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Open Source Alternative To Google Earth?
aws910 writes "Today, I fired up Google Earth to find that the 'points of interest' category had been removed, and a single checkbox is in its place. Certain layers are now entirely inaccessible. Google triggered a user revolt, but admitted fault, and promised to restore full functionality someday. In the meantime, I've found a lack of plausible alternatives. Bing seems nice, but Moonlight crashes the browser on any machine I use, and I'd rather use OSS anyway ... which made me realize there doesn't seem to be a good open-source alternative to Google Earth. Am I missing something?"
World Wind is licensed under NASA's Open Source license. Not sure of the intricacies with it (IANAL) but was developed with the open source community.
My work here is dung.
Who's going to pay to license all those satellite images? Who's going to run the servers and pay for all the bandwidth consumed by such an application?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Do "feet" count as OSS alternatives? ;)
Take a look at Marble from the KDE education project - http://edu.kde.org/marble/
http://edu.kde.org/marble/
Marble is a Virtual Globe and World Atlas that you can use to learn more about Earth: You can pan and zoom around and you can look up places and roads. A mouse click on a place label will provide the respective Wikipedia article.
Of course it's also possible to measure distances between locations or watch the current cloud cover. Marble offers different thematic maps: A classroom-style topographic map, a satellite view, street map, earth at night and temperature and precipitation maps. All maps include a custom map key, so it can also be used as an educational tool for use in class-rooms. For educational purposes you can also change date and time and watch how the starry sky and the twilight zone on the map change.
In opposite to other virtual globes Marble also features multiple projections: Choose between a Flat Map ("Plate carré"), Mercator or the Globe.
The best of all: Marble is Free Software / Open Source Software and promotes the usage of free maps. And it's available for all major operating systems (Linux/Unix, MS Windows and Mac OS X).
I've merged Celestia with Stellarium with Mapquest.
It has extremely granular chartings of low Earth to distant orbiting objects, very smooth 3D rendering with fluid transitions, and painfully difficult to navigate street view gifs encoded on and hosted over an Apple iie.
BTW: Mapquest sucks.
open source, just like you wanted.
Maybe they could make the application more native instead of using the botchy, almost-correct-but-not-quite Qt widget library.
Kriston
it's free (as in beer AND speech)
and the picture quality is spectacular
I have a map of the United States...actual size. It says, "Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile." I spent last summer folding it. I also have a full-size map of the world. I hardly ever unroll it.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
just google for it.
Google Earth is part software and part data. The data is licensed from many sources. It's hard to get permissions to license that kind of thing if you can't control how it is used (e.g. visualization is OK, but driving maps are not). Plus, there is real cost to serving terabytes of data to make it work.
Agreed. The question of an open source Google Earth is not the application, but where the data comes from. Google Earth probably would be open source, if Google wasn't afraid their remote protocol would be reverse engineered (at which point they would update it). Anyone who has programmed with the Google Earth COM API knows that Google goes to great lengths to protect the data they store on their servers.
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html/#gereplacment
FSF is actively looking for people to contribute to any such project.
AccountKiller
But it's OPEN SOURCE...
I drive a Pontiac Vibe - which as you know is a sister car to the Toyota Matrix.
Toyota seems to be dragging their feet on this whole pedal fix and reprogram issue. Even Steve Wozniak believes Toyota has a programming problem. As such, I'm in the market for a new control module for my acceleration subsystem. I'd like it to be open source. Does slashdot have any suggestions? Again, FREE and OPEN SOURCE are preferred.
Doesn't have street view or actual photos from what I've seen but its ok. openstreetmap.org
Earth (in Reality)
Any company that has huge revenues, that lets top-notch developers work on anything they think is kewl, and is structured so that investors can't complain about them pouring millions into projects that will never monetize. Alas, there's only one of those...
The upside of Google is that they push the state of the art with everything they do, and they provide free access to products that we couldn't afford without them — assuming that these products would even exist without them, which they mostly wouldn't. The downside is that they're total amateurs when it comes to the nuts and bolts of providing a product that isn't buggy, doesn't have major UI issues, and doesn't have weird outages and feature changes without notice. Google Earth seems to typify both the upside and the downside.
