For anyone interested in maps, aerial photos or just plain interesting fun stuff, take a look at Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) which has recently been launched. It's a 10 MB download (Windows only I'm afraid at present) and needs broadband to stream the data as you move around the world, but it's very clever :) UK coverage isn't as great as the US, but it's still fun browsing around 3d views of US cities and famous places...

It also seems very slow to load the maps and pictures at the moment, but I suspect that's because in the last day or two it's been featured on every news and tech site there is, so there's a fair amount of traffic!

This is seriously cool! I think my productivity in work has just nose dived for the day.

Just imagine what this will be like in a couple of years time.

wow this is cool....

:D this is so good:thumbsup:

Ive seen better. I will try and find the name of the other program I used to use, which can take you anywhere and you can just zoom in
________
Lovely Wendie (http://www.lovelywendie99.com/)

Originally posted by Mainframe
Ive seen better. I will try and find the name of the other program I used to use, which can take you anywhere and you can just zoom in

Oooooo, find it, find it, find it!!!!

Well, Google Earth is based on Keyhole, which Google acquired (http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html) last year. A similar free program is World Wind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/) by Nasa, although I'm not a big fan of the interface - it's probably much more useful for "serious" uses, but nothing like as much fun as Google's roads and 3d buildings! If anyone knows any more, keep them coming! :)

There are of course other non-free alternatives. I'm a big fan of Memory-Map (http://www.memory-map.co.uk/) but that's mainly overhead views with 3d terrain thrown in as a gimmick. Very handy having OS maps and aerial photos of the whole country though!

Trust you lot to max their site out :(

===========

The Earth At Night (Beta Temporarily Closed)

Welcome, frustrated would-be planet surfer.

We appreciate your interest in accessing 3D geospatial information, but due to the technical limitations of this beta launch, Google Earth has been forced to take a brief breather. Please check back with us soon.

Thanks,

The Google Earth Team

Grab this, but don't tell anyone I sent ya :)

http://www.picturefix.co.uk/GoogleEarth.exe

On Thursday night it was past 3am when I got to bed because I downloaded this at about 11pm; seriously addictive!

Thanks Rich:thumbsup:

Only had a brief look but was very disappointed at the quality of the images. I've only had chance to look around the sheffield area but the there is no detail to look at, just a rough idea of the Sheffield area. I thought i would be able to see details such as roads and buildings. Maybe The USA is clearer?

Sheffield's coverage is disappointing, but there are just so many other places to have a look at! :thumbsup:

Originally posted by Kristian
Sheffield's coverage is disappointing, but there are just so many other places to have a look at! :thumbsup:


Doesn't work on this OS:(.

Then again, thinking of Google's privacy policy, I may be lucky;).

That is amazing. I cant believe you are whinging about it Scutts. I think it is absolutely amazing (sorry to repeat myself) that you can seemingly fly around from country to country.

Wow!

Thanks Rich951, but you could have told me about it yourself ! :-)
says the scolding wife.

Didn't mean to "whinge"....Didn't have time to have a proper look before. Now I've looked closer, i agree it's amazing. The degree of detail in the USA is fantastic :)

Wonder if the UK will ever get that much detail... I guess the photos are down to google being able to strike the right licensing deal with a photo supplier.. The 3D buildings should be easier though, at least that can be done for free! :) Maybe we should offer the combined forces of SheffieldForum to go round our city with a tape measure writing down how big everything is!!

I have a friend in America. He freaked out last night when i asked him what the small white box was at the side of his house :hihi: It turned out to be his dog's house.
I hope we get the satellite pictures for England soon. This could be really useful :thumbsup:

Bits of London are fairly detailed. Most of the rest of the UK is a blurry mass of greeny greyish type terrain.

I'm waiting to see pictures of some of the neighbours out sunbathing........

Wow, I just downloaded it - true, the Sheffield coverage isn't great (but I can see Crookes Valley Park & the Ponderosa quite nicely) but London is awesome - I can even see buses on the road, and I found my old house in Forest Gate!

I wonder if anyone has tried Google Earth yet?

http://desktop.google.com/download/earth/index.html

Try it and see what you can come up with.

Is this the same thing Owdy? (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46807)

I've tried it after seeing the other thread.

It is a nice toy, but not much use at small scale.

I have. I love it, think it's amazing. I especially like finding moutainous areas I know well and tilting the view to look at them as if I'm stood there - Google Earth is very, very good :)

Have you guys spotted that more populated areas are done in a higher res than the lesser populated areas. I find you can pick out individual vehicles on the high res areas - even with the free version.

