GE Flight Simulator (0.4) GE Flight Simulator is a very realistic flight simulation game that uses the Google Earth plugin.
Using the simulation you can fly anywhere in the world. The simulation uses Google Maps to display and help you navigate to over 30,000 airports around the world. To view the map in flight just click the "show map" button in the option bar.
If you click on any of the displayed airports you can choose to fly from or fly to the selected airport. In "Aeronautical" mode, the map also shows a layer of airspace areas. This overlay has been generated using DAFIF data.
You can also view the map of the 30,000 airports on its own here.
HeyWhatsThat Eclipse Simulator Tonight's partial lunar eclipse is best seen from the Pacific in the middle of the night or in the western U.S. just before dawn. The upcoming July 11th total solar eclipse will be seen to best advantage in the South Pacific.
I only know this because of HeyWhatsThat's latest Eclipse Simulator. Here's a video of the simulator in action showing the July 11th solar eclipse,
The simulation uses two instances of the Google Earth plug-in, one showing the Earth and the other the sky. You set your location by clicking on the Earth, set the time by clicking on the green timeline, and start an animation by clicking on the timeline's arrow. Use the drop-down menu on the bottom right to view other eclipses.
(Note that the timeline shows your computer's local time, not the time at the chosen viewer location.)
Sae-seek.com, the social sharing site for sailors and boat lovers, has added live real-time ship tracking to their Google Earth browser sailing simulations.
With the sea-seek.com Google Earth browser applications it is possible to sail, fly a helicopter or pilot a submarine at many different locations around the world. The application includes models of other ships plotted at their current real-time positions.
At the moment if you sail around the position of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico you can view a lot of ships that are presumably involved in efforts to cap the well.
Kongens Nytorv - København Using the new Street View imagery for Copenhagen microformats.dk has created a really cool tour of Copenhagen. The mashup synchronises the Google Earth browser plugin with Street View to show you 360 degree panoramas in both Street View and Google Earth.
The tour works particularly well because of the extensive 3D buildings available in Google Earth for Copenhagen. To view a location just click on the Google Map. The tour then zooms in on that location in the Google Earth plugin and automatically rotates around the view. A Street View embed also rotates giving you the same view but as seen from the ground.
Burj, Dubai The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa (formerly known as the Burj Dubai) is due to be opened today. The Burj Dubai is 828m (2,684 ft) tall.
Unfortunately Google Maps' satellite view only shows what the location looked like before the building of the Burj began. But you needn't worry as this Google Earth plugin application allows you to view the Burj Khalifa in glorious 3D.
Viewing the skyscraper in Google Earth allows you to compare the Burj to other nearby buildings and really helps to impress upon you the amazing size of this building.
Guiness Bring it to Life Guiness have released a new Google Earth browser plugin game that requires players to terraform planets.
The object of the game is to create 'mountainous', 'plains' and 'vegetation' regions on a planet and then search for water droplets in your terraformed regions. When you have collected enough water a pint of Guiness is created on your planet. If you find the pint of Guiness you have the chance of winning a crate of Guiness or even a lifetime's supply.
You can invite your friends to your created planet via Facebook Connect and searching together you have a higher chance to win that life time supply of stout.
Virtual Tours of Chamonix & Mont Blanc Have you ever fancied taking a helicopter ride over Chamonix and Mont Blanc? If so you will love these virtual helicopter rides created with the Google Earth browser plugin.
To start the tour just press 'run'. Once your helicopter is in flight you can then change the view by using the camera buttons in the bottom left corner of the screen. You can also check the progress of your tour using the embedded Google Map in the bottom right corner.
ToriSat ToriSat is an amazing satellite tracking website that allows anyone to track satellites on Google Maps, in the Google Earth Browser plug-in and even in Google Street View. The Google Map view shows the path of the satellite around the Earth and the Google Earth option allows you to view the path of the satellite as if you were looking down from space.
What really impresses me, however, is the Street View option that allows the user to view the satellite superimposed on top of Google's Street View imagery. This is really useful as it shows the elevation of the satellite as it passes overhead. Oh, and you can see all three views at the same time.
You can see the tracking in action in the video below,
The default satellite is the International Space Station but you can select other satellites to track, including the Hubble telescope. You can also change the location of the observation point by clicking the cross at the top of the Street View and dragging the map marker to your location.
ToriSat also comes with a Twitter feed that will Tweet you when the ISS is approaching your location (the site will suggest the Twitter feed to follow from your saved location). There is even an option to save the ISS approaching schedules to your Google Calender.
I'm simply in awe of the developers of ToriSat. Check out some of the other amazing stuff they are involved in (including the Street View SpaceBike) here.
La Aventura Del Universo L'Agrupación Astronómica de Madrid, CosmoCaixa Madrid and the Planetario de Madrid have jointly released an astronomy game using Google Sky. The game has been released as a Google Gadget and uses the Google Earth browser plug-in.
The game itself is in the form of a quiz. Each question is placed in a different part of the universe and after you answer a question you fly through the stars to the next part of the quiz. The questions include YouTube videos and models of the planets (observe Jupiter in the screenshot above).
The game is in Spanish but, if you are interested in astronomy, I think you will enjoy this even if you don't understand the language.