And a google search for open source google earth points here http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/gaia-open-source-google-earth.html
That there should only be one alternative for your interests in various locations on the planet, just like there should only be One Phone, One Search Engine, One E-Mail, One Economic Planner etc., so as to make it easier to track you and your interests. Give this and google 15 years, people, THEN you can come back and mod this "troll/flamebait".
Offtopic? I think it was a jab at everyone asking for Free and Open Source alternatives to everything under the sun including products that require hefty licencing fees - such as satellite images.
Blue Marble Viewer and a few other open source projects were doing this first. But google can pay for better imagery and more bandwidth, so they end up with a better product for end users.
Google Earth is essentially a Web Map Server (WMS) The OGC http://www.opengeospatial.org/ has all the specifications for Web Map Severs and Clients. As others have mentioned, NASA WorldWind is a good example.
A blog to follow would be http://freegeographytools.com/
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Sounds just like what people were saying about Microsoft in the early 1990s.
Microsoft is dead. Google is the new Microsoft.
Stick Men
I mean, Google Maps, sure I use that all the time to find where something is, directions how to get to it...on my iPhone, it even shows traffic loads.
I click Google Earth...it is neat how it zooms down to where I'm at from outer space..but after that...what?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I use it to map out hunting locations, photography possibilities, and hiking trails.
Other than that, I'm not really sure.
Learn about Photography Basics.
I'm not sure, but I've heard there's one under development somewhere at Sourceforge... last I heard they were at version 0.1.3.8pre-alpha, but had temporarily suspended development because they couldn't find any crash-testers.
I use it to get approximate terrain ideas before flights. It's easier to find passes and get comparative (not actual) mountain heights using that than a topographic map. For actual flight planning, I use the FAA charts, but for quick reference, Google Earth helps a great deal.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Who's going to run the servers and pay for all the bandwidth consumed by Debian/Gentoo/etc's packages?
If you just pick it up and poke at it, it is largely a toy. A fun one, and visually interesting, to be sure; but 95% of the useful stuff can be done in a browser by google maps.
Where it gets more interesting, though, is if you have the interest, and the capability, to treat it more like a GIS program. ArcGIS isn't exactly quaking in their boots, nor are any of the other classic Real Serious GIS vendors; but Google Earth occupies a rather interesting niche: free as in beer, and quite easy for a noob to pick up and play with in 10 minutes; but capable of some fairly neat tricks if you start programmatically generating kmz overlays. is one rather cute example.
An indirect attack on Google by suggestions that there is no OSS alternative to GoogleEarth, so that a "Bad Thing"(tm).
Yet, most of the first posts appear to be by MS Technical Evangelists whose citations for an alternative lead to an .NET version which has been poorly implemented in Java.
Ya, like I want to trade GoogleEarth for something from the Dark Side?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
We use it in urban planning (architects do too). Google Earth can be linked to Sketchup. You can import terrain from Google Earth, model a structure on it, and then export it back into Earth. You can also use it for some GIS-esque analysis by defining polygons and such on it.
I use it for getting directions. I have a horrible memory for names, but a great one for pictures, and so while I can't remember the name of the street I'm supposed to turn on I can remember what the street corner looked like from above on google earth, imagine what it would look like from a perspective on the ground, then see if I've reached that spot yet.
Google Earth is my goto mapping tool because it makes it FAR easier to know if you're going the right way or not if you've seen it, even just from above (though with more and more incorporated street-view you can now see street-level views of most areas).
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
For the most part, GE is not useful for typical end-user activity. It is mostly used to provide a tool for commercial applications of the Google maps data. For example, if you've seen a movie that did the zoom-in or -out between the globe from space and a single house, everything from 100 feet up and further was probably Google Earth. It's also used by law enforcement, NGOs planning access routes to remote locations, real estate, site surveys, etc. See their business use cases for Google Earth for more info.
I click Google Earth...it is neat how it zooms down to where I'm at from outer space..but after that...what?
The measurement tools are useful. Good for eyeballing LoS between radios too (though not with real terrain).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
sudo go --outside
But what does Earth give you over just plain Google Maps for that application?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
THe title says it all....essentially it has all the same features....duh
I'm trying to find out what exactly Google Earth is actually useful for??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
I have a cousin who works for the top GIS company and when Google started doing the satellite view on Google Maps and then released Google Earth, there was a collective "ah shit!" from the industry because Google was giving away their bread and butter for free.
