Google Earth Redesigned

Yeah, I noticed the contradiction:

"Explore the far reaches of the world, right in your browser. "

But my browser is FireFox.

What's even more annoying about this is it requires specifically Google Chrome, I'm on Chromium on Linux, where you'd think it works, but it doesn't. It doesn't even fail nicely.

What web technology does this use, specifically, that prevents firefox usage? Or is it just a chrome plugin they decided not to port?

> "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...

Erm, this product isn't done by some random web developer but google themselves... so yeah, they made another essentially proprietary website.

it honestly sucks but your phrasing puts the blame on inexperienced developers, which most certainly doesn't apply here.

> current crop of web developers are too young to remember dark age of Internet Explorer domination.

How does that happen? I'm not even 30 and I remember when IE6 was new. Does everyone burn out or move into management by 26 or what?

Programming is really a weird field in that it seems to lose a lot of its workmen just as they start maturing into the experience level that yields a productive stride in other fields.

I know some make the argument that programming is a young man's game due to the required mental acuity, but I don't really buy that. Perhaps as people get older, they become increasingly less interested in staring into the computer and seek more social forms of employment?

We've got to be losing a huge amount of productivity by seeing experienced developers drop off the map before they hit 40.

How long before we see the same notification on Google Search and Gmail?

But is it required for some open technology?

Chrome is a voluntary install, open source and keeps pushing web tech forward. 1 site using advanced features that aren't supported elsewhere is not a big deal and not comparable to IE's history.

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 itself as a web app :D

also I noticed that at least in Switzerland, the imagery is significantly older than the one of the "Earth" layer in google maps. If I had to guess, I would say the images on Google Earth are from 2011, whereas the ones in Google Maps seem very current: last summer.

edit: Actually, the "earth" layer of Google Maps is identical to Google Earth. What's more up-to-date is the "satellite" layer which I only see offered in the mobile apps.

> The "auto-rotate around the landmark" feature

I think of this as "Drone View". I keep waiting for the JDAM impact.

Apple Maps does the same thing and was doing it before Google. Interestingly, Apple seems to have better imagery, at least where I am; trees are sharper and more realistic, the ground imagery is more detailed and the colors truer to life. In the forests, trees are rendered clearly enough that I can recognize the landmarks, which just isn't possible in Google's rendering. The only downside is that Google's colors are prettier than Apple's, at the expense of accuracy.

Bing (via the Maps app) is also doing this type of thing, but with a less robust set of data.

Google's implementation appears to be based on oblique (angle, taken from plane) imagery similar to Bing's "Bird's Eye View" feature; if you open up old Google Earth you can see oblique shots from various angles that match the exaggerated coloring of the final 3D maps.

Seriously though, check out Apple Maps. I didn't think I'd be recommending it, as I nerd out about Google Earth a lot, but it's actually got great imagery & models.

The technique is called photogrammetry. It takes photos from multiple angles and does image analysis to determine where solid objects and surfaces are in 3D. Then it projects that same imagery onto the generated 3D models. Google, Microsoft, and Apple all do this extremely well now, but I agree. It's absolutely amazing.

You can wander around in this rendered copy of Earth, today, in VR. And folks are so above it that they still say "eh, no killer app tho" without irony.

It's possible to query the Maps API for some 3D Lidar data - I use it here: http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/street_cloud/index.html - but this seems different from the other 3D data that is a mesh and has things like trees and building outlines.

Pure speculation, but I wonder whether they're doing something clever with their image data to generate the elevation data?

Id guess the details of the process are tricky, but it's possible then you only need to concentrate on getting high quality images vs. getting high quality images and high quality elevation data at the same time.

NaCl

Same place on google maps, that works on every browser that supports WebGL: https://www.google.pt/maps/@52.0849891,4.3169948,78a,35y,77....

How are they building the 3D views? Mapping cars driving around with sensors? I was under the impression that the shapes were inferred from satellite images, but the moment I step outside the major cities, it's back to flat maps. Even the couple hand-modelled buildings previously present in maps seem to be missing here.

Maybe I'm just in an area where buildings are a tad more complicated than simple boxes, but around here the results vary between acceptable and catastrophic. As if buildings were haphazardly thrown together in all kinds of weird angles and shapes. I know there are limits to what technology can do, but overall I liked the combination of flat texturing and hand-modelled buildings better.

