OT: Google Earth

[bearclaw]

Google has just released their Globe Search program called Google Earth. Now THIS is how mapping services should work. My boss came in this morning and told us all about it and the first hour of our work day was spend with everyone (including the boss) exploring this program and seeing some of the cool features it has.

Ever wondered what the view from the top of Mount Everest looks like?

http://earth.google.com

[Kamog]

It's quite amazing how you can look around and zoom in an out almost anywhere in the world. You can zoom into to cities and see individual cars on the road. The amount of data available is incredible. At work we were playing with it and we noticed that certain places like Area 51 are fuzzed out so you can't see any details, so it has obviously been censored.

[dogscoff]

Un.

Be.

Leeeeeeeeeeeeeevibble.


Utterly incredible. It's the topographical data that blew me away, that and all the buildings in New York.

Sadly my home town (search it for Bournemouth, UK) is extremely low-res and blurry. Wierdly, there's a hi-res area just to the East of it, which is the much less-populated town of Christchurch. Odd.

I really hope they contunie to add data to this tool, so that eventually I'll be able to zoom into my street and see how my wife's windowboxes are doing.

Hmmm... now if they were to tie this tool into webcams the possibilities really would be endless.

[Raging Deadstar]

Now this is just incredible...

Now, does anyone else fear that google has an orbital railgun and this is it's targetting program? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Captain Kwok]

I've been using the google maps since it was in beta. It's very cool and I really like the map format and the ability to swap it easily with the satellite map.

[dogscoff]

Hmmm, I notice there's no hi-res image available for the Cerne Abbas Giant (http://images.google.com/images?q=cerne%20abbas%20giant&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD, GGLD:2004-06,GGLD:en&sa=N&tab=wi) just up the road from me.

That's a shame, I love the idea of ancient pagans or medieval fornicators inadvertently sneaking pr0n onto one of the most advanced technological projects of the 21st century (so far)...

[bearclaw]

dogscoff said:
Hmmm... now if they were to tie this tool into webcams the possibilities really would be endless.



I saw something in one of the layers IIRC, about a webcam in St Louis or some such... Don't have it on this computer (yet) but that seems to ring a bell...

[Iron Giant]

Wow. Saw my house. Wild. How often is it updated?

[General Woundwort]

Does anyone else here use WorldWind?

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

How does it compare to Google Earth?

[bearclaw]

Iron Giant said:
Wow. Saw my house. Wild. How often is it updated?



According to the help contents, all the existing maps are approximatly 1 year old. For some other isolated regions it's up to 2 years old.

From what I can tell, it appears to be updated as satellite information is updated. EG: if someone requests a satellite image of a certain location, the database is updated. I'm only assuming because I notice that farming states/provinces are nearly all high res pics, which would make sense because of farming requests for satellite imagry.

I'm also basing this information on the fact that my home town (Terrace, BC, Canada) has one half at high resolution while the other half is low, and I know for a fact that there was a satellite image request for this strip of land that is high res by a prospecting company about a year ago who was looking at potential gold mining operations.

I love this program.

[geoschmo]

Sweet! You can zoom in on the Grand Canyon with the Colorado river view and zoom through the canyon like you are flying. It's a little akward with the controls, but I can imaging somone writing a flight simulator program to interface with this thing.

[tesco samoa]

actually most of the pictures were taken by a plane flying at 40000 feet. Wanna see something cool check out bermuda. So many pools...

Also there is a pool downtown manhatten that can be seen from like 11 miles out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Makinus]

Damn, my city is not even in the right place! If you ask for "Umuarama, Brazil" it takes you to a completely different state! maybe it´s because in Brazil we have a lot of cities with the same name...

If you wish to see the real Umuarama, search for "Cruzeiro do Oeste, Brazil" and go a little West and you will see it...

[dogscoff]

Open the attached zip and double click the kmz to be taken to my house - sadly somewhat low-rez.

[tesco samoa]

http://moon.google.com/

zoom in all the way

[General Woundwort]

tesco samoa said:
http://moon.google.com/

zoom in all the way



Fah! It's not even green! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[douglas]

We need to get Narf up there. I wonder how long it would take him to eat it all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Renegade 13]

How big is the download for the Google Earth thingy? I'm on dialup, so if it's large...

[Captain Kwok]

I believe you can use http://maps.google.com to see the same things.

[Renegade 13]

Ah, ok thanks...

Found my place...its a tiny dot, they don't have any high-res pics of it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

tesco samoa said:
http://moon.google.com/

zoom in all the way


Funny. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

As to eating it - 200 tons per day.

My area is clear enough that I think I came within a few houses of my house. Kinda hard to tell from satalite.