My Google Map Blog

Back in 2011 we showed you a new 3D social network called youbeQ. While development of the game continues (and they have additional new features coming soon), the team behind youbeQ has just unveiled a new site called the Geo3D Market.

The site is exactly what you'd expect -- a place to buy and sell 3D models. Because the official 3D Warehouse doesn't allow you to sell models, they decided to create a way for people to do that.

In their words:

That is why we created Geo3D Market it is for all SketchUp 3D modeling lovers! This concept was created especially for architects, designers and geographers. The model should be a representation of a building/structure/object that exists, has existed or will exist in the surface of Planet Earth.

Modelers can sell their models, fast and easy! Geo3D Market has a price system based in levels, for now: $4.99, $49.99 and $99.99. Nobody knows better than modelers how much their models worth. They can give a suggestion of the price they want for their models and if our staff thinks that is a fair price, it will be approved. They get 60% of the amount and more modeling and traffic they generate; more chances they have to make money!

I'm not sure how large of a market there is for this kind of thing, but perhaps it could be useful in certain niches. They've put together a nice site, and hopefully it's of value to their users.

You can read more about how it works on their How to sell or buy models page, or check the main site out at Geo3DMarket.com.

The Urban Planning Department of the Taipei City Government has built some amazing map-based features on their site that are worth checking out. The first is their swipe map, which allows you to select two of 16 timeframes and compare the two by dragging the center bar left and right. The map is similar to what we've seen before with items like this before/after comparison of the Tuscaloosa storm in 2011 and it works very well. The Taipei page is only available in Chinese, but it's easy enough to understand how it works.

Their other noteworthy site is their 3D viewer, which shows the city in the Google Earth plugin, but with many more 3D buildings than can normally be found in Google Earth.

The building creation process for the city was apparently semi-automated, though details are sparse on how exactly it was done. Ultimately I expect we'll see the new 3D Imagery replace the handful of 3D buildings currently found in Taipei, but for now this is a pretty robust solution.

Thanks to Steven Ho for letting us know about these!

It appears that we have some fresh imagery in Google Earth today! Thanks to GEB reader 'Munden' for letting us know about it.

As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!

Some of the updated areas include:

• China: Huludao, Maolin, Qingdao, Kunming
• Germany: Vaihingen, Olpenitzdorf
• India: Baga, Kusunda
• Japan: Kanazawa, Sagamihara, Fujisawa, Kamakura, Tachikawa, Akiruno, Toba, Fujinomiya
• United Kingdom: Glasgow, Taransay
• United States: Hawaii (Lanai, Molokai, Oahu), New Mexico (VLA), Nevada/Arizona (eastern Lake Mead area), Texas (Beaumont)
• Ukraine: Mykolaiv

If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!

One of the great things about Google Earth is the unique vantage point that we gain from it, as viewing objects from above often shows them in a whole new light.

Among other great items to view from above are corn mazes. They can be fun to trek through in real life, but viewing them from above can be quite neat as well.

While corn mazes only exist for a brief time each year, you can find hundreds of them in Google Earth thanks to the amazing historical imagery feature. Because any particular area can have a handful of views from different dates, the odds of finding a time where a corn maze was present increases dramatically.

To find mazes for yourself, a good place to start is in this old thread in the GEC (and this related KML file).

Many of the mazes are now gone, though you can track them down using the historical imagery slider in each location. You can also find mazes in this old post that Frank wrote or by searching for "corn maze" on Google Earth Hacks.

One of my favorites is this corn maze found in Ditzingen, Germany. Grab the KML file to see it for yourself.

What I'd love to see next is a full corn maze in Street View! Given the variety of Street View devices, such as the trike and the trekker, it seems like something that Google might do at some point.

The closest I've seen in the past is this 3D maze in London. It's easy to cheat (no collision detection), but it's a neat use of the "ground level view" in Google Earth.

What is your favorite corn maze in Google Earth?

Our family is in Chattanooga, Tennessee today on a brief spring break trip, so I thought I'd spend some time exploring the city in Google Earth.

Chattanooga is only the fourth-largest city in Tennessee, yet it has some of the fastest internet speeds in the country thanks to amazingly fast fiber network throughout the city. Inside of Google Earth Chattanooga has very solid 3D building coverage, though the city hasn't yet received the new "3D Imagery".

Our first stop was at the Tennessee Aquarium last night. Despite living in Atlanta and having their awesome aquarium nearby, the Tennessee Aquarium is still a great place to visit. The 3D model of the building isn't bad either!

You can view the aquarium in Google Earth by using this KML file.

