« Previous 10 | Main | Next 10»

June 8, 2009

Improving Google Earth Base Imagery

Google Earth has been out for four years now. In June 2005, Google not only made a fantastic and invaluable resource free to the public, but since then has added amazing features and incredible data to the application. This blog usually sits in awe of the latest and greatest features added every few weeks, or even days. However, every once in a while Google goes down the wrong path with a feature or update.

Today, I'd like to make a case that Google is going down the wrong path with their base imagery. Albeit with the best of intentions. They apparently would like to make the imagery when viewed from space look more normal (like you would see it from space). Google Earth's imagery has always looked "mottled" due to the strips of satellite imagery having many different rectangular shades of brightness (since the imagery is taken at varying times of day and year). Correcting this look is something I've also pleaded for in past blog posts. But, not the way they are doing it now.

Lately, Google has been attempting to correct the view from above by fusing different colors of shading into the imagery and using color correction on the satellite imagery. For example, this was done with Australia in December, and this weekend the US has had some of the treatment. But, the problem with this approach is that the colorization sometimes messes up the quality of the imagery (painting not only vegetation green, but also buildings, roads, and everything else (see image to the right). See the example in the screenshot here in Google Earth - turn on "Historical Imagery" option of GE 5 to see the two different shots. Not only that, but the colors are actually wrong in some places (like Arizona where they painted areas green that have no substantial green color in real life) - see the Tucson Mountains for example. However, I do approve of processing the base imagery for color saturation, brightness, and contrast consistency.

If Google wants the imagery to look better from space, they can use techniques built into GE to smoothly transition from one imagery set to another when zoomed in close. I suggested this back in 2006 and put up an example file and video using NASA's Blue Marble imagery. Try it yourself here . Note that the file shows the view from space for the current month (which changes the vegetation and ice/snow according to the season - see a time animation of all 12 months). As you zoom in closer, the imagery smoothly disappears to show the base imagery. And, Google doesn't have to use the NASA Blue Marble I suggested. They can use their own desired look (such as their special colorization technique). The important part is that they can set things up so it smoothly transitions to the normal base imagery once a user zooms in closer to the Earth.

There has been debate about how best to approach the views from space. But, I think the current course of action - modifying the base imagery - is wrong. A layer you can turn on/off to change the view would be a better approach. And, the layer could offer different choices (Blue Marble, Google's favorite view, and maybe others). In addition, the same layer could have the ability to turn on/off clouds. Ironically, the new historical imagery feature in GE 5 lets you see the Blue Marble imagery in lieu of Google's base imagery if you select a time where they don't have imagery. So, Google is already making use of the concept.

Recently I was re-visiting the Microsoft Virtual Earth/Live Maps/now Bing Maps (yet another name change). Their image sets change at different zoom levels, but I really do not like the transitions (very abrupt - not smooth in the 2D - a little better in 3D). And they have several different transitions (too many I think). You don't see the better quality imagery until you are very close to the ground. Often, you don't even realize they have high resolution imagery until you zoom to house-top level.

I certainly don't want Google Earth to have lots of levels of transitions (and definitely not abrupt ones) in the imagery. But, the current approach Google has taken is certainly not acceptable (can you tell I'm not happy?). Maybe one or two levels of transition (in a user-selectable layer), would be a better approach. It could even be useful (if it showed different views according to season, weather/clouds, etc.).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:13 AM | Comments (15)

June 6, 2009

New Imagery Update - Not all good news

[UPDATE 9-June 2100 ET: Google has released details on this imagery/terrain update. As usual, GEB readers did a great job at finding places with new imagery. The only terrain added this time was for the state of Indiana.]

Google has quietly released a new imagery update for Google Earth. The first report came from GEB reader Martin F. followed quickly by GEB reader Alok P. Martin found some spots in France in the department Gard, and Normandy (Omaha Beach). Alok noticed a very recent GeoEye image (May 18, 2009) for Akola, Maharashta, India. [Correction First report was from GEB reader Alsay who left comments to yesterday's drought post.] I guess we're going to see more of this more recent satellite imagery. I'm wondering how much there is in this update?

The new imagery only appears in Google Earth at the moment. Google Maps is still showing what was current before today. So, you can click on the "View in Google Maps" button in the top center of GE to compare the current GE imagery to yesterday's - this way you know whether it is new. If you find new imagery, please leave a comment to this post and I'll update the list. I may not have time to verify all inputs, but hopefully those leaving comments will use the method above to verify before leaving comments.

