Google Earth Redesigned

"Google Chrome required" - sure, because current crop of web developers are too young to remember dark age of Internet Explorer domination.

Looks like the Google Earth Flight Simulator[0] didn&#x27;t make the cut. Many features are missing from the original desktop app and it&#x27;s not immediately clear what this offers over using &quot;Earth&quot; within Google Maps. The &quot;auto-rotate around the landmark&quot; feature is also a pain for people who are used to maps being north-facing by default.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk&#x2F;2007&#x2F;08&#x2F;google-earth-easter-egg-flight.html#gsc.tab=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk&#x2F;2007&#x2F;08&#x2F;google-earth-eas...</a>

I never see anyone talking about google&#x27;s elevation data for buildings and the process they&#x27;ve used to drape imagery over that elevation data. I wonder why that is? Maybe this isn&#x27;t a hard problem and it&#x27;s just a question of getting high quality data. Still, I&#x27;ve never seen any other company come close to this.<p>I do wonder what exactly is new here in terms of a casual user browsing the landscape. Google maps 3D offers, more or less, the same experience. And that&#x27;s been around for a while.<p>Still, it&#x27;s hard to be negative about this. The result is quite clearly better than every other comparable technology I&#x27;ve seen.

If any Googlers are reading this: What does the new Earth require that Firefox is missing? I&#x27;m happy to help file things in Bugzilla so that this Chrome App can grow into a standards-based Web app.

Well, this is great. It&#x27;s just like Google Earth, but slower and without all the neat features like historical imagery that made Google Earth awesome. Seriously, it doesn&#x27;t even seem to support historical street view, which was the only big Maps feature that was missing from Earth.<p>For anybody who wants to see what this is a pale imitation of, Google Earth Pro for desktop is still downloadable and still free (and still full of weird unfixed bugs because they&#x27;ve been working on this &quot;replacement&quot; instead)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;earth&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;earth&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m really impressed by the amount of detail in the 3D views (hold middle mouse button to look around).<p>Even the fair at the field near my house [0] can be viewed in 3D!. Coincidentally they are currently building that same fair today, so for a moment I thought the images were live...<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@52.08511654,4.31805086,0.37952354a,143.62359855d,35y,74.28635143h,44.29917602t,0r&#x2F;data=CkwaShJECiUweDQ3YzViNzczYmZmZmZmZmY6MHhmOTJkM2VjNGZhYmE2MmJhGULEcvDxCkpAIQunFltSRxFAKglNYWxpZXZlbGQYASAB" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@52.08511654,4.31805086,0.37952...</a>

Off-topic from the update, but sometime in the past 2 years the quality of their universal photogrammetry became jaw-dropping.

Doesn&#x27;t do anything on my ubuntu &#x2F; chromium system.

Why the hard requirement on Google Chrome?

They where knocking a large building down near the office recently, this has that building in a partial state of demolition and has modeled the girders that where exposed.<p>I admit to looking at it slightly slack-jawed, that wasn&#x27;t so much future shock as the future punching me square in the face.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@53.74539679,-0.32722384,18.71382064a,234.32784729d,35y,3.04492516h,64.07003691t,-0r&#x2F;data=CkgaRhJACiUweDE1MThlNmRjNDEzY2M2YTc6MHg4Nzc1NDZmNDg4MmFmNjIwGTf4wmSqZkFAIcSUSKKXf0NAKgVTeXJpYRgBIAE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@53.74539679,-0.32722384,18.713...</a>

I love the way they play well with web standards: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;c9cNT" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;c9cNT</a>

Interesting...<p>When I visit this on iOS, I get a message that says &quot;Google Earth for iOS is coming soon.&quot; Of course, there&#x27;s already a Google Earth app for iOS. When I launch the Google Earth app on iOS, I get a message that says (roughly) &quot;The developer has to update this application to work with future versions of iOS&quot;. This is weird since it was last updated in May 2016, though that appears to be a very minor update.<p>In other words, the old iOS app is effectively abandoned and the new one isn&#x27;t available.

