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The new Google Maps is going live for all

February 24, 2014

Last May, Google unveiled a new version of Google Maps with many new features, including native support for Google Earth. The new version of Google Maps has been an optional upgrade for users, but now they’ve announced that the new version will be rolling out for all users in the coming weeks.

The updated maps that they’re rolling out now is very similar to what they unveiled last May, with a lot of minor improvements and tweaks. This video from last year gives a nice overview of what you can expect to see:

Now that all users are being moved to the new Maps, what do you think of it? It’s certainly a drastic change, but seems to be a change for the better. What are your thoughts?

Google’s new “Project Tango”

February 21, 2014

Google has just unveiled a new initiative known as “Project Tango” that has the potential to reshape many areas of our lives. This new combination of hardware and software could be of huge benefit to vision-impaired humans, but could also drastically change the state of indoor 3D modeling.

To this point, there have been two ways to view the interior of buildings with Google Earth. We’ve seen a few examples of interior 3D models, which have been very cool but very seldom (and seemingly going away). The other direction Google has gone is with interior Street View imagery, which they continue to rapidly expand upon. Project Tango looks to be an interesting combination of both, using some amazing technology. Here is a quick video to show you what it’s about:

It’ll be quite a while before we see this technology integrated into our devices, but the potential is amazing. In the meantime, if you’re a developer that would like to begin working with Project Tango, fill out the form at the bottom of the main Project Tango to be considered for one of their 200 prototype dev kits. They hope to release the dev kits next month.

What do you think of Project Tango? Amazing potential, or just a fun idea that’s going nowhere?

Using Google Earth to predict light conditions

February 7, 2014

Google Earth can be a great tool to help plan outdoor photography sessions, but Ben Wilmore takes it a step further and uses some of the tools in Google earth to plan outdoor photography based on the anticipated light conditions at a specific time and location.

Similar to the photorealistic atmosphere that we showed you last year, Ben uses the [View] –> “Sun” option to anticipate shadows in areas he may want to photograph. The resulting view can be quite useful.

To take it further, Ben has created a great video showing you exactly how he uses it:

Check out his full article to learn more. Great work, Ben!

More ways to teach math with Google Earth

February 6, 2014

Last year we showed you a great article from Katrina Schwartz about how you can use Google Earth to teach math. A recent article on Techno-Rebel posted a similar idea, but from a slightly different angle. Instead of fairly complex questions like Katrina shared (“map the 22 Iditarod checkpoints and had students calculate the time it takes their mush team to get to each stop”), the ones on Techno-Rebel are aimed at a younger audience. For example, one is “If Disneyland were a clock, what shape would you see at 5:00?”:

To take it further, they’ve created a short video that shows more examples:

The video includes a handful of neat ideas to help make learning more interactive. Check out their full article to see more.

Animating a model aircraft along a spline curve

January 29, 2014

Around a year ago Paul van Dinther shared a cubic spline curve that identified a path through the Grand Canyon.

Colin Hazlehurst (who has created items such as Captain James Cook’s exploration of Australia) was working on software to animate model aircraft in Google Earth and thought it would be an interesting exercise to make his Spirit of St Louis model fly along Paul’s curve.

This KMZ file shows this in action, and illustrates the following (in Colin’s words):

The model moves in turn to each set of coordinates (longitude, latitude, and altitude) defining the LineString. The duration of each AnimatedUpdate is determined by calculating the distance between points and dividing this by the pre-set speed of the model.
The roll and tilt of the model are calculated from the changes in heading and altitude respectively between successive pairs of coordinates.
A Camera ‘follows’ the model with a pre-determined offset, defined in terms of heading, range, and tilt relative to the model. These values identify the location of the Camera, but the Camera also has a tilt setting which varies according to the pitch of the model; if the model is climbing, the camera tilt is reduced; if the model is descending the camera tilt is increased. This has worked fairly well in this instance, but I notice that at one point the Camera bounces off the wall of the canyon. This might happen when you view the kmz, and I would suggest trying different aspect ratios (width to height) of the Google Earth window.

I thought at first it wouldn’t look right to fly a model aircraft along a spline curve; it didn’t seem to be the way that aircraft flew. I realise now that this was because my first experiments drew splines on too large a scale, with many miles between interpolation points. Paul’s curve is on a much smaller scale, making for correspondingly small adjustments to the flightpath.

Along with the file above, you can also watch this YouTube video to see it in action. Nice work, Colin!