Google Earth Demo
We've prepared two demonstrations of our Google Earth visualization capabilities. Before you jump into the demos we suggest you read about them first.
| Demo 1: Zoom | Explanation |
| Demo 2: Vorticity Animation | Explanation |
| Demo 3: Vorticity Transparency | Explanation |
Google Earth How-To
| Your World In 3D - Zoom, Tilt, And Rotate | |
 Click
image to view a demo [00:35] |
Use your mouse, keyboard or trackball to navigate the world. Grab the image with your mouse to move around. The navigation compass allows you to manipulate the view in multiple ways. Drag the right slider up and down to zoom in and out. Drag the top slider left and right to tilt the view. To rotate the image, spin the navigator's on-screen wheel. |
| Fly To Any Place In The World | |
Click
image to view a demo [00:19] |
Whether you are looking for a specific address, the intersection of two streets, a city, a state, a zip code, or a country, just type it into the "Fly To" box and hit Search. |
| View Google Earth Files | |
Click
image to view a demo [00:25] |
Just double click a Google Earth file (.KML or .KMZ) that you found on the web or received from your friend to view it. When you open a file, it will show up under your temporary places. Save it to My Places folder if you'd like to re-visit it at a later date. |
| Manipulate Time | |
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Click on the play button to start time marching forward. The play button changes to a pause button so that you can then stop time. To change how fast time is marching, click on the clock to change the timeline settings. |
| Make the World Transparent | |
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Click on the slider bar to adjust the transparency of the currently selected "Place". This can help you see the surface of the earth (like Colorado) when one of our demos is running! |
| Turn Off Image Compression | |
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To make Google Earth vizualizations look better, we suggest turning off image compression in the Options dialog. On Windows and Linux, this is found under the Tools menu. On Mac, this is found under the main menu. |
Zoom
There are five grid resolutions presented in this demo: R=7 through R=11. There is a single R=11 image available over Colorado; all other R=11 areas appear white. As you zoom in closer to the earth's surface, higher grid resolution imagery will be revealed. We've made some effort to make these transitions smooth, but performance depends on the quality of your hardware. The specs for the Mac we used during testing are found at the bottom of this page.
Data is represented as colored cells drawn with white borders. The data is completely random, so as you peel away lower grid resolutions the next image you see will not correlate with what you were previously viewing. Realistic data is presented in the next demo.
Notes about performance:
Data is being streamed from our public web server. The size of each image tile is approximately 3.3MB, so you will notice significant lag until all data has been cached by Google Earth for your current view. Also, due to the large image sizes, older video cards with less texture memory will not be able to show multiple images of these sizes. You may see a completely black image tile if this occurs. If the images appear pixelated, see the information above about turning off image compression in Google Earth.
Assuming you have decent hardware (see below) and you have allowed Google Earth to download all of the imagery to its cache, you will be able to reasonably enjoy zooming in to Boulder, CO and back out.
Click here to launch ZoomIf Google Earth does not launch automatically, download the file, start Google Earth manually, then use the File menu to open the file. Windows may try to save it as a ZIP file. Rename the extension from ZIP to KMZ, then open in Google Earth as before.
Vorticity Animation
We've taken the data that Ross provided (three files at R=8) and transformed it into a time animation. You will notice in Google Earth a less familiar timeline gadget next to the standard navigational tool. If you click on the play button you will start the time cycle. Nonsensical dates are used for this demo, so you will notice the months fly by for the years 1, 2, and 3. You can change the settings for the timeline, such as the animation speed and whether the animation wraps back to the beginning, by clicking on the clock icon next to the left of the timeline. Feel free to give the globe a spin as time marches on.
Click here to launch Vorticity AnimationIf Google Earth does not launch automatically, download the file, start Google Earth manually, then use the File menu to open the file. Windows may try to save it as a ZIP file. Rename the extension from ZIP to KMZ, then open in Google Earth as before.
Vorticity Transparency
We've taken a single file from the data that Ross provided (three files at R=8) and transformed it into a transparent image overlay.
Click here to launch Vorticity TransparencyIf Google Earth does not launch automatically, download the file, start Google Earth manually, then use the File menu to open the file. Windows may try to save it as a ZIP file. Rename the extension from ZIP to KMZ, then open in Google Earth as before.
System specs
| Hardware Overview: | NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL: |
|---|---|
| Machine Name: Power Mac G5 | Chipset Model: GeForce 6800 Ultra |
| Machine Model: PowerMac7,3 | Type: Display |
| CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.1) | Bus: AGP |
| Number Of CPUs: 2 | Slot: SLOT-1 |
| CPU Speed: 2.7 GHz | VRAM (Total): 256 MB |
| L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB | Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de) |
| Memory: 2.5 GB | Device ID: 0x0040 |
| Bus Speed: 1.35 GHz | Revision ID: 0x00a1 |
| Boot ROM Version: 5.2.4f1 | ROM Revision: 2130 |