Date: 01/01/2005
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004 (see In-Q-Tel). It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and geographic information system (GIS) onto a 3D globe. It was originally available with three different licenses, but has since been reduced to just two: Google Earth (a free version with limited function) and Google Earth Pro, which is now free (it previously cost $399 a year) and is intended for commercial use. The third original option, Google Earth Plus, has been discontinued.
The product, re-released as Google Earth in 2005, is available for use on personal computers running Windows 2000 and above, Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above, Linux kernel: 2.6 or later (released on June 12, 2006), and FreeBSD. Google Earth is also available as a browser plugin which was released on May 28, 2008. It was also made available for mobile viewers on the iPhone OS on October 28, 2008, as a free download from the App Store, and is available to Android users as a free app in the Google Play store. In addition to releasing an updated Keyhole based client, Google also added the imagery from the Earth database to their web-based mapping software, Google Maps. The release of Google Earth in June 2005 to the public caused a more than tenfold increase in media coverage on virtual globes between 2004 and 2005, driving public interest in geospatial technologies and applications. As of October 2011, Google Earth has been downloaded more than a billion times.
Google Earth displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth’s surface, allowing users to see things like cities and houses looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle (see also bird’s eye view). The degree of resolution available is based somewhat on the points of interest and popularity, but most land (except for some islands) is covered in at least 15 meters of resolution. Maps showing a visual representation of Google Earth coverage Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; and Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom include examples of the highest resolution, at 15 cm (6 inches). Google Earth allows users to search for addresses for some countries, enter coordinates, or simply use the mouse to browse to a location.
For large parts of the surface of the Earth only 2D images are available, from almost vertical photography. Viewing this from an oblique angle, there is perspective in the sense that objects which are horizontally far away are seen smaller, like viewing a large photograph, not quite like a 3D view.
For other parts of the surface of the Earth, 3D images of terrain and buildings are available. Google Earth uses digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). This means one can view almost the entire earth in three dimensions. Since November 2006, the 3D views of many mountains, including Mount Everest, have been improved by the use of supplementary DEM data to fill the gaps in SRTM coverage.
Some people use the applications to add their own data, making them available through various sources, such as the Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) or blogs mentioned in the link section below. Google Earth is able to show various kinds of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is also a Web Map Service client. Google Earth supports managing three-dimensional Geospatial data through Keyhole Markup Language (KML).
Google Earth is simply based on 3D maps, with the capability to show 3D buildings and structures (such as bridges), which consist of users’ submissions using SketchUp, a 3D modeling program software. In prior versions of Google Earth (before Version 4), 3D buildings were limited to a few cities, and had poorer rendering with no textures. Many buildings and structures from around the world now have detailed 3D structures; including (but not limited to) those in the United States, Canada, Mexico, India, Japan, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Pakistan and the cities, Amsterdam and Alexandria. In August 2007, Hamburg became the first city entirely shown in 3D, including textures such as façades. The ‘Westport3D’ model was created by 3D imaging firm AM3TD using long-distance laser scanning technology and digital photography and is the first such model of an Irish town to be created. As it was developed initially to aid Local Government in carrying out their town planning functions it includes the highest-resolution photo-realistic textures to be found anywhere in Google Earth. Three-dimensional renderings are available for certain buildings and structures around the world via Google’s 3D Warehouse and other websites. In June 2012, Google announced that it will start to replace user submitted 3D buildings with auto-generated 3D mesh buildings starting with major cities. Although there are many cities on Google Earth that are fully or partially 3D, more are available in the Earth Gallery. The Earth Gallery is a library of modifications of Google Earth people have made. In the library there are not only modifications for 3D buildings, but also models of earthquakes using the Google Earth model, 3D forests, and much more.
Recently, Google added a feature that allows users to monitor traffic speeds at loops located every 200 yards in real-time. In 2007, Google began offering traffic data in real-time, based on information crowdsourced from the GPS-identified locations of cellular phone users. In version 4.3 released on April 15, 2008, Google Street View was fully integrated into the program allowing the program to provide an on the street level view in many locations.
On January 31, 2010, the entirety of Google Earth’s ocean floor imagery was updated to new images by SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO. The new images have caused smaller islands, such as some atolls in the Maldives, to be rendered invisible despite their shores being completely outlined.