&quot;Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth.&quot;<p>thanks for nothing.

still an annoying aspect of Google Earth -<p>I can see a long range of mountains from my 2nd floor windows. I want to drop down to approximately the same position and elevation (from my 2nd floor window) and take in the same view on Google Earth. The intent is to identify mountain peaks that I can not determine in real life.<p>Google earth limits the angle one can tilt while the POV is close to the ground.

I don&#x27;t​ know why Google Earth exists. The satellite mode in maps is very good, doesn&#x27;t depend on PNaCl, and is part of Google Maps, where it makes sense.

What is the difference to the 3D view in Google Maps?<p>edit: (honest question, dear downvoters...)

Well, it doesn&#x27;t work for me. After clicking the link I see only some wallpaper and a text &#x27;Google Earth&#x27;. I use Chromium 57 with Linux. Any ideas why it doesn&#x27;t work?<p>Google maps (Earth + 3D) works without problems. When I open the website with Firefox I get a nice text telling me that google earth is an advertising platform for chrome ;-)<p>&#x27;Aw snap! The new Google Earth isn&#x27;t supported by your browser yet. Try this link in Chrome instead. If you don&#x27;t have Chrome installed, download it here.&#x27;

As expected doesn&#x27;t work in edge. Atleast bypassed the disclaimer changing the user string. Things like these make me want to not use their services.

The new Apple HQ building site looks impressive in 3D: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@37.33478572,-122.00939683,47.8437939a,465.11726319d,35y,65.7414677h,60.00288635t,-0r" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@37.33478572,-122.00939683,47.8...</a><p>They didn&#x27;t close the circle yet, to let trucks enter the midsection.

Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Google are basically old Microsoft at this point.

each time I look at google&#x27;s 3d representations for things, I really wonder why they don&#x27;t do manual touchups for certain places<p>I mean, if you are including the Eiffel Tower in the intro pages, could both make it look cleaner, and make it use less net resources

I thought that their imaging was all from satellite, but this image seems to show a very-close-to-the-camera windmill which would seem to hint at a drone....? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@32.65401271,128.717528,189.11365248a,154.7733102d,35y,65.37849899h,66.55599122t,0r&#x2F;data=ChQaEgoML2cvMXMwNTQ3cGxiGAEgAQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@32.65401271,128.717528,189.113...</a>

Google Chrome is required. Nope.

This is where the aluminium in your Coke can comes from: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@-32.55733803,116.19955541,310.41957882a,59338.79591988d,35y,0h,0t,0r&#x2F;data=CkwaShJECiQweDJhMzI5NGMwNmZiYWJlY2Q6MHg1MDRmMGI1MzVkZjUwMDAZh0Tr8vcNQMAh-CqeH-sEXUAqClJvbGV5c3RvbmUYASAB" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@-32.55733803,116.19955541,310....</a>

Navigating 3D maps in the desktop browsers has always been clunky with UI controls for panning, tilting, zooming, and their unclear mapping with the mouse buttons. They solved it by assigning the left mouse button to set an anchor and middle mouse button to &quot;operate&quot; the camera. Very simple and intuitive - I&#x27;m impressed, good job.

Oh man this is amazing! It&#x27;s fast too. I can only imagine this getting better still with more research in deep learning.

How great would it be if they did the same thing for Google Finance as well? It hasn&#x27;t been touched in years.

One thing I&#x27;m disappointed about... In the desktop version when you click and drag then let go, the camera will keep flying across the landscape without slowing down. Depending how fast you drag, it&#x27;s possible to slowly and gracefully glide over the landscape in any direction you choose.<p>This is a cool feature that is no longer possible in this new &quot;improved&quot; Google Earth. The camera now comes to a dead stop.<p>I really hope they can add an option to bring back the &quot;zero resistance&quot; camera or whatever you call it. Or a flying camera mode or similar.<p>It means you can sit back and glide over a city slowly, just above the buildings or mountains without needing to interact. If you choose a nice slow speed, the approaching map data loads in time and you have yourself a nice aerial trip over the land.

&gt; Loading in progress. 0 of 4.543 billion years processed.<p>Impressive.

I checked some of not so famous places and 3D re-construction of environment is really good. I would assume they probably have even higher detailed 3D environment internally. Now if they can only allow to use this for developing self-driving cars algorithms :).

