Google Earth Hacks blog

We’ve just upgraded our forums to vBulletin 3.7.0, which adds a ton of new features!  Some in particular:

• Some social networking kinds of features, such as friends and groups.
• You can create photo galleries, either for yourself or as part of a group.
• Your profile pages are much better looking and more informative.  Here is SpiderX22’s profile for an example.  In addition to the new vBulletin features and layout, your profile page also shows how many files you’ve uploaded, how many StreetView locations you’ve added, and your current progress in GEMMO.  You can also leave messages for users directly on their profile page.

There are a ton of other small bug fixes and enhancements, but those are the major changes.  If you have any problems, please let me know.  Have fun!

With the release of the StreetView API a few weeks ago, followed by the addition of StreetView to Google Earth a few days ago, I figured it was time for us to open up a section on the site that was dedicated to showcasing fun StreetView content.

Voila! - www.gearthhacks.com/streetview

I’ve tried to make it as easy to use as possible.  If you are looking at a cool StreetView location in Google Maps, just grab the URL from inside of the “Link to this page” link and add it to our site.  The server takes it from there.

Your submissions will show up immediately.  You can vote on existing submissions (a single up/down vote) to help sort out the good from the bad.

I had hoped to be able to dynamically generate KML files for each submission that would fly you into the same view in StreetView in Google Earth, but that doesn’t appear to be possible.  I’ve done the next best thing, which is to dynamically generate a KML for each StreetView location which will fly you to that place in Google Earth — it’s up to you to enter the StreetView bubble and look around.

Play with it, add stuff, break it, etc.  It may be a bit buggy, so please let me know if you see any weirdness.  I wasn’t sure what categories to start with, so please suggest some more categories here.

Have fun!

As you certainly know by now, Google Earth version 4.3 has been released.  It has a bunch of great new features and already has generated a lot of reviews, screenshots and videos.  Here are some of the best we’ve seen so far:

Download it! — First up, you need to download this latest version.  Get it straight from Google, or use our download page.

Google LatLong: Introducing Google Earth 4.3 — The official announcement from Google, with a list of new features.

Google Earth Blog: Video Demo of Google Earth 4.3 — A great tour of the new features, created by Frank Taylor.

Google Earth Tour — Another video tour, this time directly from Google.

Digital Earth Blog: Google Earth 4.3 thoughts, screenshots and a video — A brief review of the new features found in 4.3

Mashable: Google Earth 4.3 Released — An overview from Mashable.

Google Earth Blog: New Navigation Gadgets in Google Earth 4.3 — A video from Google about the new nav gadgets, along with a list of keyboard and mouse shortcuts.

Digital Earth Blog: Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth in Denver — A quick look at how the two products match up visually.

That should give you all the information you need for Google Earth 4.3.  If you know of any unique item that I’ve missed, feel free to tell us in the comments.  Have fun!

A new version of Google Earth is due out sometime later today.  It will include a revamped navigation system, new 3D building engine, a layer for StreetView and much more.  In addition, the Mac version will finally get Flash support, meaning Mac users can now play GEMMO and use GEboards.  It sounds like it will be a great release!

Full details can be found on the Digital Earth Blog.

Google has updated Google Earth with a bunch of new imagery. According to the Google LatLong blog, it covers more than 86 countries!

Google Earth Blog reveals some of the locations as Havana, Cuba and Mount Fuji Japan, and the Digital Earth Blog is trying to work through the entire list. Go check it out for yourself, and contribute to the answers at DEB.

We’ve added a few more cities to GEMMO, bringing the total to 25. The total area around those cities currently have 16,216 enemies waiting to fight!

There are over 600 people playing the game. Be sure to check out the leaderboard and see how high on the list you can climb.

If you have have any questions, problems or suggestions, you can use our GEMMO forum. Have fun!

Digg it!

Google has just launched Sky Online.  It’s just like Google Maps, but for outer space, using the same data as “Sky Mode” in Google Earth.  Very cool!

Details on the Digital Earth Blog.  Digg their entry!

It’s time for you to play! We’ve moved the game into public beta, so go download your copy of GEMMO and give it a shot.

Let us know what you think in our GEMMO forum, as the game is certainly not complete. Our first job will be to stamp out any bugs that come up, then add more enemies/cities/weapons/spells, then start working on new features. Your input is very helpful, so feel free to speak up.

Before you play, you might want to read our brief “How to Play” thread. It should give you a good idea of how to get things done in the game. Have fun!

Update: Digg It!

The 10 Millionth file has been downloaded from our site! To accurately determine the winner of our contest, we noted that the download occurred at at exactly 4:41pm EST today, February 16th. Our winners:

• 1st - tpstigers, with a guess of 4:30pm, February 17 (off by 23 hours, 49 minutes)
• 2nd - barakuda, with a guess of 5:17pm, February 17 (off by 24 hours, 36 minutes)
• 3rd - gekow, with a guess of 4:27pm, February 18 (off by 47 hours, 14 minutes)
• 4th - moko, with a guess of 5:1pm, February 18 (off by 48 hours, 34 minutes)
• 5th - egypt4, with aguess of 3:00pm, February 14 (off by 49 hours, 41 minutes)

tpstigers and barakuda will both be receiving brand new SpaceNavigators from our friends at 3DConnexion, along with some fun prizes supplied by Google. gekow, moko and egypt4 will all be receiving some of the Google goodies.

Thanks to all that entered, and thanks to all of you for your support of the site over the last 2-1/2 years!

Mickey

Update: Digg it!

We’re putting the finishing touches on our in-Earth MMO and could use some testers. The game is essentially a much-simplified version of World of Warcraft. You pick a race (Warrior, Elf or Mage), then go around the world fighting enemies, earning experience points, increasing your level, buying weapons/spells/potions, etc.

Some other features:

• Each major city is guarded by a different boss who must be defeated. Each city you defeat earns a crystal.
• You can team up with other players to take out difficult enemies.
• All gameplay (including battles, shops, messaging, etc) is done completely in Google Earth with no add-on software or web browser calls required.
• The battles are turn-based, similar to the Final Fantasy games, using our GEfootball engine.
• The shopping and messaging use Flash-based forms to handle the data, using code from our GEboards application.
• There are currently 9 cities, 14 different enemies (over 7,000 of them roaming the earth), 12 items, 8 spells and 6 weapons. All of those will likely be increased as we finish testing.

If you’re interested in helping us test it, simply let us know in this thread and we’ll get you set-up. We’re only looking for about 10 more testers, so it’s first come, first served.

Here are a few screenshots:

Atlanta

Attack this Tiger?

Fighting the Tiger

In-game Messaging

Shopping