Uses
Google Earth may be used to perform some day-to-day tasks and for other purposes.
Google Earth can be used to view areas subjected to widespread disasters if Google supplies up-to-date images. For example, after the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake images of Haiti were made available on January 17.
With Google’s push for the inclusion of Google Earth in the Classroom, teachers are adopting Google Earth in the classroom for lesson planning, such as teaching students geographical themes (location, culture, characteristics, human interaction, and movement) to creating mashups with other web applications such as Wikipedia.
One can explore and place location bookmarks on the Moon and Mars.
One can get directions using Google Earth, using variables such as street names, cities, and establishments. But the addresses must by typed in search field, one cannot simply click on two spots on the map.
Google Earth can function as a hub of knowledge, pertaining the users location. By enabling certain options, one can see the location of gas stations, restaurants, museums, and other public establishments in their area. Google Earth can also dot the map with links to images, YouTube videos, and Wikipedia articles relevant to the area being viewed.
One can create custom image overlays for planning trips, hikes on handheld GPS units.
Google Earth can be used to map homes and select a random sample for research in developing countries.
All of these features are also released by Google Earth Blog.
Features
Wikipedia and Panoramio integration
In December 2006, Google Earth added a new layer called “Geographic Web” that includes integration with Wikipedia and Panoramio. In Wikipedia, entries are scraped for coordinates via the Coord templates. There is also a community-layer from the project Wikipedia-World. More coordinates are used, different types are in the display and different languages are supported than the built-in Wikipedia layer. Google announced on May 30, 2007 that it is acquiring Panoramio. In March 2010, Google removed the “Geographic Web” layer. The “Panoramio” layer became part of the main layers and the “Wikipedia” layer was placed in the “More” layer.
Flight simulator
In Google Earth v4.2 a flight simulator was included as a hidden feature. Starting with v4.3 it is no longer hidden. The flight simulator could be accessed by holding down the keys Ctrl, Alt, and A. Initially the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the Cirrus SR-22 were the only aircraft available, and they could be used with only a few airports. However, one can start flight in “current location” and need not to be at an airport. One will face the direction they face when they start the flight simulator. They cannot start flight in ground level view and must be near the ground (approximately 50m-100m above the ground) to start in take-off position. Otherwise they will be in the air with 40% flaps and gears extended (landing position). In addition to keyboard control, the simulator can be controlled with a mouse or joystick. Google Earth v5.1 and higher crashes when starting flight simulator with Saitek and other joysticks. The user can also fly underwater.
Sky mode
Google Sky is a feature that was introduced in Google Earth 4.2 on August 22, 2007, and allows users to view stars and other celestial bodies. It was produced by Google through a partnership with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Alberto Conti and his co-developer Dr. Carol Christian of STScI plan to add the public images from 2007, as well as color images of all of the archived data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Newly released Hubble pictures will be added to the Google Sky program as soon as they are issued. New features such as multi-wavelength data, positions of major satellites and their orbits as well as educational resources will be provided to the Google Earth community and also through Christian and Conti’s website for Sky. Also visible on Sky mode are constellations, stars, galaxies and animations depicting the planets in their orbits. A real-time Google Sky mashup of recent astronomical transients, using the VOEvent protocol, is being provided by the VOEventNet collaboration. Google’s Earth maps are being updated each 5 minutes.
Google Sky faces competition from Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (which runs only under the Microsoft Windows operating systems) and from Stellarium, a free open source planetarium that runs under Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux.
On March 13, 2008, Google made a web-based version of Google Sky available via the internet.
Street View
On April 15, 2008 with version 4.3, Google fully integrated its Street View into Google Earth. In version 6.0, the photo zooming function has been removed because it is incompatible with the new ‘seamless’ navigation.
Google Street View provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level. When it was launched on May 25, 2007 for Google Maps, only five cities were included. It has since expanded to more than 40 U.S. cities, and includes the suburbs of many, and in some cases, other nearby cities. Recent updates have now implemented Street View in most of the major cities of Canada, Mexico, Denmark, South Africa, Japan, Spain, Norway, Finland, Sweden, France, the UK, Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Taiwan, and Singapore.
