DigitalGlobe, AEgis Technologies and NBC have combined forces and created a series of 3D models of the venues of the Beijing Olympics. This is a separate effort from the 3D models released recently by Google. They have created a special website to highlight this new 3D Beijing content which includes the ability to download some of the models in either Adobe 3D PDF, or KMZ files (currently only 1) suitable for viewing in Google Earth (NOTE: many of the buildings are already modeled in Google’s content, so turn off the 3D Buildings layer to make sure you’re looking at these versions).
Brady Forest at O’Reilly Radar posts details on the technology used to create these models. It’s a combination of satellite photos, elevation data, ground-based photography, and 3D building extraction from photos (photogrammetry). Microsoft uses a similar approach for their 3D buildings data for Virtual Earth, except they are using even higher resolution photos from aerial photography (also used for their Bird’s Eye imagery). My first thought is that this new DG/AEgis technology might be the technique used in Google’s new 3D buildings which started appearing with Google Earth 4.3 (see thoughts about this). However, if you look closely at the textures of the new buildings – it’s clear Google’s new buildings were done with aerial photography, not satellite (looking at reflections of buildings). One thing is clear, the ability to generate 3D buildings using more automated techniques – and making them available to the public – is definitely becoming more commonplace. It won’t be long before we all expect to see 3D cities rendered in our 3D maps.
digitalglobe
Myanmar Cyclone Data in Google Earth
[UPDATED May 9th: Google and other organizations have released many Myanmar visualizations for Google Earth including storm tracks, flooding data, and before/after satellite imagery. This post is being updated with the latest.]
Over the weekend, Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar as a category 4 storm with winds greater than 115 knots. The storms caused terrible flooding as well, and thousands of lives were lost. The UN Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) regularly creates maps to track disaster situations and has released a visualization for Google Earth 
showing the track and strength of the storm and the extent of flooding which resulted. via Google LatLong Blog.
Also, here are a couple of NASA satellite photos of the storm before it struck and as it was over Myanmar . via GEarthHacks and NASA.
Google provided a new KML showing an animation of Cyclone Nargis from the Naval Research Laboratory’s satellite imagery. You have to wait for each set of images to load (it takes a minute or two) before the animation plays smoothly. Also, adjust the animation speed for smoother playback (click on the clock icon on the left of the time slider). Google also linked to an NRL KML which shows more details during the timeline of the hurricane. via Google LatLong Blog.
HurricaneMapping.com sent me a Nargis KML which shows the track of the storm along with wind swaths, and details at various stages of the path.
Google has posted a new KML file which shows a variety of before and after Cyclone Nargis imagery of Myanmar. The imagery comes from a variety of sources including NASA, DigitalGlobe, and GeoEye/CRISP Singapore. You can clearly see the tremendous flooding which has caused the worst of the damage and fatalities from this storm.
As an aid to workers in Myanmar, Direct Relief International has released this KML file showing all of the Myanmar Ministry of Health facilities (over 700 sites) using data from the WHO 2002 Global Health Atlas survey. They used the spreadsheet mapper tool to make the collection.
Google Earth For Earth Day
Today is Earth Day. A time to sit back and think about our wonderful planet, and some of us will be out picking up some trash, or just enjoying nature. For those of you stuck inside due to weather, work, or other reasons – perhaps you might want to spend the day exploring our wonderful planet through the power of Google Earth. Here are a few links of stories from Google Earth Blog (GEB) describing environmental related content available for viewing in Google Earth:
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Environment Layers – Greenpeace,
ARKive (endangered species), Unicef (water and sanitation), UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) -
Rising Sea Levels – Animations showing what would happen if ice melting caused seas to rise too high – e.g. New York City.
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EPA Air Quality Report – US Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality report for Google Earth – called AirNOW
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International Polar Year – Collection of content for Google Earth about the Earth’s poles, and science projects ongoing to study the arctic environment. Part of the International Polar Year project.
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Sea Ice Melting – Dramatic animation of data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center showing ice extents from 1979 through March of 2008 on both poles. See other GE data from NSIDC.
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Google Earth Outreach Showcase – See environmental and science content for Google Earth.
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Amazon Indians Using Google Earth – Primitive indians learn to use GPS and Google Earth to help protect their rainforest – true story!
