Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


street view

Turkey, Ukraine and Macedonia get Street View

Street View has been added to Turkey, Ukraine and Macedonia. The last major additions prior to this one were the Philippines and shortly before that some Kenyan parks. We saw some ‘historical Street View’ in Ukraine dated 2011, suggesting that there were political hurdles to cross before releasing Street View there.


Street View changes from September 16th, 2015 to October 20th, 2015. Changes are marked in red. Large version.


Quadcopter drone being flown in Istanbul, Turkey.


Rumelihisarı fortress, Istanbul, Turkey.


St Nicholas Cathedral, Kyiv, Ukraine.


Church of Saint Clement of Ohrid, Skopje, Macedonia.

To find the above locations in Google Earth, download this KML file.

Street View comes to the Philippines

Only a day after Google added Street View to some Kenyan parks they have also added Street View for the Philippines. Read more about it on Google’s Lat Long blog.

As can be seen below, there have also been additions in Indonesia. The red spots in India are most likely not proper Street View but rather user-submitted panoramas.


Street View changes between 15th and 16th September 2015.Changes are marked in Red. World map.

This time most of the blue outlines can be seen in Google Earth, so there is no difficulty locating the Street View. However, we did find some locations that had footage captured with the Trekker that did not have blue outlines. One such location is Mount Pulag, seen below.


Mount Pulag, Philippines. To view it in Google Earth download this KML file


A location known as Dinosaurs Island has animatronic dinosaurs. To view it in Google Earth download this KML file

Street View in Kenyan parks

Google has released Street View for Samburu National Reserve and Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. Read more about it on Google’s Lat Long Blog. Be sure to watch the YouTube video as it shows the Street View camera being put on a vehicle as well as mentioning their use of network links in Google Earth to view live tracking data.


Street View changes from July 25th, 2015 to September 15th, 2015. Changes are marked in red. Large version.

As you can see above, the biggest changes to Street View since we last looked at it have been expansions to the Street View in Argentina.

As we discussed in this post, Google Earth doesn’t always show the blue outlines for Street View and Tanzania is one such location. The Street View is there, however, as can be demonstrated by locating it in Google Maps and then using our Street View to KML converter to open it in Google Earth.


To see the above elephant in Google Earth download this KML file

Converting a Google Maps screenshot to Google Earth

Yesterday we looked at a problem with the Street View layer of Google Earth. We thought it would be interesting to compare the Street View coverage as shown in Google Earth with that shown in Google Maps. However, it is not very easy to compare them side by side due to the different formats.

So, we decided to finally try out something we have long considered doing but not got around to: get a screenshot of a Google Map into Google Earth. We started by capturing a screenshot of the current coverage of Street View in Google Maps at a resolution of 4096×4096 pixels using this file that uses the Google Maps API. Next, we took a screenshot using this screen capture plugin for Chrome.

Google Maps uses the Web Mercator Projection, but Google Earth overlays need to be in the Equirectangular Projection as we mentioned in this post. We found an open source library called GDAL that can convert between different map projections and using suggestions from this page on GIS StackExchange we were able to get our screen shot into the correct projection. We had to use the free image editing program GIMP to convert our initial screen shot to a tiff image, but apart from that there were no difficulties.

All that was left was to create a global overlay from the image and this is the result:

To try it out for yourself, download this KML file.

Also try adjusting the transparency of the image overlay as seen below:

The blue Street View layer

Thank you to GEB reader Chris for letting us know about a problem with the blue Street View layer. It appears that some locations that have Street View do not show the blue lines that normally appear when you use the ‘yellow man’ and hover it over the map.

The location Chris mentioned is Guam, an island in the Pacific. We did some experimenting and discovered an interesting trick to use with the Street View layer. To see the blue outlines, you need to zoom in until the ‘yellow man’ appears in the Google Earth controls. However, if you hover the ‘yellow man’ above the map, and don’t let go of the mouse button, it is possible to zoom back out using the ‘-‘ key and you will still see the blue outlines. We use a Space Navigator which makes it even easier. If you do have a Space Navigator or other controller you can trick Google Earth into keeping the Street View layer on by switching to another program (Alt-Tab in Windows, Command-Tab on Mac) while hovering the ‘yellow man’ over the map. When you switch back, as long as you don’t click anywhere on the map you can move around with the controller without the Street View layer turning off – although we have found this trick is a bit inconsistent and doesn’t always work.

We have seen in the past (Different Zoom – Different Imagery, Historical imagery and zoom) Google Earth shows different imagery depending on the zoom level. It turns out that the Street View layer is no exception and goes through distinct levels of detail as you zoom, very similar to the way it does in Google Maps.

We found that for the islands of Guam and neighbouring Northern Mariana Islands when zoomed in there is are no indications that they have Street View, but when you zoom nearly all the way out, they do show a patch of blue.


Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands (red arrow) do indicate the existence of Street View when zoomed nearly all the way out.


Zoom in a bit and the Daitō Islands(1) and the Ogasawara Islands(2) indicate they have Street View, but similarly sized Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands(3) do not.

We found a number of other places where the blue outlines do not show except when zoomed nearly all the way out, even though there is Street View available. These include areas in Madagascar, Tanzania, South Georgia and India.


India is particularly interesting, as the blue pattern changes quite significantly at different zoom levels.


We also found that at higher zoom levels the blue was out of alignment – most noticeable if you zoom all the way out as far as possible, as seen above.

It would be useful if Google were to make the blue outlines a proper layer that could be turned on in the ‘layers’ panel, as that would generally make it easier to find Street View in Google Earth.

Also, we forgot to mention in our last Street View update post that the US territory of American Samoa got Street View imagery in May. Thank you to GEB reader Kyle for alerting us to it.