Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


7.1

The photorealistic atmosphere in Google Earth 7.1

The release of Google Earth 7.1 brought with it a number of nice enhancements, including the new starry sky, but the best-looking might just be the new experimental “photorealistic atmosphere” option, seen here:

atmosphere

(screen capture submitted by Dimitris Manias)

It looks amazing!

The new feature is still being tested and may be a bit buggy, but can be enabled on your computer right now if you go to [Tools] –> [Options] –> “Use photorealistic atmosphere rendering“.

To get a view similar to the image above, you need to do a few things.  First, of course, enable the photorealistic atmosphere.  Next, you’ll need to turn on the sun by using the [View] –> “Sun” option (or by clicking the sun icon at the top of the screen).  Lastly, to enable the sun to reflect on the water you’ll need to have the water surface enabled by going to [View] –> “Water Surface“.

Here are a few more screenshots taken using the technique above.  Wow!

Google Earth 7.1 released; adds support for Leap Motion

Google Earth 7.1 has just been released!  Among the many bug fixes and enhancements is native support for the Leap Motion controller, due out in the coming months.  We discussed it earlier this year as possibly an excellent controller for Google Earth, and their latest video has me even more excited — check it out!

As for other enhancements in Google Earth 7.1, they’re mostly found in the latest version of Google Earth Pro.  The two new capabilities over there include:

Map-Making: Create legends and scales and add titles to a map, directly from Google Earth Pro. You can also print your customized map or save it as an image. To conduct an environmental survey, for example, enhanced map-making tools let you highlight changes to land mass over time and document those changes directly in the map by adding a legend.

Viewshed: Identify and calculate viewpoints, measuring distances and visualizing potential views. For example, an architecture firm could use the viewshed tool to measure a view from a building or window without being physically on-site.

You can read about those enhancements on the Google Enterprise blog, or learn more about Google Earth 7.1 from this post on Google+.

To get a copy of Google Earth 7.1 for yourself, simply download it from their site.  Have fun!

After you have a chance to play with the new version, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it.