Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


gps tracks

Happy Christmas with Google Earth directions

Yesterday we had a look at the work of Japanese GPS artist Yassan. We contacted him to ask about getting his routes in KML format. He was unable to release the ‘Peace on Earth’ route featured yesterday, as it still needs to be verified by Guinness World Records, but has kindly shared some of his previous work:

Although Yassan actually travels the routes used to create his artwork, it gave us the idea that one can actually create similar artwork using Google Earth’s directions. So, Happy Christmas to all our GEB readers with the help of Google Earth and Google’s directions service:

You can view it in Google Earth with this KML file

PEACE on Earth message using GPS

Back in 2010 Japanese GPS artist Yassan (also known as Yasushi Takahashi) wrote the world’s largest marriage proposal by travelling around Japan while recording his GPS track. He holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Largest GPS drawing by an individual’. We have, however, previously looked at the work of Nick Newcomen, whose GPS writing was even bigger.

Now, with the help of Japan Airlines Yassan has out done himself and Nick Newcomen by using GPS tracks to literally write the word ‘PEACE’ on the Earth.

For more of Yassan’s GPS artwork see his website.

We were not able to find a source of Yassan’s work in KML format, but Nick Newcomen’s can be found here.

The World’s Largest Marriage Proposal

Back in 2006 we looked at a few marriage proposals visible in satellite imagery. Then in 2008 we saw a marriage proposal in Street View.

Tokyo artist, Yassan lays claim to the world’s largest marriage proposal written using GPS tracks shown in Google Earth.

You can see some of his work here and watch a YouTube video about him below:

Yassan is not the only person to think of writing with GPS tracks. Nick Newcomen created some even bigger writing by this method, which we looked at in 2010.

Read Ayn Rand

Here is a pretty funny story — Nick Newcomen apparently had some free time on his hands, so he drove 12,238 across 30 states with a GPS logger to “write” a message for all to see:

read-ayn-rand.jpg

You can read the full story over on Gizmodo, but it appears that Nick was a pretty big Ayn Rand fan.
To see it for yourself, you can view it on his site
or download the KML file to view it in Google Earth.