Our primary destination today is Lookout Mountain, which none of us have visited before. We'll ride the "Incline Railway" up the 72.7% slope to the top of the mountain, which offers views of seven different states (Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama). It's quite a view!

Check it out for yourself by using this KML file.

Have you visited Chattanooga before? What is your favorite aspect of the city?

Located just south of Montreal, this colorful and oddly-shaped barn is a fun 3D model to check out in Google Earth.

The model can be found in the 3D Warehouse here, and you can view it in Google Earth by downloading this KML file.

The model was built by a user named Jean, who has created quite a few amazing models. Among them is the amazingly detailed Chateau Frontenac, also found in southeastern Canada, seen here:

Jean has created some awesome models and I encourage you to check them all out in the 3D Warehouse.

(via SketchUp Island)

All of us use Google Earth in different ways. Some use it to look for new homes, some use it for tracking satellites, some use it to explore far corners of the world and some use to to plan missions to space -- like NASA.

Matt Deans, who is with NASA's Intelligent Robotics Group, recently held a Google Tech Talk to discuss how NASA makes use of tools such as Google Earth.

In particular, Matt discusses the following:

Did you know that NASA uses Google Earth for mission planning and real-time mission operations? Are you curious about the software NASA is developing to carry out future human and robot missions? Would you like to know how modern Web frameworks can be used for data-driven field science?

The Exploration Ground Data System (xGDS) is a suite of reusable software tools for human and robotic missions. xGDS supports mission planning, ingesting and managing geo-referenced and time-series data, and visualization/analysis. xGDS is highly modular, Web-based and makes extensive use of Apache, Django, the Google Earth plug-in, JQuery, and MySQL.

In this talk, I will discuss the use cases that xGDS was designed to support and describe how it is implemented. I will show how the Intelligent Robotics Group has used xGDS for exploration missions involving astronauts (Arizona), planetary rovers (Canada and Hawaii), and personal submarines (British Columbia and Florida). And, I'll briefly talk about how xGDS can be used for other applications, such as crisis and disaster response.

You can watch the full video here:

Since the creation of this blog in 2005, our page featuring satellites in orbit around Earth has remained our most popular page on the site with over 650,000 page views in the past eight years.

There have also been a number of other excellent satellite-tracking programs that we've featured on here, such as SES Astra and SightSpaceStation.

Now we're introducing you to the GE Satellite Tracker from Joseph Armbruster, which is a bit different; instead of showing you various satellites in Google Earth, it allows you to add your own.

It allows you to calculate the orbits, generate the KML and configure it via single python file and one configuration file. Joseph is continually improving and streamlining the program, which is completely free to use.

You can try it for yourself and read the full documentation on the GE Satellite Tracker site.

Clement Valla is known for digging into Google Earth to find and document anomalies, as we first showed you back in January. He's back with a site called Postcards from Google Earth that highlights snapshots from Google Earth in odd-looking situations.

Interestingly, of the 100 or so images on the site literally every single one of them involves a road, most of which are crossing a body of water. While this has been a known issue in Google Earth for years, 3D models/imagery are beginning to fix the issue. For example, take this image of the Hoover Dam from his site:

Then turn on the 3D Models layer:

Quite a difference! The only downside with the 3D model is that you can still see the old imagery (and the road) running beneath it. This is largely alleviated with the new 3D Imagery, such as this before/after of the Golden Gate Bridge:

It's not perfect, but it's far better than the article would lead you to believe. That said, it's fun to dig around and find these kinds of oddities, and the new 3D Imagery certainly creates some interesting artifacts when you zoom in close.

Check out the full gallery on the Postcards from Google Earth site.

(via Co.DESIGN)

A few days ago the 2013 Taiwan Ultra Marathon kicked off, a 14 day race that covers an astonishing 1100km. The runners are all carrying a Leadtek GPS device, and the organizers have put together this simple map to help track them.

However, Steven Ho (who has created tours such as this mountaineering trip and a neat tribute to Steve Jobs) wanted to be able to follow the race in Google Earth. Steven tried to get the organizers to produce a KML file of the runner's data, but was unsuccessful. Instead, he built a handful of tours to help show off the race and included "rabbit" data to show the approximate location of the runners.

You can read more about Steven's work on his blog and try it for yourself by clicking the image at the top of that page.

Along with that Google Earth Plugin integration, Steven has built a handful of KMZ files to help keep up with the event. You can use this KMZ to see a map of the course, this KMZ for a guided tour of the course, or this KMZ to see the current location of the rabbit.

Great work Steven!