Archive for September, 2007

Google Earth Black Box Recorder

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

Purely as a prototype, here’s a little script that records your flight in Google Earth for later review. (Wondering how you fly in Google Earth? See (or) here!!!)

Go here for the details and to get started.

This is recording the flight back to on my server, as that’s way easier than creating a local application. However it does mean its dependent on the net connection and my server for smooth recording. If this works out will seek better hosting! As mentioned its only a technical preview so its nowhere near perfect, but should be useful in a fun way at least :)

… technically it could be used to record movement in any mode, however it only records the camera position, which is almost ideal for the flight simulator, but not so useful otherwise.

Flying in Google Earth!!!!

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

Wow, what an Easter Egg! (Yes check it not really the first of April…)

You can now enable a Flight Simulator Mode, find out more on GEarthBlog here.

Beware tho its kinda hidden and might take a bit of fiddling to get it to work… basically you hold down Ctrl-Alt-A (capital) on windows. However I found I had to change my language settings in Windows Control Panel to ‘English (United States)’, I had it set to UK English, and try as I might it wouldn’t work. Closing GE, changing the language setting, and reopening, it worked first time. You can even change back to UK and it will still be available in the Menus, but the keyboard shortcut no longer works. YMMV.

I’ve long been a fan of MS-FlightSim, and installed lots of packages to get high-resolution imagry and meshes (often to great expense!), to find this in GE is simply mind-blowing.

One last thing, as I’ve never been a fan of keyboard for flying (as the primary controls), I see the mouse works quite well, and is responsive and intuitive, thanks guys and gals!