Google Earth - A world exploration tool

Jan 23, '06 07:19:00AM

Contributed by: robg

Google Earth imageThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]

Google Earth has been out for the PC for quite a while, but the Mac version was (finally!) officially released during Macworld Expo a couple weeks ago. (There was an unofficial beta floating around the net for a month or two before that.) If you haven't downloaded it yet, I highly encourage you to do so. It's an entirely different way of looking at our planet, and you may quickly find that hours have vanished as you play with the program. It's hard to explain exactly what Google Earth is, but think of it as Google Maps with an interactive 3D interface and (in many cases) higher resolution imagery.

You'll find yourself visiting cities just to see the high-res pictures, measuring distances between distant points on the planet, finding islands in the middle of the ocean, looking for airplanes captured during flight (as seen at left near Portland International Airport), and exploring some of the wonders of nature, such as the Grand Canyon and Mt. St. Helens -- I made a short movie [6.8MB] of a visit to Mt. St. Helens so you can get a sense for how the program works, showing the zoom, tilt, and spin features. It really is quite amazing, especially in the areas with high resolution imagery.

There are useful tools for measuring distance between points, either in a straight line or via a path, and if you thought directions on Google Maps were cool, wait until you see them in Google Earth. With a 3D perspective and instructions printed right on the map, they're quite impressive. Another fun thing to do is pick a spot (Denver, Colorado, for instance), and then just enter a faraway destination (Sydney, Australia), and watch Google Earth fly you from point to point. If air travel were only this fast and easy!

There's a lot more that I haven't even touched on, obviously. Give it a download and test drive -- and make sure you visit the Preferences section, where you can control a ton of little things about how the program works.

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