We take it for granted, but before Google, you mostly had to pay top dollar for a dataset overlaid onto a satellite map because there were no real non-commercial alternatives.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Interesting, but how up to date is it?
I remember (mostly google maps mind you) that it showed my former house in New Orleans as it was before the flood for quite awhile after the flood. Then...after the flood pics go updated....well, it wasn't updated very often apparently.
Hell, the street view stuff from Google Maps is almost useless in some areas it is soooooo out of date.
Is Google Earth any more up to date than that?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Marble is an amazing program with all kinds of different maps and satelite images it can pull from. It is worth checking out.
It may be available on Windows as well through windows.kde.org
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
temporarily suspended development because they couldn't find any crash-testers.
I groaned at that.
Just so you know.
The points of interest feature has already been restored: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2010/03/the_points_of_interest_return.html
So not only is it open source, but it also lets you travel through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind?
Count me in.
Worldwind is OK, but if you want the kind of *data* that Google has, and the level of performance, it's not really possible to replicate. Their global holdings are well into the multi-petabyte range. With worldwind it's more like "Bring your own data."
Who's going to pay to license all those satellite images? Who's going to run the servers and pay for all the bandwidth consumed by such an application?
OSS != Free Beer
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
A Megasquirt might be able to do that. You could also replace the throttle system with an actual cable, which would also work.
"Bing seems nice, but Moonlight crashes the browser on any machine I use"
That doesn't make any sense. Why use moonlight for a JavaScript application?
> Am I missing something?
Yes. Data, not code.
NASA World Wind is the most popular afaik, but there are others, including OSSIMplanet, pTolemy3D, Virtual Ocean and quite a few other ones depending on your requirements.
Animoog.org
Did you actually read my post? Because the post had both positive and negative things to say about Google. And in any case the negatives I just listed about Google bear no resemblance to the well-known negatives (poorly designed software, unethical and possibly illegal marketing methods) that MS is famous for.
I've replaced google earth with Xastir. Xastir is for ham radio station tracking but it featurs address lookup, multiple map layers, online maps, tigermaps, and gps support. When I was a cab driver I could use xastir to look up addresses offline because it's address mappings are stored locally. It doesn't look fancy, but it does look professional. http://www.xastir.org/
Try maps with the Earth overlay, like we have on the Droid. It makes finding things a lot easier when you are near to your destination. You can see buildings and their car parks, lakes, water towers, et al, all with your route mapped out.
Looking for a new house? Use Earth to get an idea of the area, zoom in and use street view for a better idea. Of course, you'd need to leave your parents' house to lean what's outside.
I'm trying to find out what exactly Google Earth is actually useful for???
I mean, Google Maps, sure I use that all the time to find where something is, directions how to get to it...on my iPhone, it even shows traffic loads.
I click Google Earth...it is neat how it zooms down to where I'm at from outer space..but after that...what?
As others have pointed out, it has a real value in the GIS community. Not so much for the actual work and planning, but for distributing our planned work in a format that's easily viewable.
Real life example, we're currently searching off of Brazil for Flight 447 and, while we use professional tools for the actual planning and searching, we also have our scan lines, the debris field, and the last known location all exported out into a set of layers that's easily opened in a KMZ file. For a quick look at what's going on, it's perfect.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
OSSIMPlanet is OSS and it talks to OGC-compliant servers. OMAR is a scalable OGC-compliant WMS. You can build your own Google Earth system with them.
See the OSSIM web site for OSSIM itself and OSSIMPlanet. OMAR is harder to find than OSSIMPlanet. Try here.
Presumably, the terrain isn't going to be changing that often and if you are doing urban planning, you are probably going to be aware of what's on the map already.
I use it to view the dark fiber routes of all the different vendors we use to make sure that none of them use the same route. Therefore avoiding the risk of having multiple fibers failing when the backhoes start doing their thing. -P
They will be funded with the money from RMS' endowment, he can get by eating the stuff off his feet anyway...
Everything should be free, we don't need to work.
Replacing ARCView. Honestly I use a couple of OSS applications to convert SHP files to KML and then display them in Google Earth. Here are a few examples of Minnesota DNR/county data: http://www.lazylightning.org/boundaries/.
Awesome indeed.
