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Advanced Historical Imagery Tour Maker with the Google Earth API

June 8, 2016

There are several different ways to automate animated historical imagery that we have explored in the past.

The first, and easiest, is to use a Google Earth Tour that simply changes the date by a given increment at a set frequency. So you could, for example, change the date by one month every second. In this post we presented some JavaScript to help with creating such tours. The main disadvantage of this technique is that Google Earth’s historical imagery is not regular and so you end up with periods of no imagery changes, and some skipped images. The technique does have the advantage of accurately representing the passage of time.

The second technique is to obtain the list of imagery dates using the Google Earth API and then use a tour to change the date, showing each existing image at a given frequency. This results in an animation that shows all the images in a given time range. We presented a tool for doing this in this post.

An outstanding problem that occurs with both techniques, is that Google Earth imagery is often not the best quality so you get an animation that includes some images with excessive cloud cover or updates that only cover part of the area of interest and do not look good. In addition, if you are trying to show change over time, you may not want images that are too close together in time if no significant differences can be seen between them. When we manually create animations for the blog we choose each image to include.

Some time ago we created a tool for creating Google Earth Tours that include or exclude images of your choice. We created it at the time the Google Earth API was expected to be shut down, so we chose not to share it. However, Google has so far kindly kept the Google Earth API alive, so we think people may find it useful.

It requires a browser that supports the Google Earth API, which, as far as we know is only Firefox. So, you will need to open this post in Firefox, and click ‘Activate Google Earth’ and then ‘Allow and Remember’ in the popup.

Instructions

To begin, zoom in to the location where you want to create the animation. Then click ‘Get dates’. The tool will obtain the list of dates available for that location. Note that for locations with a large number of images, this may take a bit of time.

For most animations, you will want to start the animation at a specific point in time. Go to the date you wish to start at in the Google Earth plugin, then click ‘Set first date’. This will exclude all dates before this date.

Now go through each image deciding whether to include it in your animation or not. You can either select images with the plugin or use the ‘Next’ button to cycle through images. If you definitely want an image, click ‘Include date’, if you definitely do not want an image, click ‘Exclude date’. The tool has two modes. You can choose to select specific dates to include in your animation, or select specific dates to exclude. If you are only removing a few images, then the latter mode is easier.

Once you have gone through the imagery you can see how it will look by clicking the ‘Play’ button. If you are satisfied with the results, set speed of the animation by adjusting ‘Step’ which is the time between frames, then click ‘Download Tour’. You can now open the downloaded file in Google Earth and play the tour.

(warning! clears included and excluded lists)

     loop.    Step (milliseconds):


Use ‘includes’ only
Use ‘includes’ and ‘dates available’

Included dates Dates available Excluded dates

Filed Under: GE Plugin Tagged With: Google Earth plugin, historical imagery, tours

Find imagery by date with the Google Earth API

December 11, 2015

We were recently considering looking for imagery in Google Earth that shows Christmas trees or other Christmas related display. In order to do this we need to find imagery captured on, or around, Christmas. The best way to do this is with the Google Earth API. So we thought it would be a good opportunity to show off the usefulness of the Google Earth API before Google shuts it down (most likely sometime early next year).

So we created this Google Earth API based tool that helps find imagery captured on a specific day of the year or within a date range.

To use it, you first need to load it in a browser, such as Firefox, that still supports the Google Earth API. Depending on the browser, you may have to give explicit permission for the Google Earth plugin to run. Sometimes the Google Earth plugin does not automatically switch to ‘historical imagery’, so if you do not see the ‘historical imagery’ toolbar then try refreshing the page.

Next, select the date range you are interested in. Both dates are inclusive. Now zoom in to an area of interest. When you stop moving the view, the tool will look for imagery within the date range you selected and show the available dates. To actually find the imagery, select one of the available dates then click the ‘toggle’ button. The tool will switch between the selected date and the previous date, which should cause the image of interest to appear and disappear, making it easy to spot. Keep in mind that it may be near the edge of the view or even just off the edge. We also found that it can be very sluggish at times, especially over areas with a lot of imagery, or if you are zoomed out too far. Try zooming in a little bit if the toggle function has problems. Alternatively, or in combination with the above, you can move the viewport around and see when the date you are interested disappears or reappears.

Once you have identified an image you are interested in, you can click the “Open in Google Earth” button to download a KML file with the location you are currently looking at.

We have not done any thorough testing or added lots of features because the Google Earth API is coming to an end, so we do not expect this tool to see extensive use in the future. However, if you do find any bugs, let us know in the comments and we will try to fix them.

If you live in the northern hemisphere in a region that snows in the winter, you will probably not find any Christmas imagery for your area, as Google generally tries to avoid imagery with snow cover. Aerial imagery in particular is usually captured during summer. However, if there is a regular event that takes place in your area during the summer months, this tool may help you to find it in historical imagery.