MOD: Threads merged

............

I think it's pretty cool myself :thumbsup:

Apparently, Microsoft are going to release one as well. Microsoft say their version will have enough detail to pick out manhole covers in the street :o

Manchester and London seem to have some high resolution photos - but Sheffield is just a blurry blob (or is that just me?)

What extras do you get if you pay the subscription, rather than the free download? Do you get higher resolution pics then?

Google Earth Plus is an optional upgrade adding GPS device support, the ability to import spreadsheets, drawing tools and better printing.
So I guess if you're just playing around to say "ooh, there's my house!" then there's not a lot more to it :) The Premium version also lets you produce fly-by videos (for another $200) and claims to do much better printing.

Just been having another play.

If you go over to Manchester Airport, you can see an airplane in flight on final approach,
It is over the fields just to the NorthEast of the runway.

Google have released a piece of software that allows you to scan any place in the world via satellite! The picture quality is AMAZING and provided you have broadband pretty quick to get there too. Althought the picture quality varies between places, the larger cities generally have great quality that allows you to picture individual cars and sometimes people walking on the pavement!

Great fun little piece of software and its free!

Homepage Of Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/)
Download Link (http://kh.google.com/download/earth/index.html)

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46807

:thumbsup:

Mod: Threads merged. Please search before starting a new thread. Ta.

Just down loaded google earth and its taken over the forum for my time spent on the pc. Who else has this and what do you think? See what you think but only certain pc's are compatable.

I think its pretty damn awesome! (but thats just my opinion):D

www.googleearth.com (http://www.googleearth.com)

Sheffield doesn't come up in much detail...

There is a thread about it here (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46807&highlight=google+earth)

;)

Originally posted by steelson
Sheffield doesn't come up in much detail...

Unfortuntely not, hopefully this will be updated soon.
Its great going around the world though. I followed the road along the Florida Keys to Key West and its pretty detailed. You can see the cars and houses clearly.

Old Trafford, The City of Manchester Stadium and Manchester airport are all clear. You can land at the airport.

Originally posted by Shiesh
There is a thread about it here (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46807&highlight=google+earth)

;)

Thanks shiesh, threads merged.

Would it be a bad plan (confidentialiy wise) to show you guys where I live now by means of Google Earth? It's really cool, you can see my block and the bit out back where my flatmates mudwrestled the other day!

Originally posted by Kristian
Sheffield's coverage is disappointing, but there are just so many other places to have a look at! :thumbsup:

try downloading this - Home Made Sheffield Overlay for google earth (http://www.netheredge.com/galleries/sheff.kmz) (5mb)

in fact you can make pretty serviceable overlays for google earth by cutting and pasting from multimap.ahem.

I do like the fact I can tell that only one of my parents was in when the photo was taken (only one white car on the driveway).

I did live in deepest darkest Norfolk, which for some reason is really detailed. Even over the RAF base about a mile from my house, which is literally covered in signs saying people taking photos will be prosecuted under the offical secrets act!

Originally posted by Phanerothyme
try downloading this - Home Made Sheffield Overlay for google earth (http://www.netheredge.com/galleries/sheff.kmz) (5mb)

in fact you can make pretty serviceable overlays for google earth by cutting and pasting from multimap.ahem.

if anyone wants this (it's very good, honest - example (http://www.netheredge.com/galleries/googleearthscrdump.jpg)) then you'll need to fetch it today, as I will be removing it later. :D [edit] gone.

Have you all seen Google Earth yet? It's amazing! It looks like it's recently been updated and so you can make out the road markings in sheffield, as well as london and places like new york now!
My friend can see the stepping stones in his back garden.
It's fantastic, revealing and really quite fascinating. And it's free to download too*






*Please note, this message has been made less boring, owing to my last post being moved to the 'I'm really bored' section by the oh so judgemental, yet anonymous 'SiteBot'

Check here (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75317)

:thumbsup:

very nice, but google earth lets you zoom right in on your own house. It's brilliant.

Originally posted by Pook
very nice, but google earth lets you zoom right in on your own house. It's brilliant.

We know (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46807&highlight=google+earth)

:thumbsup:

I love google earth, I have had loads of pleasure marking all the places I have visited in the world.

The last time I looked at Sheffield though it was very fuzzy and poor resolution. I will have to look again tonight.

