Google Earth 5 introduced a powerful new feature called “Record Tour“. In its basic mode it lets you hit a record button and record actions in Google Earth so you can share what you see. You can also record voice over narration with your tours. The Tour function is even more powerful if you delve into the Tour documentation, and much more powerful if you learn how to program Tours in the KML directly.
Richard Treves has been reviewing the new Tour functionality from a user perspective as a design specialist. He has made several posts commenting on the good and bad of the new Tour function in GE 5 (see his posts: one, two, three). In his last post, he adds historical imagery changes to a tour. Richard compares one of his tour to the tour I generated during my first review of GE 5’s Tour function.
From a developer perspective, Brian Flood of Arc2Earth makes some interesting comments about the power of the Tour function in GE 5. He notes that you can have independent camera track and focus points (like a cinematographer), and you can control the speed of playback as well. Not only that, but he comments that he’s considering making a new application to produce more sophisticated tours. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with based on his excellent work with Arc2Earth.
Tours
Jimmy Buffet Helps Announce Google Earth 5
If only I had known – I might have changed my plans and made my way to the Google Earth 5 launch. They actually had Jimmy Buffet help make the GE 5 announcement. Probably the most liked musician by sailors around the world, Jimmy Buffet is a legend. Did I mention before that I’m a sailor? Appropriately enough, Jimmy was helping launch Google Earth 5 in large part because of the new features for the oceans. They created a special recorded tour which you can play back with Google Earth 5 which gives a tour of Hawaii and Jimmy Buffet’s upcoming concert tour there. In the background is a classic Jimmy Buffet song as you fly around the islands and swoop through the oceans.
Check out the Jimmy Buffet recorded tour
(with Google Earth 5, 8 Mbytes). Once it loads in GE 5, double click on “Jimmy’s Tour” to start it. Make sure you turn up your sound for the music!
Google Earth 5 – Initial Reactions
Google Earth 5 was released on Monday February 2nd. Overall, it appears the reaction globally has been very positive. Lots of excitement over the four major new features: Ocean, Recorded Tours, Historical Imagery, and Mars. Many other significant features have been discovered in the last two days especially for developers.
Here are some notes on initial reactions so far to Google Earth 5:
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Installation – There have been some discussions in the past about the Google Earth installation process. When installing Google Earth (and many other Google applications), Google has been installing an application called “Google Updater” which runs on your machine in the background checking periodically for updates. It will automatically notify you when an update is available and give you the choice of installing updates. This applies to both Windows and the Mac versions of Google Earth now. Now, when you first download Google Earth from their web site, it notifies you about the application. Some people would prefer to just download the application itself and install it themselves. Overall, there have been few reports I’ve seen with other installation problems (considering the number of people installing GE).
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New User Interface – Google has made some changes to the look compared to GE 5. The most obvious being new buttons at the top, and new sliders for time animation, historical imagery, and record tours. I’ve seen some positive reactions to the more “Mac-like” look on the Mac. There haven’t been any wide-spread complaints to date on the other changes.
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Historical Imagery – Probably the strongest general user reaction has been over the historical imagery. People are literally “wowed” by the ability to turn back the clock and look at places over time from an aerial perspective. But, I’ve also heard strong reactions in many other areas. Here are some highlights:
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Mars – probably the second-most popular addition is the Mars mode. This new feature seemed to surprise a lot of people. There have been other Mars virtual globes (WorldWind and Celestia). But, the new Google Mars has a lot of nice features and is rich with annotations, imagery, 3D terrain, and photos. I know several people in the space program who are thrilled with this new popular tool for Mars.
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Ocean – The most-anticipated new feature has also been very popular. Many people are thrilled to see such a popular application help raise awareness about the world’s oceans and some of the threats to the ocean environment. I hope lots of people will go beyond the 3D bathymetry and explore the new “Ocean” layers which contain very important information about overfishing, rapidly melting ice at the poles, man-made environmental threats, and other issues facing the oceans. See this nice CNN story about the new GE 5’s Ocean data.
