit the sun. When used with the time animation of the planets in Sky, you can understand their motions better. The updated version lets you choose three different modes: The original (which shows all the planets at once – not to scale), an inner-planets only version, and an outer planets only version. Try the orrery here
. Great stuff! -
Zip Scribble – James also has created an interesting Google Earth visualization showing connections between zip codes in each state of the US. The idea came from someone else, he just Google Earth-ified it. The first set shows a static display, and a day later he posted a time animation version which shows the scribble in sequence. Check them out here: Zip Scribble static
, Zip Scribble time animated . It was also interesting to me to check out the more remote US zip codes in the Pacific (like Guam, Samoa, etc.). -
South China Seas – Got a message from Christopher Paterson of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that they have released a new Google Earth collection
which describes the South China Sea Project. This project is focused on reversing environmental degradation trends in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand. The placemarks in the collection provide a lot of information. This looks like it may be destined for the Global Awareness layer in GE.