Whereas, if you look at places like New york all the buildings are mapped and everything it is quite incredible. My mate tells me that the next stage, after improving countries and cities which were done with less clarity, is they are going to render the facades of all buildings in big cities and they have already got special camera vans which have started sampling all this info.

Also If you look at baghdad you can see it in such detail and so clearly that it's clear who paid for all the scanning and technology!
Google earth is clearly a spin of from the war against Iraq!

Originally posted by muddycoffee
I love google earth, I have had loads of pleasure marking all the places I have visited in the world.

The last time I looked at Sheffield though it was very fuzzy and poor resolution. I will have to look again tonight.


Make sure you've got the most recent update and then clear the cache from the options menu. Sheffield should come up pretty clear. :)

this is kool I found my house :clap:

Do you have to pay for it at some time or is it free.?

Originally posted by poppins
Do you have to pay for it at some time or is it free.?

At the moment it's free because it's only a beta version. I'd imagine that it will have to be paid for when they comlpete it though.

Anybody had a look into their back garden on Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) ?

I have - a few weeks ago, Sheffield was but a blur from 5000 feet.

Now its so clear, I can see my patio :o

I'm completely amazed! Have been having a right old nosey into my neighbours gardens :P

The images are from a long long time ago. You can still see all the cranes working on all the city centre flats, and the Forum bars beer garden hasnt even been built.!

Mod note: threads merged

Originally posted by pJay
The images are from a long long time ago. You can still see all the cranes working on all the city centre flats, and the Forum bars beer garden hasnt even been built.!

My house wasn't built when the pictures were taken, but you can see the little yellow diggers on the building site working away. :clap:

Originally posted by pJay
The images are from a long long time ago. You can still see all the cranes working on all the city centre flats, and the Forum bars beer garden hasnt even been built.!

Yeah I live in Coode House at Riverside Exchange, and on Google Earth it's still just a patch of bare land. My parents live in a small Warwickshire town which has no detail on Google Earth at all. :(

Originally posted by pJay
The images are from a long long time ago. You can still see all the cranes working on all the city centre flats, and the Forum bars beer garden hasnt even been built.!

About 2 years old I believe.

Of course, if you have the data it can be almost live.

Originally posted by rich951
Well, Google Earth is based on Keyhole, which Google acquired (http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html) last year. A similar free program is World Wind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/) by Nasa, although I'm not a big fan of the interface - it's probably much more useful for "serious" uses, but nothing like as much fun as Google's roads and 3d buildings! If anyone knows any more, keep them coming! :)

There are of course other non-free alternatives. I'm a big fan of Memory-Map (http://www.memory-map.co.uk/) but that's mainly overhead views with 3d terrain thrown in as a gimmick. Very handy having OS maps and aerial photos of the whole country though!

HOW! DO YOU ZOOM IN ON THIS PROG!(earth wind)...its getting on my nerves how to zoom cant see naught!!
Witch XX

just playing on google earth shame most of this area is a blur:mad:

Originally posted by julie23
just playing on google earth shame most of this area is a blur:mad:

It shouldn't be if you have the latest update. See my post further up the page. :)

well it is half of the area im looking at is and i have checked for updates,:(

Originally posted by julie23
well it is half of the area im looking at is and i have checked for updates,:(

have you cleared your google earth disk and memory cache?

Originally posted by julie23
well it is half of the area im looking at is and i have checked for updates,:(

Give us the co-ordinates that you are looking at. It may be that you are, indeed, looking at a low resolution image.

cgksheff sent you a pm

I've replied.

The area concerned is in fact on the edge of the higher resolution images and the specific location julie23 wants is in the older, blurred, low resolution spread.

thankyou cgksheff for your pm,

its bloody amazing, me and my mate who lives just outside of sheffield go to a computer course in town, and we were looking at each others houses in really good quality picture, i can see individual houses and cars, even the paving slabs in my back garden

BIAB

Does anyone else find Google Earth a bit scary.

I mean, its cool and all, with the, "Oh look, there's the shed down the garden, and who's that there?", quality of its images.

But if satellite images of that quality are made available for public viewing, then what kind of quality and zoom can be achieved :suspect:

Its like big brother on a massive scale. Someone told me once that we are 'being watched' all the time, obviously, I thought thats just crazy, but after using Google Earth, it shows it is possible to an extent.

My street is a bit fuzzy. But my mum's house in Oz is very clear.

Also: http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=46807

Nah, most (or quite a few) of the images from round these parts are a good 4-5 years old. If they were constantly updated then I could see the paranoia, but for now it's just good fun surely?