They also seem to have lots of trouble with pieces floating in the air, which imho could just be pruned (e.g. lots of floating train tracks here, presumably where there also has been a train at the point of geometry capture: https://earth.google.com/web/@48.51659545,9.06299404,316.491...)

The detail is great but the coverage seems limited. There's no 3D in Moscow, Kiev, Beijing or Singapore as far as I can tell, for example.

How can you look around on a Mac trackpad?

Yes, I was blown away when I first noticed this. And I was thinking how much this data, which is free for everybody, would be worth in case of a war...

Absolutely! I recently tried the Google Earth VR on Vive where the photogrammetry really comes into play, and I was awed just like back when I was a kid and hooked up my computer the first time to a color CRT.

Except getting motion sick 5 minutes later.

same here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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idem

Because it uses PNaCl

Maybe they made it so it can run on ChromeOS also ?

It's not so different than downloading a Windows application that requires JVM or some .NET distributable, or a Linux package with additional dependencies, IMHO.

Universally useful link (ctrl+click to rotate): https://www.google.de/maps/place/53%C2%B044'43.4%22N+0%C2%B0...

This has been around for years.

It's interesting that the cars on the motorway to the south of the building are pancaked (not 3D) whereas the cars in the parking lot next door are 3D. It makes sense, since I guess they need objects to be in multiple frames from a flyover to project them into 3D. It must be a bitch to deal with moving objects and figure out which position to put them in, since the rest of the imagery is generated from multiple frames.

Great example. Whatever they're doing in terms of photogrammetry and geometry reconstruction is really impressive. I wonder how much of it is manual effort (if any)

Sounds like you want the viewshed functionality in Google Earth Pro [1]. The desktop client is basically abandonware at this point, but thankfully, and generously, Google has made the Pro version free [2], and it's still available.

[1] https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/02/google-eart...

[2] https://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/desktop.html

Have you tried this site?

http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro/panoramas/makepanoramas_en...

Edit: It generates panoramas with mountains and hills labelled .

Try to get to experience Earth VR in the Vive. It's a fantastic thing. Very useful to get a better grasp of mountain ranges. It's my goto app to show non gamers people that want to try VR.

There are some pretty good apps that will tell you the mountains that your phone is pointing at. PeakFinder, for example.

You can ctrl + drag/pan to look around your current point in space.

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 higher quality visuals.

Satellite mode without terrain can look fine in JS/WebGL. Once you start tilting the view and seeing terrain and buildings, the JS performance will be horrible pretty fast, and adaptive LOD streaming is hard due to the function call overhead.

I worked on the Google Earth desktop app for a few years, so this isn't idle speculation.

This new NaCL version seems to be nowhere near feature parity with the old desktop client, sadly. I hope it catches up, since I loved the historical imagery, for instance. The good news is that the desktop app still works if you want to see that.

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 would like an answer too - I genuinely don't understand what the difference is.

With Earth you can load KML or KMZ files, and you don't have directions.

Honestly, I think this is (or will soon be)the new "3D view in Google Maps". Seems to be an improved version of that, with a (very) few of the features from the desktop Google Earth added.

Universally useful link:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/37%C2%B020'05.2%22N+122%C2...

What's more interesting to me is the cranes are 3d modeled, that was not expected

I really liked having a separate application to open for Google Earth instead of a browser. I take it this won't be an option any more?

Chrome-only and that's if there's no bug. I have the latest version of Chrome on Ubuntu but my GPU (GTX 960m, latest drivers) is blocked and the --ignore-gpu-blacklist flag doesn't work.

Seems to fail for me on Chrome on all my OSX machines. Colleague on windows/chrome it works fine..

> Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this.

Depends on the reason for "Chrome only" - if they use (upcoming) standards not supported so far by other browsers I see no harm in it. Other browsers will catch up in time.

To what, if any, extent is Chrome itself collecting user browsing data? That is part of Brave's business model -- there are many things about your behavior only the browser can know. Is Chrome doing the same?

Google has already said other browser support is coming soon.

So I guess your little analogy doesn't work anymore.

>Get the new Google Earth now on the web in Chrome; on Android as it rolls out this week; and on iOS and other browsers in the near future. (Of course, you can still access and download Google Earth 7 for desktop.)

