Archive for the ‘Google Earth’ Category

Blue Marble NG – Google Earth (Rendered) SuperOverlays

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Yes I know, its another way to view Blue Marble Next Generation imagery in Google Earth, but here Jonathan van Tuijl has taken the time to pre-process the full resolution 500m/pixel imagery into static files, meaning that hopefully the loading should be smother (at least when accessed from this side of the Atlantic!) and more refined as a its not relying on a server to dynamically generate the KML and images (even if it then caches it), as done here. We also hope to make available the full range of Blue Marble layers.

View the Blue Marble NG Overlays Homepage and download the Link

… doesn’t do any of the fancy fading out like the version here, which is designed to be left running :)

See the post in the KML group that started this little adventure, which I believe started as an exercise for Jonathan to find a way to slice up really large images, and generate a Google Earth SuperOverlay from that; as none of the ‘packages’ seemed to be able to manage it (I’ve tried it too!). So I joined in offering hosting – as think its a neat exercise in hosting really large datasets (7.4GB at last count) – now I have a powerful server. (famous last words…)

Buffalo, New York – PhotoSpot

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

While on a recent trip to the States, took this photo, stiched together from many shots with AutoPan Pro. Traditionally I have provided a GoogleEarth model using DigitalUrban’s panorama object, however this time will simply link to the placemark as provided by Gigapan.org:

View in Google Earth (but requires 4.2+ to take advantage of the PhotoOverlay – in full resolution glory!)

View in a Web Browser (using a flash viewer)

Thanks to Gigapan for providing this really super (and quite fast!) hosting for these high resolution images…

geotagged More Links for this location

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!

FlashEarth+GoogleEarth Part 2

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Following the amazing interest in the networklink for embedding FlashEarth inside Google Earth 4.2, have performed a few updates…

  1. The zoom is a LOT closer matched, this is thanks to the inspiring formula: $z = (-1.4956 * log($range/1000) + 16.529; (yes really!); brought to you by the wonder of plotting a graph in Excel, creating a trendline, turning on the formula display option. Probably could get an even better match with more patience, but probably about as good as it going to get really.
  2. Removed the title and the directions links, makes the balloon looks a bit nicer, couldn’t get it to go transparent for me tho… suggestions welcome.
  3. When the network link is now a folder so can choose the size of your popup :) The previous version is now the ‘medium’ one.

Though the magic of the web, you get 1) and 2) automatically, if want 3) just download it again:

Open in Google Earth (Required: GE 4.2 Windows)

Thanks again to everyone involved.

Google Earth 4.2 + FlashEarth equals…

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

What if the current view in Google Earth was quickly viewable in other maps, such as those made accessible by FlashEarth? Well, now it is. As you move around the globe a little white arrow follows you around, simple click it to get an approximation of the current view in FlashEarth in a popup balloon.

Open in Google Earth

Total credit to Valery35, for the concept (including a screenshot) on the Google Earth Community. (and to all the people made all the bits that could be pieced together in this 15min hack)

New Earth

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

A next version of Google Earth is out! This in the one that implements the things we got a sneak preview of with KML2.2. Unfortunatly it would have to be today, the one day I cant actully play with it, so will have to hold off any try it out propelly another day :(

I’ll forward you over to Ogle Earth to get the lowdown on the new features.

I just hope that the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator not working in Photo (or Sky!) mode is just a glitch…

“The Wrekin” Panorama

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

As a little experiment in super high resolution panoramas, created a 61215x3105px image, stitched together from a number of 10Mpix images. I’ve uploaded here as a Zoomify Viewer so make viewing it quick and easy.

I’ll try and create a PhotoSpot out of it for Google Earth when get a chance, but would love to try this with the Image Pyramid and Photo Overlay system that might be coming soon!

Update: Uploaded the image to GigaPan.com, which takes the heavy lifting of getting the pano into Google Earth 4.2 plus. (which can display it using the Pyramid system mentioned!) Highly recommended. It’s possibly a little buggy, but the new version of GE has only been out a day!

The State of the Map…

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

Over the weekend I attended OpenStreetMap‘s first conference “State of the Map“, all in all a very enjoyable time, great to to listen to all the talks, and also chat with various mappers, meet up with various people I’ve only met before in cyberspace.

Hopefully it will inspire me to actually contribute, esp as frequent two ‘holes’ in the current data…

An interesting little snippet from Ed Parsons talk, is this slide, which shows KML/GeoRSS publishing as indexed by Google, somehow I think I reconsise the British Isles hotspot; geograph, which publishes many KML feeds, (about 600k (the Superlayer, and also a file per photo), of which about 300k are reported to be indexed in Google’s main index, so show up well in ‘User Generated Content‘ in Google Maps!)

Everyone (nearly) – me third from left

Tweaking the number of the MGRS layer

Monday, June 25th, 2007

Ever since releasing the MGRS layer for Google Earth, I’ve been asked a number of times (well about 10) about tweaking the numbers on the gridlines, to be more ‘MGRS like’. To be honest havent had a clue what this means, but a recent email made me twig whats going on.

Basically the numbers included the hundreds of KM, but in fact that number is already represented in the Grid Letters so doesnt make sence to include again (it was there because the layer was an almost direct port of the UTM code, which of course needs it).

So the server hosted version has been updated, and also the file inside the zip for the offline version (which are in fact identical code!), and if really interested heres the diff.

Enjoy!