But face it, since the 80's if they wanted to watch you from space then they could.

There's a lot better things to be paranoid about...

I think Google earth is quality.
Yes the images at the moment are at least 2 years old because my car is parked outside my old house and mainline buses still exist in Red and Yellow colour.

However I like that I can see my friends places in America and see the layout of their street etc before I go.

It also lists local hotels, dining places etc with telephone numbers.
I think Google earth is the best. Just a shame the $20 annual fee doesn't give more up to date and better zoom quality pictures otherwise I'd have it now.

According to the latest pictures from Google Maps (http://www.google.co.uk/lochp?hl=en&ll=51.501548,-0.141382&spn=0.001067,0.001829&t=k) i live in the middle of a building site. Better go and tell all the neighbours then :hihi:

I love google earth though. My mate freaked out when i told him what colour his dog house is. He lives in Ohio...

What scares me is the fact that this is the free google version.

Can you imagine how good the detail is going to be on the military upgraded version (and there is one, I'm told)?

You can see the table on our back yard with this one, with the military spec you could probably see what we're having for dinner if we ate out on the back.

Wilf

In case anyone hadn't realised yet, the mac version is now available for download.

Wish it was available for Win98 - Google seem to be in Microsofts pocket :rant:

Wish it was available for Win98 - Google seem to be in Microsofts pocket :rant:
It could be more to do with the fact that Microsoft support for Windows 98 will end very soon. To port it to an operating system that will soon be unsupported by its manufacturer would be futile.

I used to make these things so it doesn't excite me as much as it does some of you. It involved scanning photography into a computer, and pinning them together using software that pinpointed common terrain features on multiple photographs. We then had to generate a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) by viewing the images in 3D by wearing a pair of special specs. Not sure how the hardware worked, but for someone not in the profession it would all be very impressive. When you're working on it every day it can get very tedious.

According to the latest pictures from Google Maps (http://www.google.co.uk/lochp?hl=en&ll=51.501548,-0.141382&spn=0.001067,0.001829&t=k) i live in the middle of a building site. Better go and tell all the neighbours then :hihi:

I love google earth though. My mate freaked out when i told him what colour his dog house is. He lives in Ohio...

Your lawn looks a bit brown as well, so you maybe ought to think about keeping less horses.:P

According to my observations, I'd say the majority of Sheffield was snapped in either 2002 (summer time looking at the lush green) - or possibly spring 2003? Can any one else be more specific?

I've been looking through all the places around the country where I used to live on this fun little program. Even managed to find my old apartment building in Toronto, Canada. Cool. :thumbsup:

Just called The GeoInformation Group who do all the high def photography. Sheffield was shot in August 2002.

When were all the pictures taken?. a few years old isnt it?
should be updated now!

Don't know about Sheffield, but I'm pretty sure that the ones of Cambridge were taken during Cambridge Folk Festival in summer 2003 (I've only been to the festival once and I spotted both my car and my tent in the places I parked them...)

Now available for Mac os 10.3.9!!! Take no notice that the download sight says its only for 10.4. It works.

When were all the pictures taken?. a few years old isnt it?
should be updated now!

beth29 the pictures were taken from a plane in August 2002 - I called the company who confirmed this.

I had a look at my house, my car wasnt on the driveway, so I zoomed over to my work carpark and damn me - there was my car! I knew what I was doing that day.

Sheffield's coverage is disappointing, but there are just so many other places to have a look at! :thumbsup:

Really? I thought the scaling and clarity of Sheffield was superb! :hihi:

Once I cleared the cache's I've got much better res pics showing! Can even see my patio!

This may be old news, but for those of you who don't know, the satellite images of sheffield on google maps http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=sheffield&t=k are now high resolution. It's worth a look. Zoom right in!

Thread here! (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=46807):)

its the same map off of google earth but google eart is a lot better as it tells you the street names, buildings etc

This may be old news, but for those of you who don't know, the satellite images of sheffield on google maps http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=sheffield&t=k are now high resolution. It's worth a look. Zoom right in!but it's the same as it's been for months. same data, same quality :confused: :confused:
you mussed have missed out on both Maps and Earth for a while :huh:

The maps are very old as well. None of the recent city centre developments are on there. Still building West One on these :suspect:

Seems it must have been longer than I thought since I last checked!

