Google Earth Redesigned • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#281

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 4:27 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #280

lern_too_spel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PNaCl is a binary executable format.

Is Google actually using that? That's IA-32 only. It won't run on ARM. What are they running on Chromebooks?

> Is Google actually using that? That's IA-32 only. It won't run on ARM.

Incorrect, PNaCl runs on both ARM and Intel.

NaCl (without the P) had to be separately compiled for different platforms, PNaCl is portable.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#282

Post by jonah » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:35 AM UTC

morgosmaci wrote: post #276

jonah wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

None of which are on the photos team or have the time to rewrite it for the newer stacks.

That is true.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#283

Post by minikomi » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 6:07 AM UTC

Well. Gives you a good idea of how massive Tokyo SkyTree is.

https://earth.google.com/web/@35.71013838,139.81057456,323.8...

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#284

Post by 8ball » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 6:10 AM UTC

If you know about politics, this is what it takes: a person on the leader's position would use anything and any way he can to keep his authority/position stable --- this is not happening just in DC but in enterprises too. As Larry etc formed Alphabet while tossing Google to Pichai, the latter's power has already been weakened by the former everyday. The fact is that as Google as well as other large companies in silicon valley is more and more occupied by Eastern Indian works, the quality control of products has therefore gone into toilet since their culture, while turning to be the majority, is to seek atomic survival by exploitation of extrinsic achievement instead of improving intrinsic value of products. Office politics has been never more severe since then and now it's difficult and exhausting for Pichai to maintain his position by dodging countless number of traps created by themselves. He would then like to do anything to keep himself up --- or else being destroyed --- even if it means to set the product quality back to a century before, to bind the will of midlevel managers to support himself.

And that is why the products goes back to as evil as IE, simply because no one could care less.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#285

Post by bla2 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 12:30 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #152

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.

There is no satellite view anymore, it's called "Earth". Not to be confused with Google Earth. And to disable the crappy 3D you have to go into the menu. What's funny is that if you disable WebGL then you get a much more usable version of Maps IMO.

I love that 3d experience you call "crappy". To each their own, I suppose.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#286

Post by collinmanderson » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

jonathanpoulter wrote: post #159

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…

Could they presumably write it as a non-native app? Would there be any issues with that? Presumably the "chrome" around a webpage isn't particularly intensive?

Can't do cross-origin requests. It would need to be an electron-style app.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#287

Post by cpeterso » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:11 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #237

futurix wrote: post #176

"Google Chrome required" - sure, because current crop of web developers are too young to remember dark age of Internet Explorer domination.

> "Google Chrome required" - sure, because current crop of web developers are too young to remember dark age of Internet Explorer domination. This is the same with the new YouTube TV too. I'm not sure if it's a DRM issue or not. Especially galling if so given the controversy over HTML5 DRM content, after other browsers have decided to support it, to then roll your own solution anyway...

> This is the same with the new YouTube TV too. I'm not sure if it's a DRM issue or not.

Firefox supports the same Google Widevine DRM as Chrome, so YouTube's choice of DRM system should not be an issue.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#288

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #237

futurix wrote: post #176

"Google Chrome required" - sure, because current crop of web developers are too young to remember dark age of Internet Explorer domination.

> "Google Chrome required" - sure, because current crop of web developers are too young to remember dark age of Internet Explorer domination. This is the same with the new YouTube TV too. I'm not sure if it's a DRM issue or not. Especially galling if so given the controversy over HTML5 DRM content, after other browsers have decided to support it, to then roll your own solution anyway...

DRM in web browsers is anything but standard.

Edge uses PlayReady, Chrome uses Widevine, Safari uses FairPlay, etc.

As a content producer, you have to get licenses to use each of those technologies and run servers for them separately. It's anything but standard.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#289

Post by dblohm7 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

kyrra wrote: post #196

dkns wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when inbox launched it could be only used under chrome/chromium. Then somebody changed their user agent in firefox to chrome and magically it started working just fine. So you might want to try that.

I believe Inbox had major performance issues in non-Chrome browsers at launch, which was something they fixed in the weeks following its initial release. Once those were fixed, it was opened up to other browsers.

The Firefox bug was trivial to fix, but nobody at Google bothered to report it. If they had, it would have been a non-issue by the time that Inbox was released.

Re: Google Earth Redesigned

#290

Post by bla2 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

oppositelock wrote: post #246

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…

Thanks for the reply. I played with this new version and with Maps's Earth mode for a bit today, and to me they feel identical 3d-eise (except that the new thing only works in chrome, and I like Maps's UI better).