Google Earths main benefit is its KML format. Google documents the KML format very well ( http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/topicsinkml.html ). I use google earth with my wireless network scanner ( www.vistumbler.net ). It has allowed me to do some interesting stuff with the wireless data, for example. - We have a wireless database with over 100,000 Access Points. This creates a 75MB kml files of access points. Google maps is unable to load a KML of this size directly. (see our full KML http://www.vistumbler.net/wifidb/ --> Daemon Generated kml) - I have a feature to export signal history to google earth as a 3d/colored/line above the earth (see http://forum.techidiots.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=278&start=0&hilit=Signal+Mapping ) - I have a feature called AutoKML which automatically creates 4 kml files. One of track you have driven, one with active APs, one of Dead APs, And one with the current GPS position. With a "Network Link" google earth updates the changes in the kml file at a specified interval and displays them. I can also specify a view height and current location, so I can make google earth follow my current location (and show me the active APs I am detecting). These are only a few examples of what I use google earth for. I'm sure there are much more creative uses for it.
I live in New Zealand and I use it for checking out rivers and lakes for fishing and access to fishing. Although I have topo maps for most of NZ, as well as topo maps for my handheld GPS, Google Earth is still very useful for getting a better idea of terrain, bush cover etc. I use the measurement tools to work out roughly how far I'm going to need to walk. I also use it to check out tramping tracks and such. Not all of my main area of interest is covered by hi res imagery unfortunately.
When the Tour de France is on I use an overlay with the race route to get a further appreciation of the route and terrain etc.
I'm interested in landscapes so it's good to use to check out various parts of the world.
There's a lot of times when something comes up and someone says "Let's check it out on Google Earth".
I might just add I used NASA WorldWind for some time before GE came out. I changed primarily because there was a Mac version of GE and becase GE had much more high res imagery. Aside from those admittedly important points WorldWind was a better application though, although it's a number of years since used it now. GE has improved over time.
I use it for planning my trips: check for points of interest, look for closer hotels, find restaurants. Street view is very pleasant too!
Yes, I read your post. IBM was the new Standard Oil. Microsoft was the new IBM. Google is the new Microsoft.
People were saying similarly positive and negative things about Microsoft 15+ years ago in a similar context: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Microsoft was seen as the Great Liberating Force against IBM.
I'm not particularly desperate for mod points today, I just think people need to bear this historical lesson in mind, which is the reason for my post. My £0.02.
Stick Men
I've used it to learn about geography. Taught me more than I ever got from school.
This will work with google maps, but tends to be a good deal quicker once you get an area cached.
It's useful for looking up non-urban areas, seeing more of a "lay of the land" type of view, or taking not of geographical entities which aren't really as important to a road-map type system.
I find that maps are good in terms of transit, and earth is good in terms of terrain. I'd imagine that "Earth" might also be useful if used in making games, etc, such as a flight simulator.
Umm... Google purchase EarthViewer 3D from Keyhole, Inc. and renamed it Google Earth in 2005.
NASA released World Wind in 2004.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Try maps with the Earth overlay, like we have on the Droid
But again, as others have said - This is Google Maps with satellite & aerial data, not Google Earth. The question remains: What is google *Earth* good for, other than 'fun stuff.'
megasquirt is just fuel (spark too, for MS2) - so you'd still need a cable for the throttle.
unless you use megasquirt, and bang up your own $2 microcontroller for the pedal. I can't see it being that big of a deal.
Sent from my PDP-11
I do work on optimization of large datasets, such as mapping all streets ala street view. KML files are a wonderful standardization, but they can be huge. In fact, a lot of geographic data is voluminous. There still is a niche for actual client apps that are not running JSON for speed reasons when crunching large datasets.
As well as the shiny interface, what makes Google is oodles of current, hi-res imagery and enough grunt to make the same base set of data available to a large chunk of the world's population.
Taken as a complete product, I can't see anything remotely in the ballpark. FOSS can do software, but data and servers to cough it up is not a software issue. Bing has data, but from what I've seen their data currecny and resolution is trailing Google. Due to the economies of scale involved, catching up would probably need deep pockets.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
It's focused more for science, but you might enjoy looking at geomapapp: http://www.geomapapp.org/
There is also the more ocean centric Virtual Ocean: http://www.virtualocean.org/
Disclosure.. I do work with these guys... but that really doesn't mean anything for free and open products now I guess does it.
and then I was tricked into install the Google Penis add-on.