Updates noticed so far [UPDATED 2042 ET]:

• Saudi Arabia - Makkah thanks Alsay

• Afghanistan - large areas with medium resolution Spot Image - thanks Alsay

• France - Department of Gard, Normandy (Omaha Beach). Also: departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. - Thanks 'mortimer'; Also: Oise, Nièvre, Puy-de-Dôme, Finistère, Côtes-d'Armor Côte-d'Or, Gers, Dordogne, Lot, Corrèze, Creuse, Cher, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret, Orne, Maine-et-Loire, Corse-du-Sud, Haute-Corse, Haute-Loire - Thanks 'jib'

• India - Akola, Maharashta, Sirur, Chinchosi, Kon Goan, Utran, and other areas in the northwest. Thanks Alok.

• US - New colorization (see notes below); Tampa, Florida (Thanks 'unkj'); Puerto Rico

• Egypt - Gaza Pyramids - Thanks Ernie. (Try to ignore the current ugly 3D models for the pyramids, they'll be replaced I'm told). Also, western half of Egypt has medium resolution Spot Image. Thanks Alsay.

• Canada - Surrey, BC - thanks Daniel. Also: Québec / Bas-Saint-Laurent: Saint-Fabien and Mont-Joli and in Gaspésie: Métis-sur-Mer, Sainte-Flavie. Note: "BIG mistake fron GE team, the Rimouski region (Québec) is marked "Haute-Côte-Nord" (Upper North Coast)the Upper North Coast is located where the Saguenay River flows into it..." - Thanks to Henry Willox.

• Thailand - Prachuap Khiri Khan province, along the boundary to Myanmar. - Thanks Andy. Chiang Khong - Thanks Pete

• China - Hong Kong, Kowloon, Fuzhou - Thanks 'unkj'

• Japan - Mount Fuji - Thanks 'unkj'.

• Iran - Spot Image - thanks Thilo

• Pakistan - Spot Image - thanks Thilo

• Austria - Vienna - Thanks Ernst

• Italy - Venice, Pisa (reportedly very high resolution) - Thanks Karl

• Luxemborg - Southwestern part - Thanks Karl

• Spain - Northern part around Costa Brava - Thanks Karl

• Cambodia - Kampot & Kep - Thanks Pete

• Tajikistan - Eastern half

What I've noticed so far doesn't make me too happy. Google for a while now (see New color imagery for Australia December 2008) has been re-colorizing imagery to make the Earth look more consistent from space (instead of all the different colored strips of satellite imagery). This time, I think they've gone too far. The western US has been re-colored and is too dark and too green in some places. I noticed this particularly in and around Tucson where I just recently went backpacking and touring around. I was just about to publish today some GPS tracks and photos of the area, but I'm too mad at the moment. The Tucson mountains are NOT green. And Mt. Hopkins is so dark you can't even see the trails.

The images to the right (click for larger) are examples of what I'm talking about: The top photo shows how the southwest US now looks from space. The two lower photos show the mountains I was climbing last month - the first one is the new darker green, and the bottom one is what it looked like yesterday (much more like real life). Notice Mt. Hopkins on the left, Google even colored the roads and buildings (observatories) green. Yuck!

Of course, you can still turn back the clock with "Historical Imagery" and see the previous imagery. So, all is not lost. But, degrading the imagery and making it look false on the ground in the base imagery is not a good thing in my opinion.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:45 AM | Comments (50)

June 5, 2009

US Drought Conditions in Google Earth by NOAA

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (better known as NOAA) has been producing a number of useful KML files which can be viewed in Google Earth. Today I'm highlighting a collection of updated drought maps which can be viewed with the time animation feature in Google Earth. NOAA has several collections at this web page which cover the year 2000 through to the present. The maps highlight the regions of drought conditions with colored contours which indicate the severity of drought (Dark red is the most severe). I recommend only loading a single year at a time unless you have a lot of memory. (The one covering the full ten year range is recommended to only be used with GE Pro because it only seems to work with Pro.) To illustrate (and save you the time to load), I've created a video showing the 2005 to present animation:

Other examples of NOAA data available in Google Earth:

• Numerous Weather Data Collections from NOAA
• Great Lakes Bathymetry in Google Earth
• NOAA Coral Reef Data
• Right Whales Sightings

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:56 AM | Comments (5)

June 4, 2009

Major Street View Upgrade - 3D Features

Google has just released an update to their Street View application - as viewed in the browser-based Google Maps (not yet available in Google Earth). The update has not yet been announced, and the new features may not be deployed to all country versions of Google Maps yet (based on reports I've had from GEB readers). [UPDATE: Announced by Google here]. When you move your mouse around the view in Street View, you now get a "3D" rectangle or ellipse "icon" indicating the position of a view available on the sides of buildings (and other structures), or to move you further down the street. When you double-click you get this animated motion-blur effect as you zoom over to that location and the camera turns to face the location you've picked (turns and tilts). This is a very intuitive, and much more useful, way to move within the Street View imagery. Plus, it looks really cool!