Google Street View, when operated, displays photos that were previously taken by a camera mounted on an automobile, and can be navigated by using the mouse to click on photograph icons displayed on the screen in the user’s direction of travel. Using these devices, the photos can be viewed in different sizes, from any direction, and from a variety of angles.
Water and ocean
Introduced in version 5.0 (February 2009), the Google Ocean feature allows users to zoom below the surface of the ocean and view the 3D bathymetry beneath the waves. Supporting over 20 content layers, it contains information from leading scientists and oceanographers. On April 14, 2009, Google added underwater terrain data for the Great Lakes. In 2010, Google added underwater terrain data for Lake Baikal.
In June 2011, higher resolution of some deep ocean floor areas increased in focus from 1-kilometer grids to 100 meters thanks to a new synthesis of seafloor topography released through Google Earth. The high-resolution features were developed by oceanographers at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory from scientific data collected on research cruises. The sharper focus is available for about 5 percent of the oceans (an area larger than North America). Underwater scenery can be seen of the Hudson Canyon off New York City, the Wini Seamount near Hawaii, and the sharp-edged 10,000-foot-high Mendocino Ridge off the U.S Pacific Coast. There is a Google 2011 Seafloor Tour for those interested in viewing ocean deep terrain.
Historical Imagery
Introduced in version 5.0, Historical Imagery allows users to traverse back in time and study earlier stages of any place. This feature allows research that require analysis of past records of various places.
Influences
Google Earth can be traced directly back to a small company named Autometric, now a part of Boeing. A team at Autometric, led by Robert Cowling, created a visualization product named Edge Whole Earth. Bob demonstrated Edge to Michael T. Jones, Chris Tanner and others at SGC in 1996. Several other visualization products using imagery existed at the time, including Performer-based ones, but Michael T. Jones stated emphatically that he had “never thought of the complexities of rendering an entire globe …” The catch phrase “from outer space to in your face” was coined by Autometric President Dan Gordon, and used to explain his concept for personal/local/global range. Edge blazed a trail as well in broadcasting, being used in 1997 on CBS News with Dan Rather, in print for rendering large images draped over terrain for National Geographic, and used for special effects in the feature film Shadow Conspiracy in 1997.
Gordon was a huge fan of the ‘Earth’ program described in Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi classic Snow Crash. Indeed, a Google Earth co-founder claimed that Google Earth was modeled after Snow Crash, while another co-founder said it was inspired by the short science education film Powers of Ten. In fact Google Earth was at least partly inspired by a Silicon Graphics demo called “From Outer Space to in Your Face” which zoomed from space into the Swiss Alps then into the Matterhorn. This launch demo was hosted by an Onyx 3000 with InfiniteReality4 graphics, which supported Clip Mapping and was inspired by the hardware texture paging capability (although it did not use the Clip Mapping) and “Powers of Ten”. The first Google Earth implementation called Earth Viewer emerged from Intrinsic Graphics as a demonstration of Chris Tanner’s software based implementation of a Clip Mapping texture paging system and was spun off as Keyhole Inc.
Google Earth Pro
Google Earth Pro is a business-oriented upgrade to Google Earth that has more features than the Plus version. It is the most feature-rich version of Google Earth available to the public, with various additional features such as a movie maker and data importer. In addition to business-friendly features, it has also been found useful for travelers with map-making tools. Up until late January 2015, it was available for $399/year, however Google decided to make it free to the public. It is now for free and Google does not mention anything about new policy changes. The Pro version includes add-on software such as:
- Movie making.
- GIS data importer.
- Advanced printing modules.
- Radius and area measurements.
Google Earth Plug-in
The Google Earth API is a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers. The Plug-in and its JavaScript API let users place a version of Google Earth into web pages. The API enables sophisticated 3D map applications to be built. At its unveiling at Google’s 2008 I/O developer conference, the company showcased potential applications such as a game where the player controlled a milktruck atop a Google Earth surface.
The Google Earth API has been deprecated as of 15 December 2014 and will remain supported until the 15th of December 2015. Google Chrome aims to end support for the Netscape Plugin API (which the Google Earth API relies on) by the end of 2016.