You can run it outside of a browser?
That's all I've got.
I have been toying with the idea of building a GPS nav system out of a netbook, USB GPS receiver and Google Earth, but it's really not any cheaper than buying one (obviously I intend to multi-purpose the netbook, or the costing wouldn't even be comparable).
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I'm trying to find out what exactly Google Earth is actually useful for???
Never mind Google Earth, I'm trying to find out what an "Atlas" is useful for, or what are all those funny map-thingys covered in strange squiggles that you can buy all over the place. I mean, I don't have the imagination to see what they could possibly be useful for, so they just seem like a total waste of paper and printing to me.
Umm, are we following the same thread? Here's the one I'm in:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1594148&cid=31603122
Microsoft was seen as the Great Liberating Force against IBM.
That's nonsense. They were never that. If you believe that you've been listening to way too much M$ propaganda.
If you want to convince me that you are actually reading my posts, try responding to something I actually said. Basically you're accusing me of seeing Google as some kind of evil force. I don't see them that way, and I haven't said a word that implies I do. Hell, I have friends there, and wouldn't mind working there myself.
Aside from your convoluted logic, your history is wrong. Nobody saw MS as liberating us from IBM. We saw cheap microcomputers as liberating us from IBM. MS became the villain because they did a lot to make the microcomputer revolution a lot more difficult than it had to be. If Digital Research (or Quantum Software Systems, or Convergent, or any other vendor with an OS far superior to MS-DOS) had become the dominant player, they world have been far more popular. MS-bashing isn't based on knee-jerk anti Big Business; it's based on dealing with a lot of really crappy products.
Serves you right for ripping people off! :D
Assuming you're referring to ESRI, (Environment Systems Research Institute), labeling them the 'top GIS company' is highly subjective. There are IMO many better platforms out there, open source included (see GRASS and/or QGIS). They just were lucky enough to secure some significant clients early on (USGS, USFS, USFWS, USDoI, DoD, NGS, etc.), which it turn forced all their subcontractors to adopt the same platform. Their software is bloated, cumbersome, about a decade behind emerging technologies, i.e., like Google Earth, and has a very closed architecture when it comes to integration.
I use it for planning sailing trips. It is nice to see what interesting places one might visit and what sights to expect but the most useful thing is the help when plotting on paper charts. If there are multiple alternative routes you can take through any particular group of islands, it's hard to determine the best one, if they're scattered on map pages that span partially over each other. And when a leg needs to span multiple pages, it does help to know approximately where it should be, which is what I get from google earth. Later I use my GPS chart plotter to place such a leg precisely on paper as well since the electronic chart is obviously much more accurate (I only go that direction for the longest legs since otherwise plotting in to the GPS what I have on paper is easier but the software is convenient for legs that are too long to fit on one page). Using my chart plotter is, however, a PITA because I didn't want to spend a fortune on it and basic models are sloooow when moving and having zoomed out. That extreme slowness is a little more bearable when finally zooming in a lot and following the route just to double check that the route is ok.
Carry a small section of fiber with you any time you go hiking... if you get lost just bury the fiber and ask the backhoe driver for help when he shows up.
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
I hike, camp and mountain bike a lot, and I've found tons of uses for Google Earth.
I'll use it for research before going out on a trip. It has a convenient "Ruler" tool that I use for rough estimates of trip distance. I also like using it to spot interesting terrain near where I'll be, that I might not have have noticed otherwise. It's even helpful for mundane stuff like finding areas that might have good camping sites.
When I get back home I'll use it, along with GPS Visualizer, to plot GPS tracks. It gives a better idea of the landscape than plotting over a topo map or plain satellite images.
It's also useful for identifying mountains and other landmarks that I see while out. I can always whip out a topo map and figure it out from that, but Google Earth is easier and more accurate because I can position the viewport to closely match what I saw.
Maybe not
Not likely. If you didn't notice, that effect had been used for decades before Google Earth even existed. Besides that, getting the images from Google Earth would be more trouble than its worth - it's less hassle to use the pre-existing CGI infrastructure to render it.
Not sure what the original poster was planning to do with an alternative to GE. A nice tool based on NASA WorldWind with access to oceanography datasets is Virtual Ocean: http://www.virtualocean.org/ This was developed by researchers at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. I have nothing to do with development of this but do manage some of the linked data sets.