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Recorded Tours – There are new tours coming out which are beginning to show the power of Recorded Tours. Anyone can make a recorded tour, but developers have new features that enable some amazing ways to demonstrate Google Earth to people. I’m expecting this will end up being the most used new feature in GE 5. Google also had Jimmy Buffet show up at their announcement and they produced a tour showing Jimmy Buffet’s concert tour!
For Google Earth developers, here are a few reactions:
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Changes to KML – to enable some of the new features in GE 5, Google had to make extensions to the standard KML. However, some have expressed concerns that Google has done this, saying it will be harder for other companies to adopt the standard if Google changes it. Google has heavily documented the changes, they say they’ve used provisions provided by the KML standard to make changes. And, they’ve updated libkml for the new features. I would expect they would like to see these new extensions become a part of the standard in a future update.
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Internal Browser – Google has improved the support of browser features in placemarks. You can now include iFrames, and most other features in placemarks. This means you can have more sophisticated HTML content and user interfaces inside Google Earth. I expect there will be some powerful new ways to interact with Google Earth as developers get a chance to take advantage of this new capability. One example is the new Mars easter egg with Meliza.
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Altitude Mode – there have been some concerns expressed about being able to render KML undersea (see discussion in comments to this post). Some files seem to work just fine, but developers are asking questions about the implementation.
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Record Tour – Lots of excitement by developers with the new Record Tour. Many of us have been waiting for some type of “scripted” capability to share experiences and show things to people with Google Earth. Many developers have lauded the new features and shown a lot of excitement about the possibilities. I’m sure there will be some initial issues as this is a new feature. But, I’m sure Google will listen and address shortcomings in future updates. Expect to see a lot from developers using this new powerful feature.
Developers should also make sure to check out these posts: (GEB, OgleEarth 1, OgleEarth 2, GoogleGeoDeveloperBlog).
EveryTrail Supports New Tours for Google Earth 5
EveryTrail, the popular GPS track and geotagged photo site, has already announced support for the new tour option in Google Earth 5 (obviously they were beta testers). EveryTrail already has a layer in Google Earth. Now, they offer the ability for folks to upload recorded tours showing off their EveryTrail travel logs.
In their announcement EveryTrail listed several examples. But, my favorite was the one of a hike up Half Dome in Yosemite Park, California. (I made the same hike many years ago). All you need to do is have Google Earth 5 installed, and then load their Half Dome Tour
(UPDATE: You must be logged in on EveryTrail to load the KMZ now). Once it loads, double-click on the “half-dome-tour” recorded tour and it will start flying you through the hike and show you photos along the way. Awesome! Users could also add voice narration over the tours if they wanted.
Tips for Developers with Google Earth 5.0
Here are some useful places to go for tips with the new Google Earth 5. Google Earth 5 has some powerful new capabilities. Some of the most powerful features will only be initially accessible to developers. Here are a list of places to look for help (so far):
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KML Documentation – Note updates marked with “New” for new features like the powerful Touring options in GE 5.
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GE 5 Specific Tips – Virgil of EarthNC.com is collecting some tips on his experiences with new KML features in GE 5. You can see his example of Hawaii here.
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Google Geo Developers Blog – Here is the first post about the new KML features. Lots of interesting things noted in a small space: New browser capability in placemarks (found by Barry Hunter below), better control over time animations in KML, and a new libkml.
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libkml – This is an increasingly more powerful set of capabilities for KML developers. Updated on Monday – does it support new KML extensions?
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More browser in Placemarks – Barry Hunter discovers placemarks have more web power in GE 5.
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New KML extensions – Brian Flood talks about how Google has extended KML with new features and gives demos.
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Other interesting stuff – Stefan Geens rounds up all kinds of interesting details on GE 5.
And, of course, keep an eye out here at GEB for occasional round-ups of new content created by developers for GE.
By the way, check out Virgil’s example of putting nautical charts onto the ocean floor in GE 5.
And, there’s also some cool new KML for GE 5 from Brian Flood in his post showing underwater bathymetry and oil/gas pipelines under the sea.
Valery Hronusov has posted some cool new GE 5 KML that shows terrain features on Mars and vector terrain features under the sea (Russian site, but the KML/KMZ’s work fine).