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
USGS DOQ
USGS DRG
NEXRAD Base Reflectivity
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!
1Brian Flood on Jun 13, 2006 at 8:21 am:
great stuff jason! the new Region and SuperOverlay stuff will do wonders for WMS integration
cheers
brian
2Adam Hill on Jun 13, 2006 at 10:30 am:
Very cool, but this begs the question - why the heck doesn’t Google just add WMS URL support???
3Jason Birch on Jun 13, 2006 at 11:30 am:
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
4Brian Timoney on Jun 13, 2006 at 7:40 pm:
Jason:
Great stuff–you definitely deserved some of that free food that was being dished up yesterday at the Developer’s Day.
BT
5Jason Birch on Jun 13, 2006 at 7:48 pm:
Yeah,
I would have (almost?) killed to be at Where/GDD, even without the food, but no such luck.
Jason
6eli on Jun 13, 2006 at 11:35 pm:
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!
7Colin on Jun 14, 2006 at 6:18 am:
Hi I use a wms sever called DEMIS. I guess they be happy to know about your work.
http://www.demis.nl is their address.
Have a nice one!
8Jeff Markham on Sep 29, 2006 at 11:21 am:
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?