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Google Earth Adds 3-D Trees
terrancem writes "Google has populated several major cities with more than 80 million virtual trees based on an automated process that identifies trees in satellite images. The realistic 3D representations are based on actual tree species found in urban areas. But Google has also extended realistic tree coverage to rainforests in Africa, Mexico, and the Amazon."
...the streets through the forest!
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How much carbon dioxide was produced making these 80 million virtual trees?
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
This was a spectacular use of Google's resources.
Unless they're planning to elaborate on the existing flight simulator built into Google Earth by implementing a first person shooter, I'm afraid having trees doesn't seem like a particularly useful development.
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that thers trees in the road
I bet that with an afternoon's work they could have spring, summer, winter, and fall trees. With a little more work they could link it to the local climate and when particular species of trees change color when.
I dunno what it would be for, but to be honest, I'm not precisely sure what this is for. "Raising awareness of trees" seems pretty lame. Still, it's very pretty, and there's nothing wrong with that.
...to Google earth based upon traffic pattern analysis following local lunch times... Seriously, is this news? I mean, it is a tiny bit interesting because they try to identify the trees and automate the process, but people were doing this in the 90's for terrain datasets used with visual simulations (I personally did something like this for an OpenFlight based sim as a consulting gig based upon something I'd seen in a product at SIGGRAPH 96.)
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Township zoning gustappo officer commeth and homeowner fineth.$1000.00 fine. You had no permit to cut that tree.
Now to add virtual people and it will be just like SimCity!
The house where I live is not on the ten-year-old aerial photo on Google Maps. Does this mean Streetview will soon show forest instead of my house?
I think a team at Google just set up a new world record in boredom...
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Yippie. Yay. How fascinating.
Seriously, Slashdot?
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I use Google Earth to scout out potential hunting grounds in addition to exploring them in person. Unless these trees directly correspond to actual trees, this is a step backward as far as I'm concerned. They'd be better off obtaining higher-resolution images like Bing's "Bird's Eye View" feature, which only works in very limited areas but it's great where they have it.
"Don't hate the media, become the media." -Jello Biafra
gigagigagiga GIGA PUDDING!!!
Recognize the make and model of various cars and put in appropriate models please.
Google Grand Theft Auto Earth here we come.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Where are the fucking 3D trees?
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
Okay, that's a bit off-topic, but not that much when we discuss virtual globes and the likes. Here's a dismissed submission last week that I think worthy of sharing: "It's a dream come true. After MapQuest and Yahoo actively supporting the Wikipedia-like map initiative OpenStreetMap.org. Microsoft announced that they hired OpenStreetMap's founder Steve Coast for their Bing Maps team. But there's more, they committed providing orthorectified aerial imagery and more to the project. From the official announcement: "Continuously innovating and improving our map data is a top priority and a massive undertaking at Bing. That's why we're excited to announce a new initiative to work with the OpenStreetMap project, a community of more than 320,000 people who have built high quality maps for every country on earth. Microsoft is providing access to our Bing Aerial Imagery for use in the OpenStreetMap project, and we have hired industry veteran Steve Coast to lead this effort. [...] As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing's global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM." Microsoft already added the OpenStreetMap layer to Bing Maps last August."
Clearly, this means to me that open data has won that round and that Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ are in deeper trouble today than a few months ago.
Now to go back to Google, at the moment, but it could change anytime, they're going on a different road away from OpenStreetMap with their Google Map Maker.
Animoog.org
..but those trees look very lame. Compare to Speed Tree which looked ten times better five years ago. Back to the drawing board, smart people. Or just do what I suggested a couple years ago and license Speed Tree. This is not the sort of development work that is every going to get done satisfactorily by the smart-but-lazy. NIH, just don't do it.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
As a grad student at the University of Arizona (in Tucson) who works on campus in the summers...I'd really like to see a shade map that is indexed to the time of day and inclination of the sun to calculate the most-shaded paths around campus. That might not sound so useful, but when it's 105F out, every bit of shade makes all the difference on a 10-15 minute walk across campus.
I don't fear computers, I fear the lack of them. -I. Asimov
...the forest for the trees
But doesn't support Linux 64 bit and the download site hands you a 32 bit version that flat out doesn't work.
As the network admin for a wireless ISP, we use Google Earth as a sort of 'first approximation' (along with RadioMobile) to do preliminary site-surveys, estimating whether its even worth our time to roll a truck for an attempted install. This looks like a great addition to an invaluable tool to me!
-- Sent from a computer.
Geeks with pre-Vista computers will be very sore at this. Businesses who didn't want Vista/Aero upgrades kept their old single core Pentium 4 machines and still game forums are full of posts showing crappy framerates on even recent hardware aren't a dwindling problem.
Though IIRC 3D buildings are an opting-in away, when you try to show off Manhattan's skyline sloooowly --thousands of buildings and skins are downloaded, and then buffered to your job's integrated cards-- disappointment will set in. Worse, even dual cores choke as you fly over the city --without yet handling thousands of trees.
<sarcasm>Thanks Google!</sarcasm>
Their wheel-zoom functionality sucks. Any CAD program, Supreme Commander, and even Google Maps zooms in where the cursor is pointed, not always in the center of the screen! And wheeling multiple clicks at once hashttp://news.slashdot.org/story/10/11/30/2254223/Google-Earth-Adds-3-D-Trees# the same effect as a single wheel roll! What a lack of common sense.
...how about updating those satellite images that are many years old?
These people certainly do.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
PD should hire some of these Google guys for their tree rendering!
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I recall that CryEngine1 had an 'auto-plantation' of trees basing their distribution on climate, exposure, hill slope, etc. Very ecologically minded. It shouldn't be that difficult then to do what Google did, except that the Earth is a lot bigger than your standard CryEngine map...
Still, imagine this in, CryEngine2.
With the thousands (millions?) of servers that google has, how about planting a few trees...
my hand just sprouted a middle finger.
Google Earth is really beautiful. And really pointless. With trees it's even more beautiful. And even more pointless.
Bah.
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
Geeks with pre-DSLR digital cameras will be no doubt sore at a distinct inability to change lenses in their cameras.
Geeks with VCRs are no doubt crying about DVDs.
Geeks with DVD players are probably trying to convince themselves that DVD is somehow comparable to the HD goodness of Bluray.
Technology marches forward. Suck it up, princess.
doesn't work
Google Earth has caught signal 11.
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too much time on his hands...
http://www.yell.com/maps/MapAction.do?mapSearchType=locSearch&zoomFactor=2&viewerMode=3dmap&location=buckingham+palace+london&lat=51.50099222050367&lon=-0.1422509808294058&pitch=39&heading=279&height3d=955
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
It's been forked so many times that it's impossible to maintain. Most of it is abandoned or poorly policed.
Meta will eat itself
So, Google got wood?
And on this street...
The Larch!