Here is the introductory video from Google:

Or, you can try it out right here:

View Larger Map

Sometimes the view you pick may or may not accurately point the camera at the place you pick. Not sure if this is an algorithm problem or what. But, for the most part it gives a much more pleasing experience compared to the previous interface.

Keir Clarke points out this could mean new business opportunities within the Street View. We already have ways to search our maps, taking it to the dynamic level of moving your mouse over a view of a building and getting a hyperlink to the business will surely happen. It is inevitable. I believe the same thing will happen in Google Earth - in some ways it already happens - if you turn on the 3D Buildings layer you can often select a building and get information about the building. But, there needs to be even more database integration to tie the location of buildings to the businesses located there. I'm sure Google is working on it.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:44 AM | Comments (8)

Making 3D for Google Earth, Google Seeking Help, KML Regions, OpenStreetMap in Google Earth

• Making 3D for Google Earth - Google has produced this video on how to use SketchUp to make a 3D building for Google Earth. You can also get some good tips from the "Acceptance Criteria" for models uploaded to the 3D Warehouse in order to be added to the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer.

• Google Seeking Help from Governments - Google continues to ask for help from official government sources to help improve their data in Google Maps and Google Earth. They want the data shown in these products to be as accurate and authoritative as possible. So, if you work for a governmental organization with authoritative data, and want to see your country's data better represented, you should contact Google.
  

• KML Regions - GeoWeb Guru has posted an article about an advanced feature of KML called "Regions". The article was written by Geospatial Training Services which also offers Google Earth courses. Definitely worth a read. (Disclaimer: Geospatial Training Services currently advertises on GEB).
  

• OpenStreetMap in Google Earth - Mapperz points out that you can not only view OpenStreetMap tiles as an overlay in Google Earth , but you can also put OpenStreetMap into GE on your browser using the Google Maps and Google Earth APIs. See his version here . A nice extra feature would be to enable a transparency slider so you can compare the two versions. You can do transparency with the overlay link above, in Google Earth itself, by selecting the loaded KML and using the transparency slider below the Places pane.
  

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:24 AM | Comments (1)

June 3, 2009

Exoplanet Astronomy Star Trek Style

I stumbled upon a cool site that tells you some basic facts about known exoplanets. But, rather than a boring web page, it pretends you are on the bridge of a Star Trek ship using the computer. The underlying planet view comes from a Google Earth plugin using the Sky mode. Yet another fun example of using the GE API and plugin in innovative ways with an educational twist.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:53 AM | Comments (2)

June 2, 2009

Huge Waste of Energy Visible in Google Earth

Recently I happened upon a thread of posts at the Google Earth Community entitled "The largest waste of energy in history". I was initially skeptical, and still am not convinced yet it is the largest, however this is indeed a serious issue. A by-product of getting oil out of the ground is often a huge amount of toxic natural gasses. These gasses can be harmful to the oil mining process, so the oil manufacturers burn the gasses to get rid of them in a process known as "gas flares". These are usually giant chimneys with scorching flames shooting many meters into the sky and burning toxic gas residues into our atmosphere. It turns out that BILLIONs of cubic meters of natural gas have been burned continuously around the world for decades simply because the oil manufacturers find it easier to just get the oil to make their money. The real travesty is that while trying to get to the oil, the oil industry is burning away huge amounts of energy (and polluting the atmosphere on a gigantic scale), that could be used to help provide energy (instead of using up all the oil!).

GEC member 'spotter2' began by posting some placemarks where you can see the flares burning in the satellite imagery in Google Earth in the Persian Gulf . But, he later started compiling examples for many countries around the globe. And, he and others have pointed out some other interesting facts.

It turns out the World Bank has an initiative called the "Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership
" to try to find a way to reduce this terrible waste of energy. They have even helped promote some data from NOAA which shows the locations of global gas flares based on night-time satellite imagery. Watch this video:

You can examine this data yourself inside Google Earth with this network link which lets you zoom in on the NOAA data. Once you locate a flare, you can turn off the link and check the underlying satellite imagery to see if you can find the flares yourself.

The best solution would be to put the natural gas to use as another energy source and properly process the energy without damaging our atmosphere (as much). There's a company which was featured in Scientific American called Synfuels which is attempting this.