I have a friend that extols the goodness of open source, and Google. He conflates the two because Google uses open source. There is a difference between using open source and producing open source. Google produces services, and the bulk of their most valued services are behind closed source that can possibly have been derived from many open sources, fortunately for them they don't need to distribute that source since they don't distribute the software.
Microsoft is catching on to Google's ways however, learning to use open source to provide services.
There are TB's of public domain imagery out there. A lot of the hosting is donated space and bandwith, Sun/Oracle is hosting 90% of the imagery you can see in World Wind. Through an agreement with Microsoft you can view Bing maps in WW.net and WWJava.
I use it to view the dark fiber routes of all the different vendors we use
How ??
Mind elaborate ?
Thanks !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Honestly I use a couple of OSS applications to convert SHP files to KML and then display them in Google Earth
Mind sharing with us what OSS applications you use ?
Thanks !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm not sure why i'm being modded down here. Speak up someone.
Bing maps doesn't require Silverlight. I'm looking at it right now on a non-Silverlight machine.
not useful for end-user activity? I think you'd have to have a fairly narrow view of "useful" for that statement to be defensible.
My son spent an amusing hour this evening driving a Viper aircraft at ground level from SFO to SEA at 390 miles per hour on Google Earth Flight Simulator. He was asked me how to figure out when he got near SEATAC, which gave me an opportunity to tell him to look for the various volcanos in the Cascades, the Columbia River, and to take a 30 degree left turn at Mt. Rainier.
Sounds useful to me, especially considering that huge fortune I spent on Google Earth.
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"useful" like "beauty" is in the eye of the beholder. We all know that MS produces loathesome software, stifles innovation, and serves up grilled dolphin steaks with penguin sauce to their droids in the cafeteria in Redmond. And yet, and yet, ... dangit: a lot of people kind of like Windows.
I don't, but I have to admit, a lot of people do.
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I think Google Earth is cool. I'm not really sure why Google did it, but I'm not yelling at them for doing it.
Inspector Lopez
I use google earth to track our work and research boats on a lake. Each boat has a gps that receives corrections from a reference base station and then sends the data to a terminal server. In real time i have a Perl script that reads the raw gps files and generates KML making the boat positions, heading and speed available to all who care. Pretty darn cool for a free app.
I use it to plan mapping projects. My company gladly pays $400/year so I can export imagery from Google Earth into a CAD program so I can plan aerial photography and select ground control points for surveyors. I then import that CAD data into Google Earth and send KMZ files to the pilots and surveyors. This is a vast improvement over USGS 1"=2000' quad maps that are ten to forty years old. I still use the quad maps as a sanity check of my final output coordinates as I don't trust the georeferencing of Google Earth's imagery -- I've seen several seam lines that were mismatched by hundreds of feet.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
How up to date do you want? If you're looking to see your property change on a week-to-week basis then you're going to be disappointed. Planners in rapidly-changing urban areas are likely to be disappointed too. I generally assume that I'm working with 3-5 year old imagery in Google Earth, but I'm beginning to think it's more like 3-10 years in more rural areas. Either way it beats the hell out of USGS quad maps that are older than I am and may not be updated in my lifetime.
That said, macro-scale elevation data from either source will almost certainly remain accurate throughout our lifetimes.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
not useful for end-user activity?
Re-read what I wrote. Here, I'll quote it for you:
For the most part, GE is not useful for typical end-user activity
Yes, your son had fun with it. I'm sure there are hundreds of people who've played around with GE, but that doesn't exactly explain why it's a Google product that they guard the protocols for jealously, which was the original line of inquiry to which I responded.
The answer to that question is that GE isn't intended for typical end-users, cute though it may be. It's intended for commercial applications.
Hell, the street view stuff from Google Maps is almost useless in some areas it is soooooo out of date.
Is Google Earth any more up to date than that?
I don't see anyone answering this question. Google Maps is completely worthless and even dangerous in fast-growing cities. You could end up driving into a hole in the ground if you treat it like factual data.
In particular, the Las Vegas images are completely obsolete for most of the area on and around the Strip. A lot of what it depicts was imploded years ago and is now either a vacant lot or a completely different structure. A number of the streets have moved around and entire blocks reshaped. I understand that the US is an unfathomably huge area to photograph, but the vast majority of it hasn't changed in ten thousand years. I don't understand why a higher priority isn't given to dynamic environments. Cities like Vegas almost need live cameras to keep current rather than still images.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
yea. responding to:
Pointing out that:
A: Google didn't create Google Earth, it was already available from Keyhole.
