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Google Earth Redesigned

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Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#241

Post by zeptomu »

bpicolo wrote: post #189
zeptomu wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really free. It's free in the sense, that you can browse around, but if you wanted to do some analysis on it, you would need access to the raw bulk data, and this is very expensive. There is free aerial imagery data available (e.g. ESA's Sentinel-2), but it has lower resolution (10m/Pixel). If you want to do the 3D building thing, I estimate you need data with something like 1m/Pixel and from different persp…

San Francisco definitely has resolutions better than 1m/pixel it feels like (for buildings downtown) At least, you can clearly identify segments that would be < 1m across.

Yeah, there is high-resolution data available, but it is scattered around small-scale web portals mostly built by the government in this local area, and aggregating and polishing this data is a non-trivial huge effort (they come in different scales, projections and quality).

Furthermore most data is orthographic only, so you can built a nice 2D map out of it, but to do 3D I estimate you need images from specified angles (e.g. 4 views per place), and I think this data is still behind closed doors and quite expensive.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#242

Post by jonah »

fao_ wrote: post #37
therealmarv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems this is the Google way. They kill one product (especially a desktop product) and it takes years till the new one is on every feature on the same level as the old one... look at Picasa vs. Google Photos. Even today Picasa can do many more things that Google Photos cannot do today. I'm sure the native/old Google Earth has a ton of stuff which is not ported to the web version. Good they cannot convert Chrome it…

It makes some amount of sense because there's less to maintain and more cultural knowledge of the new codebase. Instead of saying "We're removing features from Picasa because nobody here knows how they work and everyone's scared to change things", they can say "We have a shiny new project here that will eventually be better than Picasa". It's a nice PR stunt.

I can tell you for a fact though that at least some of the senior Engineers who developed Picasa are still at Google.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#243

Post by _lce0 »

deegles wrote: post #235
phkahler wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I noticed the contradiction: "Explore the far reaches of the world, right in your browser. " But my browser is FireFox.

Simple fix: "Explore the far reaches of the world, right in our browser. "

I know I know stupidity beats malice .. but when I first saw that same message I thought: nice marketing stunt, well played Google

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#244

Post by oppositelock »

spankalee wrote: post #218
krisdol wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What web technology does this use, specifically, that prevents firefox usage? Or is it just a chrome plugin they decided not to port?

I think the issues is that it uses NaCl - I assume they compiled the existing Earth engine to run on the web. Most likely web-based Earth was launching just too early to switch from NaCl to WASM, which just shipped, and they'll port to NaCl soon.

This is a rewrite, not a recompilation.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#245

Post by zeptomu »

Animats wrote: post #199
euyyn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just Javascript, but served from Google servers. For a fix to work for other users you'd need them to use a plugin that applies it.

At some point, it's using an API to get the map data. Is there anything that prevents non-Google hosted code from using that API?

Yes, rate-limits.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#246

Post by oppositelock »

bla2 wrote: post #51

I don't​ know why Google Earth exists. The satellite mode in maps is very good, doesn't depend on PNaCl, and is part of Google Maps, where it makes sense.

Javascript has big performance limits which don't allow Maps to do everything that Earth does. The 3D engine in Earth does a whole lot of magic to get the visual quality that it has. In Javascript, you have to trade off everything to minimize your function call overhead into WebGL and try to pre-generate as much static content as possible. Earth has a much quicker access path to GL, which allows it to render more and higher quality visuals.

Satellite mode without terrain can look fine in JS/WebGL. Once you start tilting the view and seeing terrain and buildings, the JS performance will be horrible pretty fast, and adaptive LOD streaming is hard due to the function call overhead.

I worked on the Google Earth desktop app for a few years, so this isn't idle speculation.

This new NaCL version seems to be nowhere near feature parity with the old desktop client, sadly. I hope it catches up, since I loved the historical imagery, for instance. The good news is that the desktop app still works if you want to see that.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#249

Post by pinwale »

nicwolff wrote: post #204
nxc18 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Maps does the same thing and was doing it before Google. Interestingly, Apple seems to have better imagery, at least where I am; trees are sharper and more realistic, the ground imagery is more detailed and the colors truer to life. In the forests, trees are rendered clearly enough that I can recognize the landmarks, which just isn't possible in Google's rendering. The only downside is that Google's colors are…

Apple must have deals with some vendors of very detailed 3D imagery for specific areas – in the Virgin Islands e.g. you can zoom in to see that individual vehicles and boats are bump-mapped and draped.

Apple bought C3 Technologies, a Swedish 3D mapping company back in 2011. It was originally spun out of SAAB (the mapping solution was originally used for missile targeting systems, iirc.)

more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3apAXzf3JTg

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#250

Post by exodust »

One thing I'm disappointed about... In the desktop version when you click and drag then let go, the camera will keep flying across the landscape without slowing down. Depending how fast you drag, it's possible to slowly and gracefully glide over the landscape in any direction you choose.

This is a cool feature that is no longer possible in this new "improved" Google Earth. The camera now comes to a dead stop.

I really hope they can add an option to bring back the "zero resistance" camera or whatever you call it. Or a flying camera mode or similar.

It means you can sit back and glide over a city slowly, just above the buildings or mountains without needing to interact. If you choose a nice slow speed, the approaching map data loads in time and you have yourself a nice aerial trip over the land.

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