steven ho

A Google Earth tour of Scott Jurek running the Appalachian Trail

June 15, 2015

We have looked at Steven Ho’s work a number of times before. My personal favourite was his Flying around with Blue Magpie Tea in Taiwan.

Ultramarathon runner Scott Jurek is currently running the Appalachian Trail, a distance of 2,189 miles (3,522 km). According to his Facebook page he recently passed the 800 mile mark (1,287 km). But to really put those numbers into perspective play this Google Earth tour that Steven Ho has created showing the route. Read more about it and why he created it on Steven’s blog.

When the tours starts it seems to quick until you realise just how long the route really is.

The Google Earth tour feature is a very underutilized feature of Google Earth. We wish there were more people creating Google Earth tours.

Steven has also created a more detailed map of the journey using the Google Earth plugin. However, as he notes in his blog, it is getting increasingly difficult to view Google Earth plugin content. In Google Chrome you actually have to change a special setting to allow the plugin, and even then it puts a warning message at the top of the page saying “This site uses a plugin (Google Earth) that will soon be unsupported.”.

Google Earth plugin showcase: Trans Taiwan Ultra-Marathon

April 1, 2015

This is the thirteenth in our series showcasing the Google Earth plugin. Today’s story demonstrates that although the Google Earth plugin has been deprecated it is still very much a working product and can be used for projects that do not need to be kept alive beyond its expiry date of December 12, 2015. The biggest downside is that most browsers nowadays require you to allow the plugin to run, which may put off your website visitors.

Today we are looking at a project from Steven Ho, whose excellent work we have looked at many times in the past. He has created a set of Google Earth tours for the 2015 Trans Taiwan Ultra-Marathon which can be viewed here using the Google Earth plugin.

In addition to a map of the route and tours of each leg of the race, when the race is in progress the live positions of some of the runners is displayed. This is achieved via an app on their cell phones. We have noticed that even during a leg of the race, not all racers are on the track, suggesting that some have either dropped out, or lent their cell phones to other people. He has also included the option to see ‘rabbits’ which are a set of markers used to indicate the minimum pace expected of the runners. Read more about it here.

The race has been running since the 28th of March and continues until this Saturday April 4th, 2015. Each leg starts at 6 am Taiwan time.

Runners waiting to start a leg of the race.

A leg of the race in progress.

For those wishing to view the tours directly in Google Earth rather than via the plugin, Steven has also provided a KMZ file to download.

3D Fireworks in Google Earth

December 31, 2014

By the time you read this, it will already be 2015 in the Line Islands of Kiribati, as it is the first location on Earth to celebrate the new year. It is an interesting fact about the peculiarities of the dateline, that London, Kiribati (GMT+14), will celebrate its New Year before Alofi, Niue (GMT-11), begins its New Year’s Eve. For more on the oddities of the world’s time zones, see this YouTube video on the subject.

Here at GEB we have been celebrating the new year with virtual fireworks since January 2011, when Steven Ho, whose work we have featured a number of times, created an animation of the 2011 Taipei 101 fireworks as a Google Earth tour.

View it in Google Earth by downloading this KML file.

Flying around with Blue Magpie Tea in Taiwan

September 17, 2014

Over the years we’ve seen some great files come from Steven Ho, such as his panorama from the top of Mount Everest, his tribute to Steve Jobs and his Trip View Bowl visualization. He’s back with another one, which follows the path of a blue magpie as it flies along the Xindieng River, to promote eco-friendly tea farms.

The unique part of this is the way he controls the camera during the flight. Steven says it was quite challenging to control the perspective like a movie scene. If you just keep the bird in the same position on the screen the results are inferior. So he has the camera move around the bird to get different perspectives, with the bird even going off camera for brief periods. Also, to get the bird to appear properly in Google Earth he enlarged it several hundred times, which has the added benefit of making it easier to control the perspective.

You can try it for yourself by loading this KML file, or read the full write-up on his blog.

Great work, Steven!

Qihou Lighthouse 360 panoramo & Kaohsiung 3D City Tour

May 5, 2014

Over the years we’ve seen some great work from Steven Ho, including items such as Taiwan from Above, a panorama from the top of Mount Everest, a tribute to Steve Jobs and many other items.

Steven recently visited the Qihou lighthouse and wanted to build a new model of it, but was faced with a dilemma. You’re unable to upload new models onto Google Earth, since they’re instead simply using the 3D Imagery to show new models. The option would be to disable all 3D buildings to allow him to show only his building, but having surrounding 3D is quite useful. Steven’s solution was to create his new building using additional 3D terrain to show the lighthouse (and make it more accurate), effectively hiding the old model and allowing him to leave the other models turned out. The result works very well!

He also created a tour of nearby Kaohsiung using a massive image that he shot from on the lighthouse itself. You can grab this KMZ file to view the lighthouse, this KMZ file to view the city or head over to this blog entry to read more about the entire project.

Great work, Steven!