The amazing things about Google Earth
By now, you’ve likely heard about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As a post on TreeHugger reveals, NASA has released some aerial imagery of the spill.
(via Google Earth Hacks), or view the high-res JPG here.
Upon reviewing the GEB archives it appears I missed writing about this one even though I’ve used it for over a year. The same guy who implemented Globe Glider (a useful Windows application for integrating mapping tools with GE), ‘BernhardMuc’ at the GEC, also released another handy tool. Bernhard posted a way to view Google Maps street maps as transparent images seamlessly overlayed automatically in Google Earth. As you change your view, it reloads a proper zoom level of Google Maps. One example of why this network link is useful is to view detailed map data for countries like Australia and New Zealand which have great roads data in Google Maps, but the data hasn’t been ported to GE yet. The maps also show things like parks, lakes, rivers, and tourist sites as well. I think this is a handy thing worth keeping in your “My Places” and turning on when you need a map-like perspective, but still in 3D. (Tip: you can adjust the transparency by changing the parameter in the network link from &TRANS=80 to 100 – no transparency, 0 – fully transparent)
I believe it started today with this blog entry at The Map Room, but suddenly there is a resurgence of interest in generating topographical maps in Google Earth. I’ve spoken about techniques for doing this in the past (here and here). However, let me share the easiest way to view US Topographical maps in Google Earth. This is a portion of a network link created by a company called 3D Solar which does USGS Topographical Overlays automatically. You just zoom in to an area of interest, wait for five seconds, and suddenly you have an overlay of a topo map. Just turn off the “USGSO topo maps” network link when you are finished using it. I recommend saving this one in your “My Places” for future use. For the full 3D Solar collection of network links (which also includes weather, NASA MODIS satellite images, and Landsat overlays as well), check out this GEC forum post.
Creating accurately scaled and placed image overlays from other mapping and satellite photo resources is not always a simple process. GPSVisualizer.com has just released yet another tool for Google Earth allowing you to automatically create such image overlays. The form will automatically locate and overlay the map or image you choose and allows you to choose the resolution of the resulting image. For adding a topographical map, or adding better resolution for areas with lower resolution satellite photos, this can be a valuable tool. Here is a link to the image overlay form. The screenshot here is a topographical map of Kitt Peak overlayed over the mountain using the GPSVisualizer form.
What’s interesting is the…
Google was given permission to provide overlays from a Monday night assessment of damage done by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This overlay shows the areas FEMA has assessed so far for flooded areas, light damage to catastrophic damage in a graphical fashion. You can download the overlays here or read the Google Earth team’s post here.
NOTE: Google says you may need a more recent graphics card or at least more recent graphics drivers for this to work properly.
