Google Earth 4.3 Offers a Number of New Features

GoogleWatch writes "Google's all excited for Earth day, and just in time there's a new version of Google Earth available. 4.3 offers up revamped navigation controls, 3-D photo-realistic buildings in major cities, and time-lapse views of sunsets and sunrises. Also new in Google Earth 4.3 is access to the street view movies found in Google Maps. Just click any of the camera icons and the familiar street view window will pop up. The sunrise and sunset movies are also quite impressive. Fly to a location you'd like to see and click the "sun" button in the toolbar. That will bring up a small timeline graphic and you can either hit play or drag the timeline slider to watch the day unfold."

Other views?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I understand, from recent news events, that Google Earth will also allow for a new 'driveway' view for some up-close-and-personal looks at everybody's favorite geriatric nude sunbathers. Can't wait!

Great but...

[ccguy (1116865)]

I love Google Earth but I think they should revisit their decision of replacing new images with older ones if they have better resolution.

I'm sure that's a good decision but a city like New York, but in areas recently developed it just doesn't make sense.

Re:Great but...

[spun (1352)]

I like Google Earth, too, but there are some serious problems. Processes seem to be terminated arbitrarily, and far too soon. Interprocess communication is too difficult. I can't seem to execute a JOIN successfully. Forking new processes is fun, but time consuming and expensive. Most independent agents are severely lacking in intelligence. System management is byzantine and security is non-existent, I mean, anyone can kill a process with almost no effort!

I can't wait for Google Heaven, though. If it's anything close to what's advertised, it should make up for all the crap we have to go through with Google Earth.

Re:Great but...

[Ed Avis (5917)]

Quit complaining, it's still in beta.

Re:

[ccguy (1116865)]

I can't wait for Google Heaven, though. If it's anything close to what's advertised,

Actually it's already internally betatested, and the first invitations should be available in eBay (at a price, though) soon.

I hear that they background checks to get in Israel are a tea party compared to what these guys do, though.

Re:

[CSMatt (1175471)]

I myself am waiting for Google Hell.

Re:

[dargon (105684)]

isn't that also known as microsoft?

Re:Great but...

[Chyeld (713439)]

Sadly, Google Hell has been shelved till someone can figure out a way to implement it without breaking the "Don't be evil" rule.

Re:

[Klaus_1250 (987230)]

Have to agree. Two years ago I could see the car in the driveway on Google Earth. With the new images (2008) I can't even make out the house. I'm quite surprised that their is no feedback button in the interface for the quality of particular images/locations.

Re:

[pjludlow (707302)]

I agree. I was browsing some areas of places where I've lived and while there are some new higher quality images in parts of Honduras, my current residence in the US has a lower res image than it had previously (although it is newer now).

I also think there should be some sort of tag listing the date of the image (maybe there is but I can't find it) so that if I'm planning a trip I can tell that the image was from 3 years ago and that the roads could have changed since.

Since...

[jd (1658)]

...they already have both sets of images, and they're not short on disk space, why not simply have a toggle in Google Earth that allows you to select between "best resolution" and "most recent image"? A version numbering system would be even better, as it would allow you to use Google Earth to track changes in a place, but I suspect that even Google would have problems with the storage requirements for that.

Re:Great but...

[mrsteveman1 (1010381)]

I'm against toggles....maybe we should form a committee to determine what sort of switch to use

Re:Great but...

[Kandenshi (832555)]

An interesting idea... But kinda risky don't you think?

I think we should form an action group to hold a vote on if we should make a committe to vote on what sort of switch to use.

Re:Great but...

[Nick Number (447026)]

I see this turning into a real boontoggle.

Re:

[ImdatS (958642)]

Unfortunately, as funny as it may sound, this is the reality in most big corporations: If you don't dare to make decisions (and to bear the risks involved), you setup a committee or council. In that case, nobody is to blame if the council decisions proves to be wrong in the end.

I know what I am talking about...

Re:Great but...

[sootman (158191)]

The toggles! They do nothing!

Get off my lawn

[UberHoser (868520)]

Damn google hippies with their fancy schmancy cameras all over my front lawn....

Off!!! GET OFF !!!!

Can't you see the signs that say {NO GOOGLE HIPPIES} {NO DOGS} {NO SALESMEN}

WHy I otta....

