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SketchUp Hooks Up With Google Earth
zmarties writes "Having recently bought the company and 3d design product
SketchUp, Google has now taken the next step of releasing a
free personal version of the SketchUp software.
Currently available for Windows XP, with a Mac version 'coming soon', the program allows for
simple drag and drop design of 3d models - which amongst other uses can then be displayed in
Google Earth. The pro version remains available
for commercial use, with lots more features. Google are also introducing
3D Warehouse, designed as a repository for 3d models created in the program. The models can be viewed in Google Earth via a network link, so you can see geolocated models as you browse the world, rather than having to explicitly download them. Google has pre-populated the warehouse with a number of models which range from complete complex buildings, such as the Taj Mahal, through to individual design elements such as traffic lights and furniture."
That was one of the first annoying things I saw - the skp format is a nice binary format - probably nice and proprietary. In other words, look at Sketchup - but don't touch if you want access to your data.
Blender is certainly less intuitive than SketchUp
You said it!
We need an Open Source modeller that is as easy to use as SketchUp. That would rock!
We call it return on equity. If Linux had higher market share, developing applications for it would have a higher ROE. Google develops software with other people's money. Those people do not want to see their money being used to develop a product that yields a low or even negative ROE.
You can make the argument that if more apps were available for Linux, it would have higher market share. Unfortunately, not every company is (in fact very few are) interested in evangelism.
Even if Google developed for Linux and could yield the same ROE from developing for Windows, the risk of investment would be much higher while the return would not change. Ergo, it is not a sound financial decision.
(Of course there are many other methods of measuring return, but I think ROE is most significant in this case since it represents the money that the stockholders put into the company. In other words, it is the bang for their buck.)
While there's definitely a market for a product like Sketchup, Google usually goes a step further and introduces features that may not necessarily make money for them, but are cool to use and fun to understand for regular geeks and lay-users
The downside to Google's approach though is that it has a tendency to kill the competitive market for the technologies that they make available for free. On the one hand, this is an issue of natural selection, if you're weak, you won't survive. On the other hand, people have blasted companies that have monopolies in the past with killing third parties by introducing "free" or "built-in" functionality that already exsists in the market. The most obvious example being IE. As Google continues to bring about these technologies for free, it's good for the consumer in the short term, but is bad for other third party developers in the short term, and could be detrimental to the consumer in the long term.
Think about it. Everything Google is building is going to allow you integrate many of the features articles are talking about with Second Life. Only you'll be able to do it over HTTP with AJAX and their web service APIs.
The map server can be used to create worlds, the 3d stuff can be used to populate them. They can create new environments based on domains, so the real world domain might only have real world details. But they could also build another model for say Google Groups Clubhouses®©. We've been seeing people use Second Life for these purposes, what if Google made it so anyone could integrate a Second Life type feature into their website or web services application?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
No Amiga version either. What the hell's the matter with those people? How do you explain a company making free software and not porting it to niche markets with little demand???
// This is not a sig.