Business Analyst: Ryan Kirgan’s Blog

The other day I updated my Google Earth installation to 5.0.11337.1968 (beta) and was happy to see some new functionality:

Flight Simulator

Fly a F16 (a.k.a. “Viper”) or old-school SR22 over your house. As far as I know, this function was previously available to Google Earth Pro users only. Not advisable for those who already have a fear of flying as you realise just how hard it is to fly a plane

You can do this by clicking on Tools -> Enter Flight Simulator…

Record a Tour

This function is really cool. It basically captures and records your movements in Google Earth, i.e. what you see on your screen can be saved and replayed.

The file size is small because it is the movements (rather than the actual images) that are captured. It is for this reason that the file size is contingent on the number of events rather than the duration of the tour. I recorded a 30-second tour with 5 or 6 events resulting in a 4kB (tiny) file.

The tour can be saved as a KML (unencrypted) or KMZ (encrypted) file and emailed to others to open with Google Earth. It also permits audio recordings, however, this will no doubt add to the file size (with audio being continuous data rather than the discrete events mentioned previously.)

Historical Imagery

This doesn’t seem to be implemented yet, however, it looks as though you can use a slider to look at the aerial shots over time. It didn’t work at all when I started writing this blog entry, but now (some 5 minutes later) it is allowing me to select dates between July, 2001 and today. The fact that it is killing Google Earth every time I move the slider should be ignored as I’m sure those clever ducks at Google are on the case (Might be why it is “beta”?)

I just tried it again and it works, however, you need to be patient. The aforementioned crash *might* have been due to me violently sliding the slider up and down. Also, there are limited samples (only 4 between Feb 2006 and now, Feb 2009, for a 1255ft view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge; only 1 over my house.)

Bouncing icons

Place your mouse over a placemark icon and it bounces. Very exciting.

New Splash Page

A different Google Earth image is shown on start up. All I can say is: “Wow.”

Ocean

Go under the sea (apparently). I entered in “Great Barrier Reef” as a location, however couldn’t see any streetview-camera-like icons. I’m sure this is a great feature for those who are interested in that kind of thing.

Mars!!!

Find your prospective plot of land on Mars for 2032. Street-view doesn’t work either which was a bit disappointing. What are we paying Google for? (oh, that’s right, we’re not )

My existing KML files loaded when I changed from Earth to Mars, so it looked a bit strange to have the overlay on the red planet.

COLLADA models

I’m not too sure what these are, but it appears that you can link to *.dae files. A quick Google search suggests this is some kind of 3d modelling format.

All in all, great work, Google Earth.

You can download both the Free and Pro versions of Google Earth from: http://earth.google.com/

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Feel free to add any comments. If you require further clarification on any part of this review, please leave a comment, or you can email me at: ryan@kirgs.com or simply visit my website: http://www.kirgs.com/ and complete the feedback form on the “contact” section. Ryan Kirgan is a Business Analyst who operates out of Sydney, Australia.