Google Earth

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 3:35 pm

Has anyone seen this? it's like Google Maps on steroids. Mostly the same resolution images, but there is 3d terrain, 3d simulated buildings in large cities, overlays for roads, rail, restaurants, gas stations, churches, etc. The resolution is unbelivable, over NYC you can tell the make of individual cars or the color of a person's hair. Even over my tiny town of Northampton, Massachusetts, I can see my car parked in the driveway.

http://www.geocities.com/mightyg16/newyork1.gif
http://www.geocities.com/mightyg16/newyork2.gif
http://www.geocities.com/mightyg16/grandcanyon.gif

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 3:40 pm

Yes, as I said in my other post on the similar topic my friend made the 3d terrain model and we made it into a cs map.

Post by **benryves** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 3:43 pm

I prefer the NASA software, myself. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Come on Google, fix your search engine before moving on to other projects. They've got the attention span of a 3-year-old kid.

Jim e · Post by **Jim e** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 4:09 pm

180mb?!?!?! That'll take me 5 minutes to download.

No way in hell I'm waiting that long.

Google earth is pretty cool, I never been to the grand cayon.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 4:30 pm

Yeah, it's cool huh? Where I live, you can see people playing tennis in the tennis court across the street!

Then you can zoom around the word at accelerations that would kill you instantly in real life.

Jim e · Post by **Jim e** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 4:57 pm

Spengo wrote:Yeah, it's cool huh? Where I live, you can see people playing tennis in the tennis court across the street! Then you can zoom around the word at accelerations that would kill you instantly in real life.

That's what inertia dampeners are for.

Man my house still doesn't exist and if it did it's blurry and green.

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 5:42 pm

benryves wrote:I prefer the NASA software, myself. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Come on Google, fix your search engine before moving on to other projects. They've got the attention span of a 3-year-old kid.

That sounds somewhat opinionated to me... I don't see either as superior. NASA is in possession of a much better database for place names and topography--that of Google Earth is pathetic, especially the names (unorthodox spelling, poor coverage and gems like German town names in Hungary...). However, Google's client is far superior regarding interface speed (the 'perfectly smooth vs. ridiculously sluggish' case) and they also got the movement right as opposed to the NASA guys. Besides, Google Maps has considerably higher resolution in many places, especially urban areas, which surprised me a lot. Apparently neither of them have heard of Unicode, or non-English characters for that matter, which is a big minus for both...

p. s. NASA is apparently unaware of the border between Russia and Belarus.

Andy_J · Post by **Andy_J** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 6:18 pm

Well, I instantly found my village just by navigating it -- not by typing the name in! It still has utterly poor resolution, but hey I found it. I also found the University of Akron quite easily. New You City just looks friggin' sweet.

DarkerLine · Post by **DarkerLine** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 6:38 pm

I found my house in the US quite easily, and couldn't find anything in Russia at all. To my surprise, I found that the town I live in is centered in the middle of the sea, and things went downhill from there.

Duck · Post by **Duck** » Wed 24 Aug, 2005 7:06 pm

NASA World Wind and Google Earth are both spectacular pieces of software. I've used the former for about a year now and I was impressed from the beginning. WW's rendering engine is superior (though slower) then GE, and it has much easier movement controls. I also like, for example, the smooth movement in WW.
The biggest advantage of World Wind is its incredibly big and versatile map database, contrasting GE's single map. GE has these nice high-res images though and the cool 3D-buildings feature. I wonder when they'll insert these sideview-images of buildings they are planning for some time. I remember reading they were driving cities with camera-stuffed cars to make sideviews available.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Thu 25 Aug, 2005 1:54 am

The Google earth thing also has a cool buildings feature which lets you see 3d models of the skyscrapers in downtown areas.

Andy_J · Post by **Andy_J** » Thu 25 Aug, 2005 3:11 am

Only of large cities.

A few cool images:
http://ajanata.ath.cx:2080/~andy/brewster.jpg My village; I'm roughly on the cyan dot. Also note how the railroad (purple line) doesn't line up with where it is in the picture (brownish areas).
http://ajanata.ath.cx:2080/~andy/cak.jpg Akron-Canton Airport; they extended that runway a couple years ago and apparantly Google is using a quite old map.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Thu 25 Aug, 2005 3:37 am

Portland OR isn't all that big.

mnc2fan · Post by **mnc2fan** » Thu 25 Aug, 2005 6:03 am

I've looked at the area where I just moved from and there are some very recent images from google earth. Well recent as in the past year.

kalan_vod · Post by **kalan_vod** » Fri 26 Aug, 2005 1:49 am

is there a way to "find" a address? ie oklahoma city then a residental add?