
Google Earth Studio - duck
https://www.google.com/earth/studio/
======
baroffoos
Clicked just to see the message saying Chrome only. Nice to see the devs at
google still don't give a shit about browser diversity and standards.

~~~
jasonkester
It's a desktop tool to generate video flybys from google earth. Not a website
they expect people off the street to visit. How would you deliver such a thing
in 2019?

In the past this would have been a standalone app like google earth itself
was. With a big download and an icon on your desktop.

Or, they could simply bundle Chrome into the app as electron to give people
the exact same thing but avoid snarky hacker news comments.

Or, better still, they could do what they did and ship it as is.

The correct response to this used to be "wow, that's pretty cool that they can
make this work in a browser".

~~~
Majestic121
Or, they could do what they did but try to make it work with other major
browsers as well.

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jasonkester
Again, to what end?

It's a pro tool, not a website. Be happy it wasn't adobe releasing it as a
desktop product and charging $1,000 per year to use it.

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w-ll
That first scene in the bg video made me feel very un-easy.

Edit: This also reminds me that I'm still upset there is no easy way to have
the satellite view on google maps without the 3d info. I've read articles
describing how to use the old sat maps but nothing seams to work.

~~~
wtallis
Getting the plain imagery in Google Maps without the falsified 3D models is
pretty straightforward. After switching to satellite view, just open the
sidebar that lets you select between regular map, satellite, and terrain
views, and below it you'll find globe, traffic, transit, bicycling. Click the
globe option to disable it, and it'll revert to the plain 2D view.

~~~
w-ll
Thanks; I've found it. But really this ux is bad... its a 2nd level sidebar...
The _hamburger_ menu is only available after the places or location info menu
is open. What ever happen to the map layer options you get with google maps on
a 3rd party.

~~~
wtallis
What platform are you using? In a web browser, it's not a second-level menu;
the hamburger button is always accessible at the left end of the search box.

~~~
w-ll
I'm using the latest Chrome on Windows 10.

Gallery of the 3 levels =>
[https://imgur.com/a/xPTralG](https://imgur.com/a/xPTralG)

Edit:

I get it now. Triangles, Chevrons, and whatnot.

The sidebar is required to go to the side menu.

But I spend every day in Maps and it was never obvious to me.

I wanted to screen cap the year ago Maps api layer selector where it was
Satellite and Map then with the Map option of terrain.

Edit Edit:

To modeless:

Click something in the sidebar... that revels another sidebar...

Back to UX how am I going to know that clicking "Globe" is a toggle state like
a checkbox?
([https://i.imgur.com/rvLdzM8.png](https://i.imgur.com/rvLdzM8.png))

I've been using Google Maps for years, I preach it. These things make me feel
like a heathen.

~~~
modeless
The search box with hamburger menu is visible by default. You deliberately hid
it to get to the state in your screenshot. It is two clicks to disable 3D from
the default state. This is entirely reasonable.

~~~
buriedMEnus
You do realize that I myself, and many people I know, do not even try to learn
"two clicks deep" anymore.

Why?

Because in 6 months there will be another phone, another product, a redesign,
to "freshen up" styles, and everything we expended effort to dig out from even
one click (or tap) below the surface is upended, and moved somewhere else,
because of territorial pissings and careers behind the curtains.

User Interface experiences actually haven't improved since 1999. It's really
just that the best parts of that era have withstood the test of time, and
remained constant.

People come in with amnesia and make the same old mistakes over and over
again, and we're forced to unlearn and relearn nested menu trees because
popularity contests must be won.

Case in point:

> Google still has a minus operator for exclusions, but the plus operator was
> destroyed in the name of Google+

And just like the headphone jack on iPhones, we’ll never get it back because
to admit error is to court liability and damages in the corporate context, and
smells like a recall to suits and share holders.

~~~
mavhc
User Interface experiences actually haven't improved since 1991 when RISC OS
3.0 came out

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ruytlm
I wonder how long it will be before this can be built on as a world for a
video game.

~~~
tasuki
Maybe it already has and you've been playing it for years!

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TimTheTinker
Any idea whether it supports other basemaps or layers? I’m interested in
loading some content from ArcGIS Online or a local raster/feature dataset.

~~~
jordache
Is there robust integration of google maps with arcGIS in general? If not,
then I would not expect any unique integration of the two platforms strictly
for the google earth studio context.

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pavlov
Seems to be like After Effects with Google Earth as the only input.
Impressive. What are the use cases?

~~~
geek_at
news stations who don't have good animators

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tjpnz
News stations that don't have access to drones?

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542458
Getting somebody on-site with training and a drone and a flight permit and
communicating what exactly you want and getting the right footage and hoping
the weather cooperates sounds a lot more difficult than launching a piece of
software.

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trynewideas
Merry Christmas to Jon Bois

~~~
avolcano
First thing I thought. Wonder what he's been using to animate Google Earth in
his existing stuff - manual camera movement and screen recording?

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trynewideas
Pretty much:
[https://twitter.com/jon_bois/status/764180167656955904?lang=...](https://twitter.com/jon_bois/status/764180167656955904?lang=en)

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cee_el123
What representations does Google use to store such a humongous amount of
geospatial data ?

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enriquto
A multi-scale pyramid of tiled images allows O(1) access at arbitrary scales
at positions, independently of the size of the whole thing. It may be
something like that.

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davissorenson
Looks nice, but it's yet another Chrome-only project.

~~~
tjpnz
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted but this is a pretty serious
shortcoming.

~~~
richev
True, but their FAQ addresses this:

> Our 3D rendering engine currently uses a Chrome-only technology called
> Native Client to power Earth Studio. However, we’re closely tracking the
> evolution of WebAssembly (especially threading). Stay tuned!

~~~
burgerboy
People here just have to hate in everything Google does eh?

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zapzupnz
No, people hate that Google is observably becoming the next 1990s era
Microsoft.

NaCl is already deprecated in favour of wasm but this thing still uses NaCl.
This should just not have been released until it was ready.

Forgive the world for thinking this smells like IE and ActiveX from an
infinitely scarier company with much more power than Microsoft ever had.

~~~
SquareWheel
It's nothing like ActiveX. Native Client was an open and modern recreation of
a dying API (NPAPI). It didn't catch on, so it's being deprecated.

~~~
zapzupnz
Sure, but realistically, that makes no difference when (A) only one browser
ever implemented it, and (B) its continued use by its originator company
_despite_ deprecation last year (after its team was destaffed two years ago)
still stinks of an attempt at lock-in, open source or not.

~~~
jchw
There are still things you can't do with the web platform alone. WebAssembly
is still in its infancy, and not everything is really figured out yet. In this
case, it looks like they're held back by the lack of proper threading:

>However, we’re closely tracking the evolution of WebAssembly (especially
threading). Stay tuned!

It seems reasonable to get this program out and running today and move it over
to WebAssembly in the future. One of the alternatives would've been to deliver
a native app to every platform, but Chromium is already a native app that runs
on many platforms that you can compile yourself, and then you get a security
sandbox for free. Seems a better to me, frankly, especially in a world where
many "desktop" apps just ship with Chromium anyways.

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exodust
I signed up. I've been waiting for years for a way to animate Google Earth.
Don't care that it's Chrome-only, good to see they addressed this in their
FAQ.

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slowwwclap
Did anyone manage to get access yet? I did submit a request.

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mmanfrin
Someone at Google must really like Jon Bois.

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Jagat
So how long before this is sunset?

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jannes
You could probably animate a regular sunset with it a few times before Google
sunsets it.

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spacegod
As a GIS developer I don't know what my thoughts are on this.

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enriquto
Think about something and write it, then!