There is some data analysis from the DOE on how much energy is being wasted through gas flares. However, some GEC members have pointed out the data is based on oil industry data which is most likely using the lowest possible theoretical figures in their estimates. It would be interesting to see more scientific studies on what the environmental impact and natural gas energy waste has been through this process.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:40 AM | Comments (8)

June 1, 2009

Links: North Korea, Network Links, National Geographic

• North Korea - The news about another atomic test in North Korea has prompted some to use Google Earth to help analyze and provide maps on where the testing occurred. See an excellent summary of the recent test and Google Earth maps by Stefan Geens at OgleEarth. Another KML file for Google Earth made big news last week. This one posted by Curtis Melvin is called "North Korea Uncovered " on the Google Earth Community and was featured in a Wall Street Journal article. The file has been downloaded over 45,000 times - and contains a vast amount of placemarks resulting from painstaking analysis of satellite imagery and other information to understand North Korea's infrastructure. I recommend reading the WSJ article to understand the background on what has been accomplished.

• Network Links Explained - Matt Fox at the Google Earth Library site has written this nice explanation of how Google Earth network links work. This serves as a nice compliment to the more basic overview of GE Network Links written in 2007 here on the GEB. For other basic information about Google Earth - read the "Basics" page here at GEB.

• National Geographic - Last week I visited the headquarters of the National Geographic Society. National Geographic has long been one of my favorite publishers - and possibly one of the main reasons why I love geography and Google Earth so much. While there, I spoke to Ford Cochran who writes National Gegraphic's "BlogWILD". Ford wrote about one of the Google Earth files I thought he would be interested in seeing: the collection of placemarks which categorizes animals found in the National Geographic Megaflyover images found in Google Earth. Definitely worth checking out... a lot of people don't realize you can see so many animals in the Google Earth aerial imagery.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:34 AM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2009

Links: New 3D Tours Gallery, Earth API Update

Lots of interesting news buried below. If you're a hard core GE user, make sure you read closely and follow some of the links below. I don't have time today to do a more elaborate review of all the goodies below.

• New 3D Tours Gallery - Yesterday Google announced a new addition to the Google Earth Gallery called "3D Buildings". This gallery shows some cool tours of 3D models around Google Earth for various categories. For example: castles, bridges, museums, baseball stadiums or skyscrapers. Most of these are Google Earth 5 Tours. Tours are a great way to help people see the wealth of 3D data available in Google Earth. I expect Google will be adding many of these 3D tours to the Tours Gallery for viewing them in the browser with the GE plugin. I do have a couple of suggestions for improvement though: 1) I think adding some sound and/or narration would make some of the tours better, and 2) The name "3D Buildings" needs to be changed - I've been saying for some time the layer in Google Earth should be changed because there are all kinds of non-3D Building models in the layer now (bridges, animals, buoys, ships, and more). Maybe the name of the layer (and this new gallery) should be "3D Objects".

• Earth API Update - Yesterday at Google I/O Googler Roman Nurik presented a session called "Building Advanced 3D Geographical Applications for the Web with the Google Earth API". You can see his presentation documentation here. Virgil Zetterlind of EarthNC.com blogged his notes while attending the session at his Maplify blog. Of particular note is that updates to the Maps and Earth APIs have improved integration between the 2D and 3D maps so you can more seamlessly transition between the two modes. Here is a 30 second video demo of the transitions. Roman also has produced a "MyEarth" demo application that uses the Earth API and the Maps Data API to allow you to integrate content from you Google MyMaps to view it in the Earth Plugin. I recommend checking out Roman's presentation for links to other cool demos.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2009

3D Flight Tracking in Netherlands with Google Earth

One of my favorite KML collections from the early days of Google Earth (way back in 2005 - which is a long time in Internet time), was the real-time flight tracker by FBOweb that lets you watch incoming aircraft for several major airports in the US. I am a bit disappointed they haven't enhanced the tracker very much considering all the new features in Google Earth since 2005. But, it still amazes people when I demonstrate live updating positions of planes in 3D approaching a major airport. (See a list of several cities to follow in this post).

Recently I ran across another real-time flight tracker in the Netherlands for Google Earth. The Geluidsnet web site (in Dutch) lets you watch planes arriving and departing from a few airports through this Google Earth network link (once it loads, click on "Schiphol area" to see the tracks for the last 30 minutes). They display a vertical "fence" below each plane to help visualize the altitude and paths. Orange fences are arriving aircraft, green are departing. The visualization gives a better sense of position and the number of planes when viewed from an angle. If you look closely, you will notice every few seconds the positions (and fences) change. Updating data like this is done using the power of the Google Earth "network link".

You would think the data is coming from aircraft transponders. [UPDATE 1530 ET: And they are! In doing a translation of a page on the Dutch-speaking site, I read how they were taking sound measurements for noise pollution purposes related to aircraft - and interpreted this to mean that was how they were getting the data. But, locals have explained to me the data is in fact coming from transponders.] But, using Google Translate, I read that they are using sophisticated sound measurements and algorithms to record data on aircraft and can determine position, speed, and even aircraft types.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:32 AM | Comments (7)

« Previous 10 | Main | Next 10»