Extension Warehouse

The new Extension Warehouse is designed to be a “one-stop shop for anyone looking to customize their copy of SketchUp”, with tons of new features included.

LayOut in SketchUp Pro 2013

New in 2013 they’ve “added hatching and other pattern fills, speedier vector rendering, better zoom, more useful callouts and other improvements we think you’ll love”.  Here is more info about LayOut from the SketchUpdate Blog.

SketchUp Make

The free version of SketchUp now has a new name: SketchUp Make.  The word “SketchUp” now refers to the family of products, with includes the “Pro” and “Make” verions.

All told, there are quite a few great updates in the latest releases of SketchUp.  While SketchUp isn’t being used for Google Earth as much as it used to (due to the automated 3D Imagery continuing to be rolled out), it is still an amazing tool for creating 3D models.

You can read more about this update in the SketchUpdate Blog.

The post SketchUp 2013 released appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

In addition, the +Google for Media page has created 3D models of Plaza Towers Elementary School, Briarwood Elementary School and Moore Medical Center for use as needed.  You can download the models here.

Another source of mapping information is the BBC, which has a detailed map of the tornado, along with a variety of before/after pictures.

While the residents of Oklahoma will certainly value your thoughts and prayers, financial assistance is often the best way you can help.  We strongly encourage you to donate to the American Red Cross to support their efforts.

UPDATE: New info from NOAA’s Steve Ansari

A few years ago Steve shared some amazing visualizations of the Joplin tornado, and he’s back with similar images from Oklahoma.  You can download the files/movies here, and see a sample below:

The post Moore, Oklahoma in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Ale Zuniga (known as Azz8® in the 3D Warehouse) has constructed an amazing model of the stadium, seen here:

You can learn more about his model on this page in the 3D Warehouse, or check it out for yourself in Google Earth by loading this KML file.

Ale has a total of 189 models in the 3D Warehouse, including 60 that have been accepted into Google Earth.  He does excellent work and I encourage you to check out his full collection.

Great work Ale!

The post Old Trafford Stadium in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

When you draw a map on a napkin, you are automatically filtering out the most important information, and doing it with your specific audience in mind. The result is a simplified map, that involves maybe a few major routes, as well as smaller roads, and a prioritization that doesn’t necessarily reflect how important a road is to the general population.

The way Google is making it happen is quite amazing:

First, for a specific location the new Maps algorithm will analyze the entire set of people looking for directions in that area, and then highlight the routes that come up most often. Then from that subset they’ll focus in even further and weigh more vs. less important routes, based again on aggregated user data. They can see which roads are more popular, and then pop those out vs. the less important ones. Finally the less important ones are cut away, and you’re left with something resembling the hand-written map.

…

That then informs the UI rendering of the Map itself, which still retains the street markers for all surrounding routes. Lines along routes important to getting there are made bold and lines on less important streets are thinned out, but not removed in case some users still require that information. It’s about drawing attention and changing perspective, not eliminating something altogether.

While this approach requires amazing levels of computing power from Google, it keeps the impact on end user’s computers even lower than past versions, since less data needs to be sent out.

It was an impressive and informative talk, and I highly recommend you check out the full article on TechCrunch to learn more.

The post How the new Google Maps redesign came together appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

TechCrunch recently spoke with Google about their Ocean Street View program, and came away with some amazing insights, including:

…the cameras his team uses for this project are very different from those used by Google’s other Street View vehicles. The team had to use wider-angle lenses, for example. Google’s underwater Street View camera has three cameras on its front and takes images every three seconds. One of the cameras points downward, because that’s how images during reef surveys have traditionally been taken. The back of the scooter features a tablet that can control the cameras.

During a typical dive, the divers cover about 2km and take 3,000 to 4,000 images per camera, and the team does three dives per day, each of which lasts about an hour. In total, the team has taken about 150,000 images so far, and Vevers expects this number to grow exponentially over the next few months. In the long run, the team hopes to create diver-less systems that can stay underwater for 12 hours or more. The technology is already available, but it needs to be adapted to the kind of camera system needed for Street View.

The systems cost around $50,000 each, and they’re already testing 3D cameras to begin to capture that kind of imagery soon.

It’s quite an amazing article, and it offers some great details into how this system works.  Check out the full article, then explore our previous post on underwater Street View to visit some of these areas for yourself.

The post How underwater Street View works appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

There are quite a few enhancements in this new update to Maps, but the Earth integration could be quite compelling.  We’ve seen some amazing uses of the Google Earth Plugin over the years (things like youbeQ, concert seating, Ships and even a great flight simulator), so it’ll be interesting to see if this leads to even better projects.

You can read more about the latest mapping updates on the Google Lat Long Blog or in this long post from TechCrunch. The new version of Maps isn’t available to everyone yet, but you can request an invite to try it for yourself at this link.

What do you think of these latest changes to Google Maps?

The post Google Earth arrives in the browser with no plugin required appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

1 – Google Maps isn’t Google’s only mapping product.

You don’t say?

2 – Because it uses software on your own PC, Google Earth offers a more polished interface than Google Maps.

