My Google Map Blog

In celebration of the new year many people shoot off fireworks, and we love to show off the work of GEB reader ‘Steven’ who took it a step further and created some great 3D fireworks in Google Earth! As you can read about in his blog, the fireworks are intended to duplicate the 2011 Taiwan New Years Eve show, based on the simulation that you can view here.

As you can see from the photo above, the fireworks aren’t just simple animated images — they’re fully 3D! Some of them shoot into the sky, and some wrap around the Taipei 101 tower. As Steven points out in his post, animations like this are only possible because of the work of 3D modelers that created the buildings. In this case, credit goes to user Tang Huang who created the exceptionally detailed model of the Taipei 101 tower.

To see the fireworks in action, you can view them here using the Google Earth Plug-in, download this KMZ file, or watch the video below:

For another fun way to view fireworks, Keir at Google Maps Mania built a map that allows you to view video from celebrations around the world. It’s a simple map that does a great job.

Happy New Year!

The post 3D Fireworks in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Back in July, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash landed on final approach to San Francisco International Airport.  While three were killed in the crash, the other 304 passengers thankfully survived.  The folks at Flightradar24 have taken the data from the plane’s transponder and analyzed the final 2-1/2 minutes of data from it.

In their words:

We have analyzed the last 150 seconds of data from flight ‎#OZ214. It looks like the ADS-B transponder continued to transmit data for about 10 seconds after the first impact. You can also see that the altitude increased after the first impact, when the aircraft bounced up in the air. The ground speed in the last seconds of the flight was only 112 knots.

You can read more about it on this Google+ post, or grab the KML file to view it directly in Google Earth.

Updpate: Sent in by a GEB reader, you can also download this KMZ file that adds the “ideal flight path” to the file and tweaked the track so that viewers can ‘fly’ along both flight paths using the Touring feature of Google Earth.

The post The flight of Asiana #214 in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

The city of Charlottesville, Virginia has plans for a major redevelopment of 330 acres.  While the plans are still in progress, Brian Wheeler took advantages of Google Earth to add some great context to his recent story about the plans.  He simply took the proposed plans and created an image overlay of them in Google Earth, as seen here:

You can download a copy of his KMZ file here to see it for yourself.  As for his reasons why he chose to use Google Earth to help show the plans?

Whenever I see someone looking at the Strategic Investment Area map when it’s projected, they ask where exactly that is in Charlottesville. Google Earth to the rescue! Even works great on my tablet using the Google Earth app.

Be sure to check out his full article on the Charlottesville Tomorrow site to learn more.  Great work, Brian!

(via +Brian Wheeler)

The post Visualizing redevelopment using Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

With that mouthful of a title, our friends at MyReadingMapped have again created a very interesting map for us to check out.  In their words:

If you do an image search for the Thermohaline circulation, what you get are lots of maps without any submarine topography as though all the undersea mountains, canyons and basins have little effect on the Deep Sea Current. All the the maps are oversimplified in order to get the concept across and they don’t include the Antarctic Bottom Water (aka Antarctic Brine) that has an affect on the Thermohaline Circulation. So my map of the Thermohaline Circulation, being done in a Google Map, enables you to see the actual undersea features that shape one of the prime factors of our climate system and how the Antarctic Bottom Water weaves in between.

You can read more about it on their site here or grab this KML file to view it in Google Earth.  You can also read more about the project here:

In addition, it seemed to me that if Tambora had such an impact on the Thermohaline Circulation as to create the Little Ice Age, that any submarine volcanoes and thermal vents along the path should also have an impact on the Thermohaline Circulation at any one point in time or another. So I included them as well along with the impact of melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and their impact on the Deep Water Formation transfers between Surface Currents and Deep Currents. And, I linked several articles on various factors on the impact on the Thermohaline Circulation on climate change and the disruption of the Thermohaline Circulation by melting glaciers and volcanic activity.

Great work, George!

The post Viewing the Topography of the Thermohaline Circulation of the Oceans in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.