Re:Get off my lawn

[sricetx (806767)]

Dude, you need to put robots.txt sign on your lawn to keep Google out.

Question:

[Enlarged to Show Tex (911413)]

How does it handle the sunrise/sunset shots for locations that enjoy periods of 24x7 daylight during the summer? Does it (correctly) show the sun rotating around the sky?

Re:

[jejones (115979)]

I've been trying to check this, but I'm having a hard time setting the POV to get the full effect.

Re:Question:

[freeweed (309734)]

We're past the spring equinox so to test this, zoom out far enough that you can see the entire globe. Put the north pole roughly centered on your screen. Now run the 24 hour slider back and forth - you can quite clearly see daylight never leaving some areas of the far north. By June this area will be much-enlarged.

As the actual "viewing the sun from ground level" part of GE seems to correspond to the sun's terminator everywhere else I've tried it, I see no reason why the same wouldn't work from the land of the midnight sun.

It's actually kind of fun to look at the entire globe at once - it really brings home why northern latitudes get longer daylight this time of year. The terminator is clearly angled during both sunrise and sunset to demonstrate the earlier sunrises and later sunsets the further north you go. The closest I've seen until this is the usual flat projection of the Earth with a distorted day/night overlay.

Another cool thing is to use GE to show how the sun does in fact set further north than straight west (in the northern hemisphere) during summer. A surprising number of people refuse to believe that this is the case.

Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[Nicopa (87617)]

This is slightly offtopic, but... I live in Argentina. This country has been excluded from Google Maps since its beginning (Google Maps'). It's the only excluded country in Google Maps, I guess.

If you search for it you will see that the map is just a white area. Not even the major cities, or the capital. We only have satellite images. Does anyone reading this know what's going on?

Re:

[Machtyn (759119)]

Really? My wife, who served a church mission in Argentina, used Google Maps to show me the different areas where she lived and worked. This was a couple years ago. But checking now, sure enough it's all white.

Re:

[doti (966971)]

He's talking about the map data (roads, cities, borders, etc), not satellite and aerial images.

Re:Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[rat7307 (218353)]

Same for North AND South Korea, that surprised me a little bit.....

Re:Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[Tibor the Hun (143056)]

Because Maradona used his hands to stick those two goals back in 1990 World Cup.

No, we didn't forget.

Re:Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[mstokle (1275034)]

He scored one with the hand, but the second goal he slalom every english player in field... We didn't forget neither :-)

Re:Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

Break it up, guys. Let's leave the fighting in the stadiums and surrounding bars, all right?

Re:

[tgd (2822)]

Wow I read that as Madonna, and was going to make some crack about crying for Argentina...

Re:

[CODiNE (27417)]

Also the Dominican Republic. Notice Haiti on the left all tagged and detailed.

Re:Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[CODiNE (27417)]

Ya know as long as we're listing them...

There's also Martinique, Dominica, Libya and others.

Thought Quebec was ignored but on closer inspection there's just nothing there.

Re:

[jrumney (197329)]

Thought Quebec was ignored but on closer inspection there's just nothing there.

The same goes for Libya if you look closer.

Both Koreas are empty, not surprising in the case of the North, maybe the South is worried about North Korea using Google Maps to plan an invasion? Also Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana in addition to a handful of islands in the Caribbean, some of which you named.

Re:Speaking of Google Maps... Argentina?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Google only licenses the map data from whatever company or government agency owns it. If they don't have map data for Argentina then whoever owns the map data for Argentina isn't selling.

Re:

[afabbro (33948)]

It's the only excluded country in Google Maps, I guess.

Well, there's also Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname, Guyane...and that's just South America.

Keyboard/Mouse

[j3wwy (848834)]

They need to set up "wasd" controls for movement.

I'd love to strafe jump around town!

Underwater

[rossjudson (97786)]

Cities are cool. Underwater would be cooler. With special underwater lighting. And little spiffy killer fishies at the bottom on the Marianas trench. Or a way to see coral before we succeed in killing all of it off.

Where's the underwater google truck-a-subtomic?

Or near-earth orbit, so we can see the junk?

New Images

[Thelasko (1196535)]

How about updating the images. They must be five years old. Things change, buildings get built and torn down.