B: NASA had a product that was already open sourced 1 year prior to Google acquisition of Keyhole.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
..but after that...what?
When I set it up on my system, a friend used it to go to and fly around one of the hills in Vietnam where he had been seriously involved once upon a time.
(warning, shameless plug)
I've been working on a similar program for a while called libgis. The main difference is that libgis is built as a library instead of an application and uses OpenGL for rendering, which allows it to render terrain. It also uses GTK+ instead of Qt, but that's just due to my personal preferences. Unfortunately, it's not (yet!) as complete as Marble/WorldWind/Google Earth.
I'm have to call BS on your cousin.
I actually work in the GIS industry and when Google Earth was released there was a giant "Thank fuck for that" as it meant more people beyond the niche's of mining, government and military started to look at GIS services seriously. Google Earth has been a huge boon for any GIS Analyst trying to sell GIS services.
Previously, when trying to get new clients we had to try an explain a complex field to a perspective client, a lot of "imagine this...", and then watching their eyes glaze over. Now we can say with maps and data we can provide x service, just like Google Earth. We've even been able to sell Google Earth services, putting data into Google Earth and Google Earth training.
Google Earth has opened a niche market into something more mainstream, in general it has been a good thing(TM) for GIS even if you're just grabbing onto Google's coat tails for a bit of extra revenue (like a A$500 a seat one day Google Earth training course).
Google have a relationship with GeoEye for satellite data and they are most certainly not giving it away for free, either raw or processed. If you actually want the imagery for manipulation or publication you need to pay.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
KML was turned over to the Open Geospatial Consortium when it hit version 2.0. The spec is now administered by OGC.
I don't quite get what you mean with you tautological statement. Are you implying that open source is bad and/or should be avoided, that using open source inevitably leads to facial mutilation or that if there is a proprietary solution that the open source implementation is inherently flawed and shouldn't be used.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Look at http://isrobhuvan.in/ - copied from their site:
Here is a frank review of the features and performance of ISRO Bhuvan (the much anticipated satellite-based 3D mapping application from ISRO) BETA Release and comparing it to supposed arch rival Google Earth. Bhuvan from the begining is claiming that it is not competing with Google Earth in any way, but there was much hype and propaganda in the media saying that ISRO Bhuvan will be a Google Earth killer atleast in India.
Ravi Kumar
The same happened not a long time ago in the navigation industry when Google gave their Google Maps Navigation for free, followed by NOKIA.
Where Google goes, the traditional business dies.
Who needs servers? This is an ideal case for P2P. Satellite and aerial maps don't change that fast, at least not for mapping purposes. There's ample scope for sharing the same maps between P2P members.
It's true that current implementations of Google Earth and NASA Worldwind use central servers, but that is merely a control issue. These organizations want to control who gets access to the maps, and what people get to do with the maps, perhaps for licensing reasons or perhaps for other reasons. So they pay huge server bills because of it.
But a truly open source app doesn't technically need central servers, if it can have P2P. We have the technology, it can be implemented, and it won't cost any one user a small fortune in bandwidth bills. We even have community members who are real mapping enthusiasts and could make a list of all the public datasets, and we might have companies who are willing to donate their older satellite image datasets, if eg they get to leave their logo somewhere discrete.
I click Google Earth...it is neat how it zooms down to where I'm at from outer space..but after that...what?
Then you can turn around and look at the stars. Or go over to the nearest ocean and explore underwater. Or enjoy the ever-increasing amounts of 3d buildings and user-submitted photos. See what places look like in 3d (try dragging w/ the middle mouse button). Spin the globe (drag quickly and let go) and explore some place new. Play with the built-in flight simulator! Find crazy and unusual things on the earth by accident. Improve your geography skills.
etc, etc, etc
It's intended for commercial applications.
I'm willing to hold my breath for grand theft auto: google earth. Until then I'll just have to keep playing the built-in flight sim.
Yes, if you want open source, then the java edition is best. If you want technical advantages under the hood, then the java edition is best in that cut too.
