What Goes On
I finally downloaded Google Earth, which I was discussing here a few months ago ([1] [2] [3]). I'm still at a very basic level, looking at my wife's car and traveling across the country. Meanwhile, other people have the belief that buildings are speaking to them, are talking about "Google Space" at Heathrow, and are touting the features of the new Google Middle Earth.
Meanwhile, Spatially Adjusted is noting the Google Earth may be the ideal tool for some GIS applications, if it beefs itself up:
I’ve been talking quite a bit over the past few weeks about why I think Google Earth will become the default GIS viewer in the next year, but I thought I’d also post about what might keep it from [be]coming that viewer....
GE should be able to handle different projections on the fly. ArcGIS has done this for years and I think it is a requirement for any GIS data viewer. Because most of our work is for the U.S. Department of Defense, we deal in UTM and State Plane most of the time. I’d just rather not have to worry about changing projections (or have an ArcGIS extension do this for me)....
I’d like to have an API exposed so I can add buttons and forms so I can add or subtract features I don’t need. Google Earth is simple, but sometimes I need something even more simple....
As we load up more complex information into Google Earth, we’ll need a better “Find” dialog to get at this data. I’m not sure how Google will view this since they are all about “I feel lucky”, but I know many Engineers and Planners who will want this capability....
We need better information about what the acquire date of the satellite imagery is and the source of the road information. I don’t want phone calls from clients telling me that the photo is out of date when at the bottom of the screen it says “Copyright 2005 Google”....
Google Earth is a “geoviewer”, not an analysis tool. GE is about a 70% solution toward a great GIS tool, but its limitations are showing up in how I’d like to deploy it for my clients. I can see many cases when Google Earth is all they would need, but I suspect unless Google Earth opens up more on many of the above points as well as their planned updates to the datasets, I’ll probably be looking more toward ArcExplorer....
Meanwhile, Spatially Adjusted is noting the Google Earth may be the ideal tool for some GIS applications, if it beefs itself up:
I’ve been talking quite a bit over the past few weeks about why I think Google Earth will become the default GIS viewer in the next year, but I thought I’d also post about what might keep it from [be]coming that viewer....
GE should be able to handle different projections on the fly. ArcGIS has done this for years and I think it is a requirement for any GIS data viewer. Because most of our work is for the U.S. Department of Defense, we deal in UTM and State Plane most of the time. I’d just rather not have to worry about changing projections (or have an ArcGIS extension do this for me)....
I’d like to have an API exposed so I can add buttons and forms so I can add or subtract features I don’t need. Google Earth is simple, but sometimes I need something even more simple....
As we load up more complex information into Google Earth, we’ll need a better “Find” dialog to get at this data. I’m not sure how Google will view this since they are all about “I feel lucky”, but I know many Engineers and Planners who will want this capability....
We need better information about what the acquire date of the satellite imagery is and the source of the road information. I don’t want phone calls from clients telling me that the photo is out of date when at the bottom of the screen it says “Copyright 2005 Google”....
Google Earth is a “geoviewer”, not an analysis tool. GE is about a 70% solution toward a great GIS tool, but its limitations are showing up in how I’d like to deploy it for my clients. I can see many cases when Google Earth is all they would need, but I suspect unless Google Earth opens up more on many of the above points as well as their planned updates to the datasets, I’ll probably be looking more toward ArcExplorer....
posted by Ontario Emperor | 21:30
2 Comments:
Where's Tim integrates with Google Earth too. Goto http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim.aspx and click "Fly to with Google Earth", click open on the KML file that it generates and it will open in Google Earth
I'll have to try that when I get home. Where's Tim also integrates with MS Virtual Earth, of which I know nothing.
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