Archive for category Google Earth

Nanaimo Photorealistic Buildings in Google Earth

Posted by Jason Birch in Google Earth, Nanaimo, Sketchup on June 8, 2009

Just a quick shout-out to Pauline Hackwood and the City of Nanaimo’s planning department for their initiative in starting to model Nanaimo’s downtown in Sketchup Pro, and for making these models available to others in Google Earth via the 3D Warehouse.

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The City of Nanaimo is now managing a 3D Warehouse Collection called Nanaimo Current Models, containing Pauline’s models and any other good models of Nanaimo the collection managers run across.  If you’re interested in having your high-quality photorealistic geocoded model added to this collection, let the City know in the Nanaimo 3D Models Google Group.

These tools are a great way to convey planning information to the public.  In the future, hopefully the City will also be able to publish historical models of buildings that have been replaced and conceptual models of new developments for public review.

-J

P.S. Cheers to the Sketchup folks too; it didn’t take them very long at all to evaluate the initial set of models and push them into Google Earth.

P.P.S. Like all articles on this site, this represents my personal opinion and viewpoint, not that of my employer.

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KML Spec Bizarro?

Posted by Jason Birch in Formats, Google Earth on January 20, 2009

I’m working on some new KML resources and, just as I try to do for my HTML, I want to at least attempt to get it to validate against an official specification.  For KML, this means the OGC KML specification.

These resources will be single-feature, and will each be related to exactly one HTML representation of the same feature.  Now, it seems logical to me that I would specify an atom:link with rel="alternate" inside of these KML files, either at the Document level or perhaps at the Placemark level.

Unfortunately, from section 9.1.3.5.1 of the official OGC KML specification:

The atom:link rel attribute shall be present and its value shall be related.

What the heck?  I’m not an XML guy by any means, but I think this means that the best I can do is specify a "I think I met that guy in a bar a couple years ago" kind of relationship, when what I really want is something more like "hey, that’s me in a dress shirt."

Now, if I’m right, the question is:  do I exclude the atom:link element from my KML, do I include the element and settle for a generic relationship, or do I intentionally break compliance with the OGC specification.  Tough choice.

-J

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thematicmappingblog rules!

Posted by Jason Birch in Google Earth on May 31, 2008

At university, I took a hard-core cartography class at one point. I remember manually (pencil, ruler and eraser) performing a Douglas-Poiker line generalization and using Lettraset, but I also took away a healthy respect for map design and elegance in conveying complex information.

I love reading books like the ones by Cynthia Brewer and John Krygier on Fantom Planet’s list, and Bjørn Sandvik’s Thematic Mapping Blog fascinates me in the same way. I always considered Google Earth to be a bit of a dead fish as far as cartographic elements go, but Bjørn’s work shows that some truly amazing representations are possible with a bit of work. If you haven’t checked this blog out, give it a read.

-J

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GeoWorld Geospatial Leadership Awards

Posted by Jason Birch in FDO, Google Earth, Nanaimo, Open Source on May 9, 2008

Just a quick note asking you to VOTE for the solutions you think are best in the current GeoWorld Geospatial Leadership Awards.

Some interesting entries have been nominated. In particular, FDO and Fusion (both open source applications) are competing alongside other prominent applications in the Innovator Award category.

Full disclosure: My work on earth.nanaimo.ca (built with MapGuide Open Source technology) is nominated for the Public Enterprise category. Please only vote for it if you think it’s the most deserving solution in this category.

-J

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Clear skies… mostly :)

Posted by Jason Birch in Google Earth on April 1, 2008

Looks like the east coast of Vancouver Island got a huge resolution increase in Google Earth. Previously, a large proportion of this area was low-resolution satellite imagery. Now much of the island appears in what looks like half-metre (18 inch) resolution. The copyright on this data reads IMTCAN, which I assume is Integrated Mapping Technologies. In general, this is a great upgrade and these photos really show off some of the recently improved terrain.

New Terrain VI

I feel sorry for the folks in Port Alberni though… Not only did they miss out on the new imagery for most of the city, but they also have a huge imagery glitch in the middle of their community:

There are a couple other places where the imagery was not very well edge-matched (some white triangles in the middle of the Strait of Georgia) and there are some really odd colours in the water, but I think that most people will be happy to trade consistancy for clarity.

-J

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