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Upper Green Valley – Issues of gas drilling impacting the environment in one location
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Neighborhood Fights Logging With Google Earth – Neighbors in Santa Cruz, California successfully stop a logging plan by using Google Earth. Read the full story.
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Blue Marble Add-On – This file lets you view a prettier image of the Earth from NASA for Google Earth. It shows the view of the Earth from space, with or without clouds, based on the current month. The clouds are closer to real time – updated every 15 minutes. The picture of the Earth and clouds disappear automatically as you get closer so you can see GE’s built in satellite imagery without interference.
Links: GE Lesson, GETools, Microsoft KML, 3D Bridges, Royal Australian 3D, EPA Award
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Stonehenge GE Lesson – Noel Jenkins has released another well-prepared school lesson which involves Google Earth – this one is about Stonehenge. via Noel’s JuicyGeography blog.
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GETools – Brian Flood – author of the excellent Arc2Earth tools for GIS folks, is working on some new tools for working with Google Earth. He’s working to turn the tools into a product which he’s calling GETools. He has been developing various ways to interact with Google Earth through its little-known API (which also hasn’t seen a lot of development by Google). Based on some demonstration videos he has released, the tools will enable some pretty cool functions. My favorite is the implementation allowing draggable directions to work inside Google Earth (I believe he’s leveraging the Google Maps API to perform the same function in Google Earth – which Google hasn’t done themselves!). I’m looking forward to seeing these tools released Brian!
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Microsoft Maps KML Better Than Google Maps – KML was recently approved as an international standard by OGC. But, KML is already reaching wide acceptance in the geospatial visualization world. In fact, it appears Microsoft’s implementation for KML in their 2D version of Virtual Earth is better than Google Maps’ implementaiton of KML. And, it’s true. I’ve tested it myself. Google Maps does not show large KML files with lots of vector data. But, Microsoft’s recent update to Virtual Earth handles them just fine. Google thinks this is a good thing because they are excited to see KML reach broader implementations.
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3D Bridges – Gerardo Paz of Buenos Aires, Argentina (who translates GEB to Spanish) is also a 3D modeler, and he has posted some excellent 3D models of bridges in Argentina. Notice how he has even edited the underlying imagery to remove the aerial photo of the bridges while replacing them with 3D. You can see all four bridges here
in GE. Here’s a collection of other bridges found in 3D Warehouse. -
Royal Australian 3D – The Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) has released a layer featuring hundreds of unique buildings and structures in Australia. This is similar to the layer for GE released last year by the American Institute of Architects. In the RAIA layer
, each placemark contains photos and details of each site and links to more information. In addition, they have modeled 60 of their favorite structures and uploaded them to the Google 3D Warehouse, so you can easily choose and download them for viewing in Google Earth. I do wish their layer of placemarks highlighted the locations with the 3D models with a different placemark icon and provided a link in the placemarks to download the models. In fact, I sent that as a suggestion. See the Google post about this new content, and the RAIA web page. -
EPA Award – The US Environmental Protection Agency has given an environmental award to Terradex for its development of a Google Earth network link called AirWatch
that dynamically shows air quality for the US (and the UK, China, and Mexico City – see post). This work inspired the development of the EPA’s AirNow application for Google Earth. See details from Google about the award announcement.
More Thoughts on Google Earth 4.3 (beta)
It’s been over 24 hours now, and many thousands of people have had a chance to download the first beta release of Google Earth 4.3. Read GEB’s first impressions for screenshots and see the GEB video demonstration. Here are some more observations about GE 4.3, including other new features, and some problems reported with the new release (some of which GEB readers have pointed out in the comments to earlier posts):
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Streaming indicator – the old horizontal streaming indicator which showed the progress of images loading for the current view has been replaced with a small circular streaming “clock”-like indicator. The old one actually showed a numerical percentage. The new one does not. While I understand the desire to not waste the screen with too much information, I would rather have the option to use the old indicator, or have an option to at least show the numerical percentage.
