
Introducing Google Earth 6—the next generation of realism - Anon84
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/introducing-google-earth-6the-next.html
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ugh
There is something about Google Earth that just doesn’t make it as fun to use
as Maps. Maybe because Earth is a lot uglier than Maps? There are all those
customization options but no sensible defaults and a very strange aesthetic,
completely unlike what you see on the much more subtle and sophisticated Maps.

Navigation also feels somewhat broken. I often manage to get lost in Earth,
that doesn’t happen to me on Maps. Is it the added degree of freedom? And now,
Street View. It’s not really a joy to use on Maps, either, but it feels
atrocious in Earth. It’s slow, it’s too blurry for too long, it just doesn’t
feel right.

Earth has all those potentially great features but the UI feels like such a
huge step back from Maps.

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forgottenpaswrd
"Earth has all those potentially great features but the UI feels like such a
huge step back from Maps."

You mean, for you.

On the contrary, I find Google Earth UI way better than maps. I have
continuous zoom, continuous panning(you could use a joystick, multitouch or
mouse wheel easily), huge screen(you could hide left tooltip menu with a
simple key).

I just can't understand any of your comments, maybe you have a bad graphic
card,I don't know but Earth is way way faster than maps and awesome.

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jws
It doesn't do a good job of using the available UI on the Mac at least…

• No pinch-zoom or rotate.

• The two finger panning motions don't work, the vertical portion having been
repurposed as zoom.

…but the animation seems smoother and the more prominent date display at the
bottom of the view should lead more people to the historical imagery.

The transition to street view is brilliantly done! Moving around in street
view is, um, trippy. (Two-finger scroll forward and backward works here, lose
all relation to reality if you turn your head with the keyboard. Rotate
gestures do not work.)

Pretty spectral artifact at the Missouri Botanical Garden on the north side of
the climatron for the current imagery.

~~~
silvertab
Agreed. It also slowed down my entire system to the point where I had to Force
Quit it... and even then, it took a good 30-40 seconds before the system got
responsive again... I kinda feel like Google Earth is less and less relevant
and mostly always revert to using Google Maps instead...

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socratees
Tangential to the conversation. So theoretically, Google will be able to count
the number of trees in a given city right?

~~~
NathanKP
I imagine that it would be a very rough estimate. In areas of dense tree
coverage in parks or backyards Google probably just plants trees to cover the
area since it would be nearly impossible to actually differentiate each
individual tree in a canopied area. Trees that are out in the open, standing
alone can obviously be counted, but trees in groups probably can't.

~~~
wooster
That's assuming they're doing the tree counting with imagery. The newer Google
Street View cars I've seen have LIDAR rigs on top, so they could be mapping
trees that way.

~~~
boucher
But presumably they aren't driving through most of the forests, right?

~~~
wooster
I don't see any reason they couldn't do the same from the air. You can tell
foliage with LIDAR, and I'd imagine you could get a pretty good approximation
of trunk location pretty easily by looking at the foliage height.

~~~
boucher
Fair enough, but do they collect their own aerial data? I was under the
impression it's all collected through by third parties. Also, do they use
anything other than satellite imagery right now? Is LIDAR effective at that
range?

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wooster
Yeah, they have some aerial data. For example: zoom in on downtown San Jose in
satellite view. The perspective view is aerial photography, and is copyrighted
by Google.

Although, now that I've done more digging, it looks like they're using
satellite imagery for at least some of this, along with LIDAR and infrared
techniques:
[http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/35659.pdf)

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jws
They are using this as a vector to install Chrome.

That annoys some people, but at least the people most likely to be running IE
6 or 7 at home are also the ones most likely to remain co-opted-in to a Chrome
download.

~~~
dangrossman
I have my doubts that bundling a browser with other software will really
convert those that don't know what a browser is.

They go online by clicking the blue 'e' icon on their desktop or start menu,
as that's what they've always done. Adding another browser or changing the
default browser doesn't change this behavior, and IE will ask the user to make
it the default again as soon as they do.

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VMG
Still broken as hell on linux: <http://code.google.com/p/earth-
issues/issues/detail?id=1068>

The quality of google earth for linux is an embarrassment.

~~~
samstokes
Broke for me too, but this solved it:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/earth/thread?tid=14469...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/earth/thread?tid=144696eab7d5a9c7&hl=en&fid=144696eab7d5a9c70004963a23259a5a&hltp=2)

On Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install lsb-core

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isani
The new Street View in Earth features seamless movement. They apparently do it
by mapping the Street View images onto 3D building models. The end result is
pretty terrible, though: lots of warping and a visible "pop" when moving from
one image to another.

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baddox
I wonder if zoom-scrolling follows the mouse in the new version. If not, then
Google Earth is still unusable and I'll continue only using Maps.

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dstein
I'd be surprised if they're not working with Rockstar Games to build Grand
Theft Auto maps from Google maps data.

~~~
stuhacking
Prepare to be surprised.

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njharman
I instantly recognized that as exploratorium in SF. So, fairly successful
realism.

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cookiecaper
Hopefully it won't crash when I try to run it on Qt 4.7 anymore :D

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Tylergillies
yay. trees.

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kunjaan
Wow. They have trees now. I should watch out for them.