Although the tool proved quite effective at finding imagery captured on Christmas day, we were unable to find anything relating to Christmas in the imagery, largely because the resolution of satellite imagery is a bit too low to make out enough detail. In addition, a lot of Christmas decorations are only highly visible at night. We found a number of images in Eastern Europe all captured on Christmas Day, 2013. For these and a few other locations we found download this KML file.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: Google Earth plugin

The Google Earth API gets a temporary reprieve

December 7, 2015

We recently received some good news. We heard from Google’s Earth team that the Google Earth API will not be shut down on December 12th, 2015 as previously announced but will be kept running a bit longer. We have been told it should remain active at least until the end of the year. This is great news for those of us who utilize it for various tasks. It doesn’t significantly affect most web applications that have depended on it, as they will eventually still have to seek alternative solutions.

Please note that we are talking about the Google Earth API, which is a way to display Google Earth in the browser and control it using JavaScript. Google Earth, both the desktop and mobile applications, are not going to be shut down at any point in the near future.

To celebrate the fact that the Google Earth API will still be active over Christmas we have decided to bring back the Google Earth version of Santa Tracker.

The original creators of the Google Earth Santa Tracker, Google and NORAD, parted ways a few years ago and created rival Santa Trackers that are web based and do not use either Google Earth or the Google Earth API. You can find their trackers here: Google Santa Tracker, NORAD Santa Tracker.

For more on the history of tracking Santa see this post from last year.

We will attempt to produce a Santa Tracker that will be available both via the Google Earth API and directly in Google Earth using network links.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: Google Earth plugin, santa tracker

Where next after the Google Earth API?

December 2, 2015

With the end of the Google Earth API imminent we are having a look at what various sites that depend, or used to depend on the Google Earth API are doing about it. Earlier this year we did a showcase of sites that use the Google Earth API and we will have a look at a selection of those sites.

The first is Rally Navigator. It is a comprehensive online application for creating rally road books, which are a set of instructions used by rally drivers and their co-pilots to map out a course and know what is coming next at each turn of the road. Knowing that the Google Earth API was coming to an end, the developers of Rally Navigator redesigned it to use Google Maps instead. Although it now lacks 3D effects we do not believe it has lost any essential features as a result of the conversion and has gained more features with time. So if you are a rally driver (or co-pilot) then you should definitely check it out. It has both free and paid for versions.

Next up is GETeach. This site was converted to use Google Maps even before we reviewed it earlier this year, but they left the Google Earth version online and it can still be found here. GETeach is designed to use as much screen space as possible for the maps, which leaves very little space for menus or other information telling you what it does. So the first thing you should do is view the help page to get an idea of its features and how to access them.

We do feel that the loss of the Google Earth API in this case does mean the loss of a lot of useful features that simply cannot be replaced by Google Maps, notably the loss of historical imagery and 3D imagery. Although Google Maps does have 3D imagery, it is not accessible via the Google Maps API as is used for this site. Even with the loss of the Google Earth API, however, it is still a great site and would be very useful in the classroom, so be sure to check it out.

Next is Flightradar24, a flight tracking website that shows the live locations of flights around the globe. It used to have a 3D view, which used the Google Earth plugin to show a model of an aircraft in the correct location on its route. They currently have a message stating that due to the demise of the Google Earth plugin, they are currently working on a replacement 3D experience. We will have to wait till they are done to see how it compares to the old Google Earth API experience.

Last but not least is GEFS Online, a popular flight simulator based on the Google Earth API. As far as we can tell, no significant development work has been done on the site for quite some time, with the last blog entry being nearly two years old. We can only guess that there are no current plans to move to an alternative platform and that the site will die along with the Google Earth API.

Filed Under: GE Plugin Tagged With: flightradar24, GE Teach, gefs, Google Earth plugin, rally navigator

Wild Dogs and the Google Earth API

November 23, 2015

We recently came across this interesting article about how researchers have created a land cover map of East Africa, differentiating the areas with human land cover vs areas that remain natural. The map will be useful for studying many different species of wildlife in the area, but it has already proved useful in the study of African Wild Dogs.

The map was created using a tool called GE Grids created by Andy Stanish and available here. It creates a grid over a specified area and you can select or de-select squares in the grid. So, for the East Africa map in the article above researchers looked at the satellite imagery and selected areas that showed signs of human habitation or land use. Very simple but remarkably useful. This highlights the usefulness of the Google Earth API, which Google plans to shut down next month. In this particular case the tool does not use historical imagery or other features unique to Google Earth, so it would be relatively easy to convert the tool to use Google Maps instead. However, there are plenty of other applications and tools out there which will have no real alternative after the Google Earth API comes to an end.

Filed Under: GE Plugin, Site News Tagged With: Google Earth plugin

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