That could be argued either way.  I’d say that Maps is actually a bit more polished, but Earth offers many more features.

3 – No doubt you’ve used Google Maps Street View feature but did you know it works in 3D?

That’s indeed a fun tip. Press “3″ or “T” to enable it (only in Google Maps).

4 – Google Earth includes a flight simulator so that you can view the Earth from a unique perspective.

The flight simulator can be quite a lot of fun.  Try it for yourself by activating it from the [Tools] –> [Enter Flight Simulator] option or check out this post for more.

5 – Thought that Google Maps was just for exploring the surface of the Earth?

Along with locations like the underground Akiyoshi-do caves in Japan, you can also visit other planets on Google Earth such as Mars.

6 – Google Maps can show up-to-the-minute traffic conditions.

Google Earth can as well, under [Layers] –> [More] –> [Traffic].  The Maps versions is great if you use it for GPS navigation, as the traffic data is factored into your estimated travel time.

7 – Don’t think of Google Maps as a universal panacea because there are some places you can’t see.

It’s relatively rare, but some places have their imagery blurred out, such as the example found here.

8 – If you’re an Android user you’ve probably discovered the Google Maps app but you might not have realized that it can be used offline too.

You can read details about the Android offline features, and don’t forget that Google Earth can be used offline as well.

9 – Using Google Maps doesn’t have to be a passive experience.

Google Maps has some great ways to save your points of interest and maps, and Google Earth has a very comprehensive set of layers to enhance your experience.  Over time, I think we’ll see those features begin to merge more and more, which would be a great thing.

10 – You can even create your own 3D models of buildings to view in Google Maps or Google Earth.

Even though they’re discontinuing the excellent Building Maker tool, you can still use SketchUp to create 3D models for use in Google Earth.

What do you think is missing from the list?

The post 10 things you didn’t know about Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Richard went through a number of steps to create the model of the bolt:

• Scaled both images to the same size
• Traced both images and matched up the coordinates of each location in the bolt
• Put the resulting data in a table to calculate the difference in x and y position in each image

After he had done that, he had some work to do:

Now we need to do some maths… except I don’t like doing complicated maths and it turns out there is a big simplification you can make! If both pictures are taken from a long way away from the lightning bolt (i.e. the object has quite a small angular size in the image) then the shift in position between the images is proportional to the distance from the camera. Bigger shifts mean that bit of the bolt is closer to the camera. This approximation is pretty accurate for the majority of cameras, so I used it here.

The other problem is the proportionality factor. If one part of the lightning bolt shifts twice as much between the two images as another part that means it is twice as close. But twice as close as what? Without knowing exactly where the cameras were positioned that means only the relative distance, not absolute distance, can be calculated. Oh well, close enough!

You can view the resulting image in Google Earth by using this KMZ file, or read more about the process of creating the file on his blog.

Great work Richard!

The post Reconstructing a lightning bolt in 3D appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

So how did she find the area?  Google Earth.  From Co. Design:

A few years ago, when Di Martino was working on a project on the Chott El Jerid, a salt lake in Tunisia, she was scanning the site on Google Earth. “I saw a tourist photo on Google Earth of a ruin used for the Star Wars films that was attached to the location.” She tracked the structure to somewhere near Tozeur, an oasis city in the country’s central region close to the Algerian border.

While that article doesn’t supply the locations she discovered (only the photos and story), Star Wars Locations can help us with that.  They offer a page dedicated to Google Earth that includes a comprehensive KML file that shows the various locations around the world that were used in the movie.

You can read more about Di Martino’s adventure on the Co. Design Blog.

The post Tracking down Star Wars in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Do you have imagery for August 15, 2011 at 3:50pm? My house/car/business was broken into and we want to catch the thieves.

Sadly, this is incredibly unlikely. Because of the way that Google Earth imagery works, any given area is typically only updated once every few years. The odds that they captured imagery at the precise moment you need it, along with the the odds of the imagery actually capturing a detail that helps with the investigation, are very remote.

The imagery in my city is 3 years old. When will it be updated again?

The short answer is that we have no idea, as Google doesn’t release that kind of information ahead of time. We recommend that you sign up to be notified when new imagery is released in your area, and be sure to keep an eye on the “historical imagery” as it’s sometimes newer than the base imagery.

How can I get a live streaming view of Google Earth?

In short, you can’t. Despite what you see in movies like “Men in Black”, the government can’t either. While it seems likely that we’ll have a live-streaming Google Earth in the coming decades, the technology simply isn’t there yet. Not only would you need thousands of additional satellites capturing imagery (and the corresponding servers on the ground to process it in real-time), but there are also images with daylight, weather, angles, etc. Beyond that, I’m sure we’ll see issues with privacy begin to arise as well.

We again refer you to the “about Google Earth imagery” post to see how complex it is to add imagery to Google Earth. Having to cover all 57.5 million square miles of earth in real-time will be quite a challenge, but one that I know engineers are looking forward to tackling.

Be sure to check out the full basics section for more answers, don’t hesitate to ask if you have other questions.

The post When will my area get new imagery in Google Earth? appeared first on Google Earth Blog.