WMS on Steroids – KML 2.1 Regions Application

I hate the way Google keeps making me lose sleep :)

By now most of you know that Google has released version 4 of Google Earth. This version comes with a new revision of the KML format, with some really cool goodies. If you haven’t already, make sure you download the latest version before trying out any of the live demos in this post.

I’ve just finished hacking together a PHP script that distributes WMS services as nested Region-based KML layers, what Google is calling SuperOverlays.

You can download the WMS2KML script as a zipfile, or view the source online. And no comments on the sloppy style… I’m tired :)

Looking for some good WMS sites to try this out with, I picking up on Matt Perry’s post about his favourite WMS servers a few months ago and used some of these for my examples. The following images show what each of the WMS reflectors gives for an area off the east coast of Florida near Jacksonville.

Base

Jacksonville - Base

USGS DOQ

Jacksonville - DOQ

Live ExampleSource Code

USGS DRG

Jacksonville - DRG

Live ExampleSource Code

NEXRAD Base Reflectivity

Jacksonville - NEXRAD

Live ExampleSource Code

Well, that’s it… I’m off to work. Let me know what you think, and please pass along links to any services you put in place!

10 thoughts on “WMS on Steroids – KML 2.1 Regions Application

  1. Pingback: Ogle Earth

  2. Very cool, but this begs the question – why the heck doesn’t Google just add WMS URL support???

  3. That would be nice, eh?

    There is a suspicious-looking registry key on my PC:
    HKCU\Software\Google\CommonSettings\WMSServers

    It’s been there for quite a while though; I’m wondering if it’s something that’s only active in EC, something that was considered and abandoned, or something that’s really far out on the horizon.

    Jason

  4. This is really cool, good job; but I’m waiting for the new Geoserver functionality to support KML 2.1 with regions. That’ll be really cool!

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  6. The potential for this is huge. Great work. For those of us without experience in .php is there anyone out there who can post some simple instructions on how to use this script?

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