Sports

Rally Navigator releases open beta version

February 28, 2013

Rally Navigator is a program that helps rally riders create printable navigation instructions called roadbooks, used in Cross Country Rally events such as the Dakar Rally. The fun part is that the rider might not know where he is going and needs to follow the roadbook instructions to the letter while the route leads the rider through landscapes otherwise never seen.

Mike Shirley is a rally rider and owner of Double Diamond Athletic Club in Reno, Nevada. He already used Google Earth to design his roadbooks but the process was cumbersome. Mike asked Paul van Dinther at Planetinaction (creator of the A-tour, Ships and much more) to take this roadbook production process to the next level, and they did.
The Google Earth based Rally Navigator uses an intuitive user interface to either import gps tracks (gpx format) or allow users to virtually lay out a route by tracing satellite images of roads and dirt tracks. Wherever the rider needs turn instructions, a point is promoted to a waypoint by a single click which causes it to be included in the roadbook printable output.
Individual user accounts allow off-road enthusiasts to create routes that can be kept private, shared with select friends or published to the whole world. Today anyone will be able join Rally Navigator and start to create and share rally roadbooks. Bear in mind that anyone can have fun with roadbooks. It doesn’t have to be about speed.
All interaction is immediate and in real time thanks to the power of HTML5 canvas. A stylized map drawing, along with compass heading and segment distance is automatically generated to detail turn instructions for each navigation waypoint. Users can interactively further detail the waypoint with custom road drawing tools to create “tulip” images and adding internationally standardized symbols which can all be sized and rotated to more accurately resemble the real life waypoint along with a simple text description.
Technically this project provided entirely new challenges. The Google Earth API is not fast when creating items in Google Earth. This caused a project containing a few thousand points to have a load time of more then 5 minutes! It took some serious wizardry in the form of batch loading to overcome these limits. Importing GPX point data to Rally Navigator is optimized using a newly developed algorithm causing distance errors of less then 0.2%. A point count reduction of 85% is possible on certain gpx files that are recorded at a high frequency.
Some of the features in the new beta include:

Improved load and save function (load GPX tracks 10+ times faster!)

Private route libraries and share with friends, share in public library function

Tons of formatting improvements

Better content throughout the site

Supports A4 paper size printing

Google Translate supports multiple languages

Kilometer or Miles

Show/hide GPS Coordinates

Improved stability

Here is a brief promo video that shows more:

Their goal is to build a community of off-road motorcycle enthusiasts working together to create and share a worldwide library of interesting roadbook routes, growing the sport of cross country rally and dual sport riding.
New Rally Navigator features in development:

Create Route from imported GPX file or from Google Satellite image
Kilometer and Miles configuration
Capture distances, CAP Heading, and simple tulip from track information
Drawing tools for detailed Tulip creation
Drag and Drop FIM – Dakar Rally Navigation icons
Header function with Miles, WP, Fuel mileage, altitude profile, start finish
“Virtual Pre-Run” Google Earth route flyover with synchronized roadbook, ICO, Compass display
Utilization of Google Earth roads & routing function – snap track to road
Saving/Sharing preferences: Private – Share with select friends – Public
Fully searchable Route library – search by ratings, location, creator etc.
Support for comments and ratings on each route
Facebook Integration, sharing and authentication
Narrow Format roadbooks – enduro style

There still have a lot of work to do to fulfill their vision and they would appreciate any advice you may have regarding function, additional features, bugs etc. Please use the feedback widget located on the left side of the screen to submit your thoughts.
Note that Rally Navigator works BEST on Google Earth 6.2 on Firefox with the IPC controls disabled. Check it out for yourself at RallyNavigator.com.

Animating GPS tracks in Google Earth

February 26, 2013

When Google Earth version 4 was released back in 2006, it added a great feature that allowed KML files to have time-based data. This allows you to animate GPS content as Frank wrote about soon after.
We’ve seen great examples of this over the years, such as Google’s tips on sharing your ski trips or showing replays from a sailboat race.
I recently took the family to go sledding on the fake (but fun) snow at “Snow Mountain” a few weeks ago and recorded our tracks from a few runs on my MotoACTV watch.

You can play with those runs in Google Earth by grabbing the KML file

Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.

or the raw GPX file (which Google Earth can also open).
While I was out there it brought to mind the excellent 3D model of the carving that Peter Olsen build a few years ago. When loading the GPS data into Google Earth, I noticed that most of the buildings in the area were now in 3D, including the cable car system.

The majority of these models were built by Bill Molony, who has done an excellent job of creating and texturing them in a very realistic way.
If you have any GPS data from a recent activity, try loading it into Google Earth and it’ll give you a whole new perspective on what you just did. If you have a particularly compelling track, feel free to share it with everyone in the comment section below.

Previewing the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi

February 12, 2013

In just over a year, the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia and the folks at Google Sightseeing have taken a close look at the various venues in Google Earth to see how they’re progressing. The current Google Earth imagery is from roughly 17 months ago and shows the buildings in various stages of progress. A good example of that is Fisht Stadium, home of the opening and closing ceremonies.

I expect we’ll see a nice imagery update in the area in the coming months, as Google tends to update cities prior to them hosting the Olympics as they did for London in 2012 and Vancouver in 2010.
In addition, I expect we’ll see most of the venues in 3D and perhaps even Street View imagery around the city. For now, the only venue in 3D is the “Iceberg Skating Palace”, seen here:

Check it all out for yourself by reading their full blog post, or grab this KML file

to fly around and see the venues in Google Earth.

Ride along GP tracks from all over the world

February 7, 2013

The folks at GP Circuits have mapped out 183 racing circuits from 27 championships in 36 countries, and they’ve wrapped them all inside of an excellent interface.
Along with providing stats, info and a great map view, every course is available in a “3D Fly-Through”, which races you along the track using the Google Earth Plugin.

The also include elevation data for each course, and photos when available. It’s quite a wealth of knowledge for those looking for info on circuits like these. As Google’s 3D Imagery continues to expand, sites like this will only get better!
Check it out for yourself at GPCircuits.com

More great updates to the Google Earth Flight Simulator

January 10, 2013

While Google Earth has a built-in option for flying a flight simulator, the better choice for the past few years has been Xavier Tassin’s GEFS (“Google Earth Flight Simulator”). It’s an incredible program, with a variety of planes to choose from, real-time weather, and even allows you to see other pilots flying around you!
He’s just released another update to it, which features the following changes:
• User accounts, self moderation
• Instrumented cockpits
• Flight record/replay
• Autopilot
• PAPI
• Reworked aircraft 3D model
• Antonov An-140
• New user interface

You can read more about it on his blog, but your time would be better spent simply heading to his main site and flying!
Great work as always, Xavier.