How is this any better than the desktop version that&#x27;s already out?

&quot;Aw snap! The new Google Earth isn&#x27;t supported by your browser yet. Try this link in Chrome instead. If you don&#x27;t have Chrome installed, download it here.&quot;

The 3d view is faster in google maps than google earth, why do we need google earth? Also I&#x27;m already used to use ctrl to rotate the view on google maps.

Bug: the demo only shows beautiful aspect of the Earth, not the polluted industrial areas, trash yards, plastic gyres, ship graveyards, oil spills, et cetera.

They don&#x27;t even explain why Chrome is mandatory! &quot;Learn more.&quot; just sends us to the Chrome page...

A bit disappointed to be honest - this doesn&#x27;t do much better than Cesium and has a hard requirement on Chrome :(.

Well. Gives you a good idea of how massive Tokyo SkyTree is.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@35.71013838,139.81057456,323.83953229a,1872.25254428d,35y,89.34096197h,93.36321476t,-0r" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;earth.google.com&#x2F;web&#x2F;@35.71013838,139.81057456,323.8...</a>

Looks like only few places in the US and some other cities elsewhere have the 3D view (that too not properly finished). Rest of them are still the old 2D. Wasn&#x27;t most of this already there? I have seen their 3D view before, so besides performance improvement nothing much is new?

Does this browser version of Google Earth also support the 3D mice that 3Dconnexion produces? I prefer using them in Google Earth for flying&#x2F;zooming&#x2F;rotating <i>so much</i> over using a regular mouse.

On my 4 core i7 laptop with 8GB of RAM running Ubuntu this juddered and flashed a lot and CPU utilisation went to 100% on all cores... I didn&#x27;t think my laptop was that bad.

I want to VR around the earth. I was kind of excited and hoping this was that

The fact that it was designed to be used only with Chrome is troubling. Of course it was the right of Google to decide on whatever platform they wanted.<p>Anyone knows if there is a parallel &quot;open&quot; version in the works (in WebAssembly or similar)?

Lets hope they release an API for it, google maps api still only 2d and google earth api got discontinued years ago

There is no information on the redesign. The only thing I know is they made Chrome a requirement to use it.

I&#x27;m glad to see that they&#x27;ve fixed the Oslo bug (half the city couldn&#x27;t load since 2014).

They don&#x27;t even explain why Chrome is mandatory!<p>&quot;Learn more.&quot; just sends us to the Chrome page...

Nice, I hope someone makes a GTA 1 clone using the models and data :)

I have Chrome but my computer doesnt support WebGL apparently.

Mobile view using F12 dev-tools shows a not-so-well-done design. That&#x27;s a first for Google but I guess it will be improved even on various devices without having to install&#x2F;try the apps.<p>But it&#x27;s a good first shot, keep going guys!

Just why did they re-use the K8s logo on the landing page?

this is absolutly awesome. Polymer shines :)

Very impressive, but too bad zooming in a zone isn&#x27;t smooth: it keeps accelerating and slowing down on my computer, which feels dizziness-inducing.

Hangs my current Chrome on Linux on a Core2Duo E8400 with older Intel onboard GPU - The old Google Earth Linux runs fine :(

This is an engineering marvel.

Got a bit of vertigo there

&quot;Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth. Please try this link in Chrome. Learn more. &quot;<p>GFY.

j

I think it&#x27;s a little funny and symptomatic of HN that we can&#x27;t take a minute to fucking marvel at the fact that we&#x27;ve got something like this in the first place without going over the font or the whatever.<p>Technology is amazing and moving rapidly, and if we can&#x27;t take out five minutes to revel in an achievement like this, I don&#x27;t know what the point is.

<i>404. That’s an error.<p>The requested URL &#x2F;static&#x2F;9.0.31.6&#x2F;balloon&#x2F;balloon.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know.</i><p>Great...<p>Edit: after some F5-ing got it working. The 3D view is great! And I wonder why maps should be so slow. This feels much faster.<p>Edit2: I keep getting the 404 error every time. Looks like something is still wrong.

My house isn&#x27;t even on there. :(