Re:New Images

[Christianfreak (100697)]

Exactly. I haven't downloaded the newest version yet but the version I have, and google maps sat view on the web has an empty field where my neighborhood is. My neighborhood has been here for almost 4 years. In a rural area that makes some sense but I'm in Dallas.

What's worse they haven't even updated the street map itself, so even though the Google van did street view recently (not all the way where I am) they couldn't be bothered to update streets that they still don't show on the map. Those have been there for more than 2 years.

Re:

[Christianfreak (100697)]

Downloading the new version and indeed my neighborhood is finally there.

Still not on the online map though which I really find weird. They have the data, why aren't they using it everywhere?

Waiting for 4.4

[CSMatt (1175471)]

I hear that Google Earth will be allowing users to control the spy satellites directly in version 4.4.

Imagine getting a live feed of when your boss leaves his house, and then tracking him all the way to work. I'll never be late again!

More Web 2.0 anachronisms

[heroine (1220)]

Well they're certainly photos of buildings, just not realistic photos of buildings.

Well, they certainly have free models on 3D warehouse. They're just all in a format Google Earth can't read without a plugin for a commercial operating system.

They certainly have 3D graphics, just not the 5 lines of code that it would take to support 3D anaglyphs. Everyone's killing themselves stacking screen shots to work without this simple feature.

photography tool

[carlcmc (322350)]

One could use this for planning of landscape photography and how and where the setting sun will be.

It's still missing the new part of I-355 that is..

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

It's still missing the new part of I-355 that is in the Google maps web site.

google earth...without the earth

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

I updated, but if im not logged in as root i log in to their server!
And being a "beta" it doesnt give me any information, it should at least have a -v flag or a --help flag.

Evil POS!

[Raven737 (1084619)]

Makes you install and updater (not just as a constantly running Service but also as a DRIVER?!! WTF!)
then it also sets google as default search engine and installs google toolbar.... can this be any more EVIL?

Luckily i have a VMware 'crapware' virtual machine... this got installed on there, once done, i just copied the Google Earth folder to my real machine, GE 4.3 Beta without the *unnecessary* crap :)

The new controls

[Angostura (703910)]

Is it just me, or are the new controls really very confusing? The older slider for determining angle of view has now been replaced by the up/down controls on the 'eyeball wheel', but you can no-longer adjust that angle very quickly . There's the new fancy-schancy 'dive from a great height to the ground' slider, overall I feel pretty lost.

Love the squashed cars.

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

The demo "comes in for a landing" on a San Francisco street. The building imagery is texture-mapped onto the building volume models but the profiles of the cars are texture-mapped onto the ground.

Result: The cars are all "squashed flat" onto the street. Reduced to a layer of paint. Steel road-kill.

A great Earth Day gift for the eco-freaks of San Francisco. B-)

(And I bet Critical Mass members are grinning as well.)

Shaded Relief

[Anti_Climax (447121)]

Because of the angle of the angle of the sun, the photos of the hills near my apartment are shaded on one side. The sunrise and sunset feature, coupled with terrain view makes it possible to get an idea of what time of day/year similar images were taken.

Not that it helps me, but I'm sure someone has wanted to know for one reason or another ;)

Label bug

[SEWilco (27983)]

Yeah, it's nice. But today most of the letters in "Pennsylvania" vanished. Then all the state and place labels went away. What is that big red dot in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania?

Video demonstration of the new features

[Lord Satri (609291)]

Ok, I'm late on that one. But really worth is the GEB 6-minutes video demonstration of the new features [gearthblog.com].

Here's more info, well, a copy of my post of the site from my sig:
Mentioned earlier this week [slashgeo.org], here's the official announcement [blogspot.com] and a description of a new feature, 3D building swooping [blogspot.com]. The release provoked a lot of reactions and writings in the geoblogs. Here's the GEB entries on his first impressions [with screenshots] [gearthblog.com], a video demonstration, well worth the 6 minutes [gearthblog.com] (really), a short explanation of the new navigation widgets [gearthblog.com] and some final thoughts on GE 4.3 [gearthblog.com]. Ogle Earth also shares his comments and discuss the differences between atlases and mirror worlds [ogleearth.com]. Interesting to note that not everyone is pleased with some of the changes [spatiallyadjusted.com], with GE being dubbed the AOL of the Geoweb [earthissquare.com]. APB also links [directionsmag.com] to a IW article on the practical uses of Google StreetView [informationweek.com].