Hacking Google Earth?

[BetaMaster]

I have a question, this might sound rather n00bish, because I know very little in coding. However, I was playing around in Google Earth today and came up with an idea. Maybe someone here can help me out.

Is it possible to get access to the Google Earth imagery files, by downloading them from the server, or just hacking them out of the installation directory? I assume Google MUST download the parts of the map you've been to, otherwise that would be ridiculously inefficient and a waste of bandwidth on their part. That being said, I also assume that if Google DOES download these files, they are most likely encrypted (am I on the right track?). Has this encryption been broken (that is, if Google actually downloads the images). Has anybody actually tried? Does anybody care?

The reason I ask is because of this: I thought it would be a cool idea to, using an image editing program, like Photoshop, make an original, unique world map. Design continents, cities, etc, and get them to load in Google Earth, rendered on the planet, and be viewed as you'd view the Earth. Would it be easier to just code a Google Earth-esque clone? Or is this possible?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Oh, and P.S. I know what a gigantic, huge, daunting task it would be to actually draw out a map of an entire world. That's not an issue here, just the coding factors :p

[GEH4EVR]

First of all, Hacking of that description is illegal! We will not encourage that Hacking here. But I haven't got a clue on what you want done.

[BradG7]

What you are describing can be done in an image overlay, the legal way ;)

[blob]

Hum,
perhaps he wants to make a plugin for world wind so that it can access the data cache (or the google servers)....

(World Wind, BTW is open source, free, non comercial, and can have 100gb cache).

[Zothip]

First of all, Hacking of that description is illegal! We will not encourage that Hacking here. But I haven't got a clue on what you want done.

Hacking a program that has a GNU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU) license is about as illegal as breathing. Google Earth Beta 4 was released with a GNU license. I have already torn it apart in Visual Basic.

You can actually screw with the display and change the planet to say mars. It is easy to find the server and port assignments. Just point that to what you want to view.

Also, check out http://www.googleearthairlines.com/. They have embedded GE into the webpage. Which is what GEH should do with the cover page. They have the scripts for download on the page.

Peace.

[blob]

Hum,
after a bit of snooping i found out that there is a hack for NASAs worldwind which can use the microsoft imagery servers, and indirectly the same files as used by google earth. The images are sometimes newer or older, though more extensive.

So if you want to access google earth imagery files then download world wind (60mb) and download the `virtual earth addon`.
Copy the files over to the worldwind directory, and it`ll tap into the microsoft servers.
(look in the cache to see the .dd or jpeg.png files)...