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Open Source Alternative To Google Earth?

Posted by timothy on from the you-are-where dept.

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?"

2 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Licensing? Severs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Licensing? Severs? by hipp5 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.