My Google Map Blog

By the time you read this, it will already be 2015 in the Line Islands of Kiribati, as it is the first location on Earth to celebrate the new year. It is an interesting fact about the peculiarities of the dateline, that London, Kiribati (GMT+14), will celebrate its New Year before Alofi, Niue (GMT-11), begins its New Year’s Eve. For more on the oddities of the world’s time zones, see this YouTube video on the subject.

Here at GEB we have been celebrating the new year with virtual fireworks since January 2011, when Stephen Ho, whose work we have featured a number of times, created an animation of the 2011 Taipei 101 fireworks as a Google Earth tour.

View it in Google Earth by downloading this KML file.

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

Yesterday we looked at Google’s progress in imagery updates. Today we will look at the progress Google has been making in rolling out 3D areas in Google Earth. Back in September we worked out the area covered with 3D using the KML file we had released the week before. At that time, Google Earth had approximately 207 thousand square kilometers of 3D. Now, a mere 4 months later, there are 260 thousand square kilometres covered – an increase of just over 25%.

We don’t always know the age of the source imagery for the 3D, as Google does not indicate the date it was captured, like they do for other imagery. However, for some locations it is possible to identify the age of the imagery, such as Black Rock City the location of the Burning Man festival that was released in 3D recently. It turned out that the imagery was from the 2013 event, implying that it took Google over a year to process and release the imagery.

Thank you to all the GEB readers who have contributed by finding new 3D areas and letting us know in the comments. A very special thank you to GEB reader Anton Rudolfsson who has been assisting us by drawing the outlines of the newly discovered 3D areas in Google Earth. In late November Google released their own map of 3D areas, but since they only show placemarks and not the perimeters of the areas, we will continue to maintain our KML.

The cruise ship Marco Polo docked in Tromsø, Norway. Tromsø was recently added and is currently the northernmost 3D area in Google Earth.

The post Google Earth 3D imagery progress appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Google has updated the ‘Latest Google Earth Imagery’ map, showing an update on December 17th. Thank you to GEB reader ‘AC’ for letting us know.

Latest Google Earth Imagery map – December 17th, 2014. Larger Version.

As is traditional at this time of year, let us look back at previous updates and see how Google is doing. Google provides a handy map of imagery updates from 2009 to 2014, although it does not currently include November and December this year. But even without including the large update on November 8th, it is clear that 2014 has been the best year yet for imagery updates.

Imagery updates 2009 – October, 2014. Larger version.

The post New Google Earth Imagery – December 17th, 2014 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We have featured Colin Hazelhurst’s work a number of times before, including a recreation of the famous flight of The Spirit of St. Louis flown by Charles Lindberg, and James Cook’s circumnavigation of New Zealand.

He has recently produced a new tour he calls ‘Americons’ showing the Spirit of St. Louis visiting the Golden Gate Bridge. It is best viewed in Google Earth by downloading this KMZ file, as you can pause it at any time and have a look around at the scenery.

The Spirit of St. Louis flies under the Golden Gate Bridge.

He has also put a video of it on YouTube:

For more on Cook’s voyages be sure to check out Colin’s website.

The post Americons: a Google Earth tour appeared first on Google Earth Blog.