NASA Moon Rocket Crash Site Here is a Google Earth browser plugin map of today's NASA experiment of firing a segment of rocket into the Moon. The target for the rocket was the Cabeus Crater. The crater was chosen because the lighting conditions at the time would be ideal to see the resulting ejected dirt and rock.
The map includes an embedded YouTube video from Associated Press showing footage of the mission. To view the map and video you will need to have installed the Google Earth plugin on your computer.
kmlfactbook.org The kmlfactbook.org site can create impressive presentations from global data-sets. The site allows you to create Google Earth kml files from your own custom data and view the results in Google Maps, via the Google Earth plug-in or download the kml and view it in Google Earth.
The left part of the screen is used to list and select the submitted data-sets. Once a data-set is selected the data is loaded onto a Google Map. You can also choose to view the data in the Google Earth plug-in or opt to download the kml.
Apollo 11 Moon Lander Paul van Dinther, author of the excellent Ships games has turned his attention to the new Moon in Google Earth and produced an excellent Lunar Landing game.
This game, for the Google Earth Browser plugin, involves having to land the Apollo 11 Eagle lander, whilst controlling your fuel and rate of speed. The Google Earth Blog created this video of a successful landing,
One of the big problems with games for the Google Earth plugin, is the lack of automatic collision detection. Therefore in driving games the cars are able to drive straight through buildings. One thing Google Earth does have though is terrain and Paul has used this to enable collision detection for his Lunar Lander.
The Google Geo Developers Blog is featuring a Google Earth plugin version of the amazing Apollo 11 tour, created by Sean Askay for the launch of Google Moon on Monday. To view the tour you will need to have installed the Google Earth plugin on your computer (or you could watch the video of it below).
The Google Moon Buggy Wow! Google have released a Google Earth plugin game that lets you drive a Lunar Rover on the moon.
The game allows you to drive around the various Apollo moon landing sites. The Apollo 11 site is a good place to start because it also contains a model of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.
Space 1999, Moonbase Alpha Earlier today the Google Earth Blog reported about Gerardo Paz's amazing 3D model of Moon Base Alpha from the Sci-Fi television series Space 1999. You can view the model and a tour created by Gerardo by viewing this kml in Google Earth.
Søren Johannessen has now created a web page where you can view the tour in the Google Earth plugin. Here's a little screencast:
Today's big news from Google is that the moon has been added to Google Earth. For news of the launch you should check out the Google Earth Blog. Frank Taylor is at the launch event and I'm sure he will be posting about all the features of this latest addition to Google Earth.
You can also check out the Google Earth Blog's Twitter feed, which Frank is using to comment live on the launch in Washington.
Google Moon Landings Google Moon has also been added to the Google Earth plugin, which means it is possible to view Google Moon in your browser. I've created a quick example of the Apollo Moon landings sites using the plugin. The example includes YouTube videos of the moon landings.
One of the great features of Google Earth and the Google Earth browser plugin is the ability to add tours. Here is a very brief tour of the Apollo 15 Landing Site. The tour is very short and I haven't added any narration or a soundtrack. However, it does show some of the possibilities of creating tours with the new Google Moon option.
HeyWhatsThat This Google Earth plug-in application shows a simulation of the July 22 total solar eclipse. The simulation shows the view for the eclipse at its maximum in the South Pacific. The application uses the Google Earth time-line to show the relative position of the sun and moon throughout July 22nd.
If you prefer to see the eclipse in 2D you can also view the eclipse in Google Maps on the HeyWhatsThat Cosmic Visibilty page. This Google Map uses the Google Sky feature of Google Maps to also show the view at the eclipse maximum in the South Pacific.
You can use the time feature at the top left of the page to see the position of the sun and moon at different times of the day.
If you want to know what view of the eclipse you will get at any location on the Earth you can use the HeyWhatsThat Planisphere. This Google Map lets you define your location and download a collection of planispheres for that location, including July's solar eclipse.
Ill Comm Earth Driving Game Have you fought for the right to party? OK, then you can play the Beastie Boys GE plug-in driving game.
The website for the Beastie Boys newly remastered and re-released album Ill Communication has a great Google Earth plug-in game. The game let's you take control of your very own sabotage cop car and drive around, flying off buildings and hills, to your heart's content.
Check out the screencast below:
Other Google Earth Plug-in Games
Ships - take control of a number of ocean going ships Sea-Seek - sail boats and submarines The Monster Milk Truck Game - the original Google Earth plug-in driving game
Google Earth Tour of Airbus A310 French news site 20minutes.fr has created a Google Earth tour of the flight of Airbus A310 which crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday. The tour uses Google's embedded tour player which means that it is possible to embed the tour in any website or blog.
There were 66 French nationals on board the plane, which was flying from the Yemeni capital Sanaa to the Comoros, and the French transport ministry say the plane which crashed had been banned from France because of "irregularities". 20minutes.fr have asked readers to respond to the appropriateness of showing the plane's last flight by leaving a comment on their blog. Also See
The Google Earth tour helps to give a human face to refugees from seven different camps across Asia and Africa, allowing you a small insight into the lives of refugees.
Using the Google Gadget for the Google Earth plugin microformats.dk has created a website so that you can view the tour directly in your browser.
