OT: Google Earth

bearclaw · #1 July 15th, 2005, 07:49 PM

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 · #2 July 16th, 2005, 03:19 AM

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 · #3 July 18th, 2005, 07:23 AM

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 · #4 July 18th, 2005, 08:59 AM

Now this is just incredible...

Now, does anyone else fear that google has an orbital railgun and this is it's targetting program?

Captain Kwok · #5 July 18th, 2005, 12:01 PM

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 · #6 July 18th, 2005, 01:01 PM

Hmmm, I notice there's no hi-res image available for the Cerne Abbas Giant 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 · #7 July 19th, 2005, 12:39 AM

Quote:

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 · #8 July 19th, 2005, 11:39 AM

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

General Woundwort · #9 July 19th, 2005, 12:59 PM

Does anyone else here use WorldWind?

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

How does it compare to Google Earth?

bearclaw · #10 July 19th, 2005, 01:49 PM

Quote:

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.