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Google Releases Earth to Beta
Cros13 writes "Google has released a beta of it's Google Earth software to subscribers of the existing Keyhole service. New features include 3D models of buildings in selected cities, input from your gps receiver and a better search system. I have posted screenshots here and here." This product is in competition with Microsoft's Virtual Earth, as we reported earlier.
Why wasn't a link to the Windypundit article placed in the blurb?
It's just off the page and contains a lot more information.
Take the functionality of Google Maps and make it into a local application, and that's what you get here. Instead of JAvascript-powered click-n-drag scrolling, it's OpenGL or Direct3D buttery-smooth, with texture filtering to ease some of the pixelation on the imagery.
The most amazing part is the driving directions--they're plotted out in front of you on the zoomable and scrollable earth, like Streets and Trips on steroids.
The ability to measure arbitrary lines and paths, carried over from the previous version of Keyhole, adds a nifty dimension. Instead of staring at a feature in the satellite imagery and wondering, "How big is that, anyway?", you can measure it and find out. I used it to definitively settle which of the two routes I can take home from work is shorter.
For $29, this app delivers, per dollar, more fun and utility combined than anything else I've ever purchased. You can use the layering features to do extremely useful stuff, like highlight the locations of ATMs, school district boundaries, golf courses, parks, show crime statistics, and even show placemarks set by people on the Keyhole web forum ("Look! I found a cool thing here!").
Sounds a bit like I'm babbling, but this thing is seriously hella-cool.