My Google Map Blog

Learning to manipulate the mouse and keys to control Google Earth is crucial to getting the most out of sightseeing the Earth. The first important thing to know is how to zoom in closer to the Earth. You have many ways to do this: double-click your mouse button (left button, if you have multiple buttons, to zoom in, right button to zoom out); use the mouse scroll-wheel (if you have one); use the + and - keys; or use the PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN keys to zoom more quickly. You can also use the navigation gadgets - the "+" and "-" buttons with slider on the far upper-right to change your altitude. The mouse scroll-wheel is probably the favorite method of most typical GE fans. All of these methods adjust your altitude above the Earth's surface. You can see your height above sea level in the lower right of the GE viewing window. You can move the Earth to position it where you want to see by clicking a point with the left mouse button and slide the cursor to the middle of the viewing window.

At first, many people don't realize Google Earth is much more than a map with aerial and satellite photos attached. GE uses data from NASA Space Shuttle missions which provides 3D terrain data for the entire land surface of the Earth. Let's demonstrate this.

Click on this link to go to GE and fly to Mount St. Helens. Beautiful view right? But, try this: hold your SHIFT-DOWN key combination and watch GE tilt your view so you can see Mount St. Helens as a 3D mountain (if you don't - check to see that "show terrain" is checked in the options menu). Very cool right? SHIFT-UP will tilt your view back up. You can also use the slider control at the upper right of the navigation control for tilting. A nice tip: hit the "u" key to tilt back straight up automatically. The "r" key will reset to north and tilt up.

An easier way to tilt and pan your view is to click and hold the middle mouse button or scroll wheel button (those of you who have a Mac with one mouse button have to use the above key or navigational control techniques - but, I would recommend getting a 3-button mouse). While you're holding the middle button if you move your mouse forward and backwards it will tilt the view. Side to side will pan your view around the point you are looking at.

Navigating effectively in Google Earth will make your experience much better, and hopefully those tips will help!

Over the years we've shown you a handful of projects from the 3DTravel.com folks. They built the impressive 3DHawaii two years ago (and recently covered the two-year anniversary on their blog), then followed it up with 3DLasVegas and 3DSanFrancisco. The sites are very well done, and are great tools to help explore those areas.

Since the launch of the San Francisco site earlier this year, they've stayed quite busy. They acquired a mobile app to help people navigate their cities once they've arrived. You can read about that acquisition on their blog here.

They've also added a handful of additional private label products (found here) and added translation tools to help those sites quickly translate their content into any language (such as this site with its Japanese translation).

As you may remember, Google added quite a lot of new Street View imagery to Hawaii in June, and 3DTravel makes extensive use of that imagery.

Google is planning to roll out their new 3D Imagery to the desktop and (presumably) the API later this year, so it'll be interesting to see how this affects the 3DTravel sites. 3D Travel has built some amazing models to supplement their sites, and it would be a shame to see them all go away. On the other hand, areas will certainly look better from afar with the new imagery, so it may vary a bit from case-to-case. I expect Google will offer some kind of option in the API to choose which kind of imagery/terrain/buildings to show, so nothing will necessarily have to change for them right away.

In any case, congrats to 3DTravel for everything they've accomplished and best of luck to them in the future.