Google Earth Blog

As interesting as this is, the author should make it clearer on his main landing page that his site is not affiliated with Google. http://www.gearthblog.com/about > This blog is not officially affiliated with Google. Google Earth Blog is dedicated to sharing the best news, interesting sights, technology, and happenings for Google Earth.

The best thing the chinese have got in their desert is a 1:20 model of a section of the india-china border. http://www.gearthblog.com/images/images706/scalemodel.jpg http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/07/huge_scale_mode.html They also have a deserted replica of a typical english town: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Town And they recently unveiled an exact replica of a real austrian town: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18327751 The rapid growth over there sure is producing some interesting things.

Sounds like you want the viewshed functionality in Google Earth Pro [1]. The desktop client is basically abandonware at this point, but thankfully, and generously, Google has made the Pro version free [2], and it's still available. [1] https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/02/google-earth-pro-view… [2] https://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/desktop.html

An interesting bit: China created a half-mile square terrain model of a disputed region with India that was discovered in 2006[1]. 1. http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/07/huge_scale_mode.html

I never used Google Maps Engine myself, so I'm not really familiar with it. But it looks like Google was trying to consolidate and improve its paid maps offerings, not discontinue them: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/01/google-maps-engine-dep… The move should be seen as Google transitioning customers to already existing alternative products, especially Google My Maps (formerly Maps Engine Lite) which has come of age and now has most of the important features of Google Maps Engine A better example would be if Google were to discontinue its paid Google Maps API?

This. Since February 2009, when Google released Google Earth 5.0, adding the animated waves [1], I've being thinking that eventually, they could actually make a nicer animated coastline, like in so many games now. But comparing the satellite view, with the map view, maybe the resolution is not currently good enough to make the simulated water overlap perfectly the pictures and make the coast look nice. [1] http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2009/02/post_3.html

The B2 bomber photo isn't from a push boom sensor, because it would be distorted since it's moving relative to the camera. This would manifest itself as a shear along the motion vector . There is no shear in this photo, only spectral bands. I've spent a number of years doing image orthorectification, and satellite imagery post-processing, then also worked on Google Earth and Google Maps, so I can tell you precisely what happened. This is a satellite image from a satellite which photographs different spectra at different times. There isn't enough parallax at typical orbital distance for this much displacement to come from multiple cameras. Looking at some parked cars, this looks like 20-30cm resolution per pixel, which is consistent with the newer earth imaging satellites. Google Earth made a blog post about this a while ago (https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/03/planes-flight-rainbow…

It's hard to find any concrete details on the resolutions used by GE, and it varies massively by area. I recall their recent investment in one of the (GeoEye?) satellites had a theoretical resolution of 40cm, but is restricted by US regulations to provide a maximum (edit: minimum) pixel size of either 50 or 60cm. Assuming 1m x 1m pixels, a standard[1] QR code could be fitted inside a 25x25m square. You'd probably want to increase pixel size, and maybe use a smaller version (along with a url shortener, if necessary) to increase the chances of a successful decode. Aircraft orthoimaging can work at much higher resolutions. An article from 2005[2] shows pictures capable of distinguishing individual faces. I can only assume things have since improved. [1] of which there are many: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/QR_code [2] http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2005/09/ultimate_google.html