The maps are very old as well. None of the recent city centre developments are on there. Still building West One on these :suspect:

Photos taken August 2002

The perspective is really wierd. I can see the front of the houses on the north side of Freedom Road, and the front of the houses on the *south* side of Palm Street!

It's about time Multimap did the same - their aerial photos must be at least six years old now - probably older!

The perspective is really wierd. I can see the front of the houses on the north side of Freedom Road, and the front of the houses on the *south* side of Palm Street!

Some views look more like photos taken from a plane rather than satellite images, but the detail in full zoom is quite good for my area and the overlay with road names is useful.

Some views look more like photos taken from a plane rather than satellite images, but the detail in full zoom is quite good for my area and the overlay with road names is useful.

greybeard - they are taken from a plane. the high definition photos are anyway.

greybeard - they are taken from a plane. the high definition photos are anyway.

That explains it then :)

don't forget the tilt function,stretch the relief by say 3x and see those hills come alive,
i was flying down the valleys at ladybower the other night on a bombing run :hihi:
amazing stuff,

JJ..

This may be old news, but for those of you who don't know, the satellite images of sheffield on google maps http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=sheffield&t=k are now high resolution. It's worth a look. Zoom right in!

Amazing. Been playing with this for ages.

Its amazing to see how much the city centre has changed since the photos were shot in late 2002. Many of the city centre flats are still in the early stages of construction and estates such as Woodside and the Claywood flats are still standing.

It's about time Multimap did the same - their aerial photos must be at least six years old now - probably older!

Multimap are Getmapping images from 2000
Google Earth are Cities Revealed images from 2003

For anyone interested in maps, aerial photos or just plain interesting fun stuff, take a look at Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) which has recently been launched. It's a 10 MB download (Windows only I'm afraid at present) and needs broadband to stream the data as you move around the world, but it's very clever :) UK coverage isn't as great as the US, but it's still fun browsing around 3d views of US cities and famous places...

It also seems very slow to load the maps and pictures at the moment, but I suspect that's because in the last day or two it's been featured on every news and tech site there is, so there's a fair amount of traffic!

I'm a GIS Development Officer so i was chuffed when Sheff popped up on GoogleEarth - although it is eating into my working day quite a bit...oh well...look there's my school!

Multimap are Getmapping images from 2000
Google Earth are Cities Revealed images from 2003

Google Earth - it was infact August 2002, leg-end. I called the company to find out and they confirmed Aug 02 for the south yorkshire high definition area

Mod: Threads merged

Put these coords in Google Earth and go down to 1000ft.

53 32.3145, -1 20.812

:hihi: :hihi: :hihi:

did you know that was there cus you did it? or just run across it by chance??

dave

did you know that was there cus you did it? or just run across it by chance??

dave

Can't claim credit for either. Someone told me about it. :hihi:

And if you pan south west a short way, you will see some crop circles.

In case it's not been mentioned before, GE now has detailed views of a lot of the Peak: a strip from the A628 going right down to Birmingham. You can even have a look round Alton Towers :)

Someone told me that you can only get Google Earth if you have broadband(which I havent) Is this correct ?:huh:

Someone told me that you can only get Google Earth if you have broadband(which I havent) Is this correct ?:huh:

The Google Earth client requires certain system configurations in order to run smoothly.

Minimum configuration:
Operating System: Windows 2000, Windows XP
CPU: Pentium 3, 500Mhz - System Memory (RAM): 128MB RAM
Hard Disk: 400MB free space
Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec This means "Broadband"
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 16MB of VRAM
Screen: 1024x768, "16-bit High Color" screen

Recommended configuration:
Operating System: Windows XP
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
System Memory (RAM): 512MB RAM
Hard Disk: 2GB free space
Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
Screen: 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color" screen

http://earth.google.com/faq.html#requirements

For anyone interested in maps, aerial photos or just plain interesting fun stuff, take a look at Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) which has recently been launched. It's a 10 MB download (Windows only I'm afraid at present) and needs broadband to stream the data as you move around the world, but it's very clever :) UK coverage isn't as great as the US, but it's still fun browsing around 3d views of US cities and famous places...

It also seems very slow to load the maps and pictures at the moment, but I suspect that's because in the last day or two it's been featured on every news and tech site there is, so there's a fair amount of traffic!

It’s also available for the Mac. 11MB download. O.S. 10.3.9 and above.

Just had a quick look at Google Earth, and surprised to find than in the UK it even marks the centuries old ‘lay lines’. Remarkable!

If you want to get deeper into GE, it has its own forum at:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0