And they thoroughly deserve their evil moniker today, but in the 80s, Microsoft truly brought computing to the masses: their OS was cheap, it could interface with large numbers of hardware cards that did anything you could think of, and there was a huge and affordable software library. This combination didn't exist anywhere else to the same extent, certainly not on Apple or Commodore or $VENDOR if we're talking about micros.
Is Google Earth any more up to date than that?
I don't think it's more up to date, but at least you can see when the images were updated. You can also scroll through a timeline to see older versions. If you really need an up to date image you can use image overlays.
What ever happened to X3D Earth?
http://www.web3d.org/x3d-earth/
...here is the real map of the world...
Until the skies turn blue...
Until the air of freedom strikes us...
Investigating prospective rental properties? Identifying the terrain and surroundings before travelling to a new location?
[clever sig]
Some of the integrations here are beyond me, but for simple map browsing / satellite imagery I'm mostly switched to www.wikimapia.org
What also helps, I'm working in a foreign land (where arabic is spoken), and wikimapia will quite often allow me to pick up nearby lattitude / longitude for plugging into the satnav . . .
FalconView (FOSS) does a pretty good job of displaying KML (in 2D). http://www.falconview.org/trac/FalconView
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
has some few hour old imagery, +IR
Unfortunately, the satellite data of Marble is way too low-res. It shows my whole city as only four pixels. :/
(Oder maps are partially better though. But only some of them.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The conversion is pretty straightforward using ogr2ogr. It's part of the GDAL library for geospatial data. Other OSS software like QGis or FWTools rely on, or include GDAL for these conversions.
My most recent use was in prepping to go to Disney World. Disney has loaded Sketchup models of the rides of their parks. I could see where we were staying, and how to get to the park, and zoom around
Maybe much of the functionality could have been done in Google Maps, but it is definitely not the same experience.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
They're pretty straight forward if you know what you're doing and what formats the original SHPs were in. The Minnesota DNR likes to use something other than WGS84 so I have to do a conversion: ogr2ogr -s_srs EPSG:32615 -t_srs WGS84 out.shp in.shp
"Google bear no resemblance to the well-known negatives (poorly designed software, unethical and possibly illegal marketing methods) that MS is famous for."
Why does Google need to have an updater continuously running in the background for a program that I only use once in a while? Plus they obfuscate it's removal so that the average user can't remove it themselves. That pushes my internal scam meter to the far right line. The day I installed Google Earth was the day I quit trusting Google.
Click the "Explore the New Bing Maps" link. As soon as you do, you'll be prompted to install SilverLight. The 'new' features (streetside images, etc.) won't work unless you have SilverLight installed. Anyone who's been around the block will recognize this as the standard step two of Microsoft EEE strategy.
MS wasn't a villain until the 90s? How old are you? Back in the 80s we used to call them "Microsloth" because of all the buggy software they produced.
FYI, cheap microcomputers were around long before MS became big. They didn't create the PC revolution, they just rode the wave.
And if Google hadn't bought Keyhole, it would be an expensive niche product, not a widely-used free product. As the guy who started this thread pointed out, Google subsidizes GE users for huge amounts in licensing and bandwidth costs. Having an OS alternative doesn't do you much good if you can't afford the incidental costs.
why not make it toolkit independent? For instance it seem on gentoo that many programs can be compiled with either gtk or qt support based on the user preference.
Who's "we"? You sound like a vocal minority with this comment. FWIW, my first micro was a PET 2001, but that is neither here nor there since we're talking about the 80s.
Metcalfe's law. What wave is that? Apple, Tandy, they were early and successful sure, but they were not the wave. The IBM PC clones were the wave that brought computing to the masses, and Microsoft and Lotus were at the center of it. Before then, all you had was little fiefdoms of incompatible hardware. Little eddies if you want to stretch the metaphor.
Who's "we"?
I might ask you the same question. You and the other guy are the only two people I've ever met who've considered MS to be the good guys.
Darn! I thought it was!
That perhaps would've been funny if he hadn't been talking about G. Earth in comparison with G. Maps.
Just shows you can't moderate without reading the parent article...
I just can't figure out how HEAVY could it be...
i had a Keyhole account before Google acquired them and rebranded their software as Google Earth. It was actually worth the $30, easily, but i was really happy when Google offered it for free because now i can easily use it as a way to encourage kids i volunteer with in the Philippines to learn geography.