It looks like a very good shinny little toy to convince those who have not Chrome installed yet that Chrome is a good browser.

It surely is, but for me, it seems weird that a huge company like Google will give you these marvelous toys for free and they don't take anything in exchange.

What I mean is that putting people in a g-bubble like this is bad. I also wonder what the shinny 3 dimensional thing can add as a value to a standard map. In term of education for example: people don't even know how to read a map without a GPS and a map app now. I don't say that map apps are bad, but I don't know...

chrome is free, fast to download, runs on most platforms, and in no way forcing you to use it exclusively. It's not like they're asking you to download an .exe with direct3d drivers. you think they need to support microsofts 30 browsers or shouldn't release at all?

We need something like OpenStreetMap but with 3D content like this. And allow people to touch up the models.

Nah, it makes more sense if you go to the 2D view of the same spot [1]. There'll always be some parallax perspective offset towards the edges of the satellite image.

[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@32.65383541,128.71781037,186.9...

Google has been one of the largest purchasers and schedulers for aerial photography over the past 5+ years. Traditionally aerial photography uses airplanes as the flight system.

I wish Google would lower search engine rankings for sites that require some kind of browser or plugin.

In my opinion it is not that fast on initial loading on a 3Mbit/s line... I had the feeling that native Google Earth was faster (but maybe only because of caching).

Can you please tell me how deep learning is used in this app?

Just like Google A, B, C and then some.

Same problem here. On the first page visit, it loaded to 3,XXX,XXX,XXX of 4.543 billion years and froze. On refresh, it doesn't load a damn thing.

I am using up-to-date Chrome.

Clearing the cache did nothing.

My wife's home town in Belgium looks amazing in 3D at Google Earth.

https://goo.gl/I4b46I

Unforutnately, all of Sweden is still entirely flat. I wonder why.

It's not - they just stopped developing the desktop one because now they're all about web-only.

It sucks too because we use the desktop one all the time at work - though we're slowly replacing it with custom Cesium-based stuff.

Cesium is a clusterfuck of JS though. I also once thought it was cool then I tried to use it professionally and extend it. It's a nightmare. Mapbox and Vizicities are offering some good stuff with real DEM now. Fingers crossed.

https://vr.google.com/earth/

Google Earth VR is definitely a thing and it is amazing. You can get it on Steam.

There's a desktop client available for Linux, Windows, and Mac.

go to chrome://flags and enable overriding the gpu black list also there is an option to force Hardware acceleration.

I tried it and works fine.

It is a bit goofy using another products logo but Kubernetes means Helmsman and that product is called Voyager so I see where they were going with using a ships wheel.

I'd like to agree, but this does nothing in Chromium on desktop, does nothing in Firefox, and won't run in Chrome on my Android phone. It's not much more than hearsay to me that it exists at all. I think a certain amount of HN-grade irritation about that is understandable.

(I'll try it under Windows when I get home, and then maybe feel more celebratory.)

While I agree that it's funny (see Louis CK's cell phones and flying rant), it's IMO a weak argument when you think about it in earnest. This is a post about redesign, so we talk about the redesign. Also if you go further down, the device you're even typing this on is a mind-blowing wonder machine by any historic standard. Heck, the chair you're sitting on is! Things are getting better. And if no one ever complained, they wouldn't.

I find myself often thinking this. Louis CK sums it up really well when he says "everything is amazing and nobody is happy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4

There is nothing new about this. Google Earth the desktop app had all of this for many years now. Google Maps itself had all of this for at least 2 years, likely more now.

I looked at it and have no idea why it took that long to load or how it was significantly different from either Earth or Maps.

E: It also runs a lot more choppy than the desktop version.

We all think it's great. But, I wonder why they basically rewrote what we've had for over a decade with Google Earth desktop. It's a tell that Google isn't making the smartest choices for its users but instead for itself.

Devil's advocate, what exactly can this do that we couldn't do 10 years ago?

What achievement are we revelling in? That they've managed to replicate something a desktop app could already do in javascript?

+1. This was just amazing to look at and play with.

Indeed, as a maps fanatic, Google Earth/Maps is an awesome toy for me. Could spend hours on it. It's incredibly impressive.

Is it really something new, or is it something old, redone in Javascript, with fewer features, though?