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Imagery dates – When you move your mouse over imagery, Google will show the dates in the lower right – if dates are available. Google says the dates may only be approximate. And, some of the sources of the imagery did not provide date information. Most of the DigitalGlobe satellite imagery have dates, and are more accurate. I’m quite surprised the Spot Image imagery doesn’t have dates though. Perhaps they are blends of several dates like the Landsat imagery?
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Mac Flash Support – and Bug – Google has added a frequently requested capability to 4.3 to also support Flash applications inside placemarks, as was done for Windows in 4.2. This means you can now view YouTube videos, and other flash apps on the Mac as well. However, there is a bug with YouTube videos on the Mac. Once you start playing a video, you have to double-click to get the buttons to work (like Pause, the slider, etc.). This needs to be fixed!
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Mac Atmosphere – The new atmosphere on the Mac is too bright, and obscures the view of the Earth. The transparency/brightness needs to be turned down so it looks like the Windows version when viewed on the same screen.
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3D Buildings – As I’ve previously said, the performance in 4.3 is much better than with 4.2. However, some people have reported things are slower. I think this has to do with the increase in the number of 3D buildings, or it may be graphics driver issues (make sure to update your graphics drivers). Older graphics cards are going to be slower with more 3D buildings even with the improvements. After testing on several differently aged computers, my tests show 4.3 to be faster in all cases for 3D buildings with comparable numbers of buildings (most of my computers tend to have faster than average 3D cards though). By the way, I would really like to know how Google acquired several complete cities in 3D with photo textures: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Oakland, Phoenix, Raleigh, San Francisco – and there may be more (anyone find any others?). Some of these buildings even appear in Tokyo. These are not in the 3D Warehouse – if you put your mouse over these 3D buildings they don’t highlight. It appears the cities may have been at least partially automatically generated. Hamburg also has lots of 3D buildings, but these came from an earlier release from the city itself. One last thing, many new cities also have “gray buildings” (without photo textures) in the new release. [UPDATE – See Google’s post about the new 3D buildings.]
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Sunlight – I generally like the sunlight in this version. It’s obviously designed to make things look nicer in Google Earth, as opposed to accurately portraying the sun and lighting accurately. If that’s the intent, then I wish the atmospheric effects would show more orange and reds when at sunsets/sunrises. There have been reports with some people not getting the expected behavior with the new lighting. It appears there are some graphics driver, or video card incompatibilities with this beta release. If you’re having these problems, make sure to report them at the Google Earth Support Forum. Google has been really good at making GE run on a wide variety of platforms and video cards.
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Placemarks – This release of Google Earth appears to have a complete re-write of the placemark description bubbles (probably required in order to enable Flash support for the Mac). Some people using less common browsers have reported problems when following links that they don’t open in their browser (e.g. Maxthon).
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Flight Simulator – The Flight Simulator is no longer an “easter egg”. It is now enabled as soon as you install 4.3. Look under the Tools menu for “Enter Flight Simulator…“. Follow GEB’s Flight Simulator tips for how to use it, or read the new Flight Simulator instructions in the GE User Guide. via UsingGoogleEarth blog.
Regarding beta releases: For Google Earth 4.2, Google only released one beta version before releasing the final version. GE 4.0 had several beta releases before the final version. There are several reports now of things needing fixing for this release – I’m sure Google will take all the reports and implement fixes as quickly as possible. If you’ve got a problem not reported elsewhere, report it at the Support Forum.
Over all, I think this release has some very nice new features. There are several things I would still like to see added in a future version of Google Earth, but the one I want most is: a new user interface for the layers (the current interface makes it too hard to find and use good layers). Google Earth has some really great data, but many people don’t realize the data is there. Plus, Google is constantly moving the layers around trying to help, but that means those of us who use it every day have re-learn the locations. Not only that, those of us who blog about layers have to re-edit old posts to point to the new locations – which is a real pain (I still have dozens I’m sure which point to old layer locations).
Stefan at OgleEarth has some thoughts and ruminations about this release. As I stated in my comments to his post, I think Google Earth’s strength is its ability to share useful information, but also be able to produce beautiful views of the Earth as well. The new features in 4.3 focused on making it look good (new atmosphere, sunlight, and better 3D buildings) are just as important in my opinion as functional features like showing dates for the imagery. They all contribute to its popularity, and usefulness for different applications (whether scientific, presentational, or even artistic).