Useful Navigational (vfr) help

[daz1]

Whilst searching on Google yesterday, i found a program called 'google earth', manufactured and made by the same team as the popular search engine. Having downloaded the program purely out of interest, i was astonished to find how detailed it really is. Put simply, it is a collection of aerial sattelite photos placed on a dynamic 3d globe. In many places elevation has been added, enabling you to tilt the screen and view relief of the land. In addition, many US cities have virtual buildings.
Just to give you an idea, i uploaded these screenshots

The famous Grand Canyon, tilted so the relief can be seen in detail


A top-down, aerial view of the Tokyo palace and the streets surrounding it


Seattle city with the virtual buildings i mentioned before added:


Seatttle Tacoma airport- this clearly demonstrates the level of detail


This program has really helped me with vfr navigation, where previously i had to use the fs maps. There are three versions- a free version (the one ive got), which gives massive detail on every major city and medium detail everywhere else. Ver.2 costs about $20 and provides clearer detail on minor cities. The final version is $114!, but provides the ultimate in satelite photography, which makes it fantastic for vfr maps, and other relevances to FS. The program can be downloaded at http://www.earth.google.com, and i would recommend it to anybody who flies using vfr a lot. The file is about 6Mb, and runs off broadband internet connection, so bear that in mind before you download.

Thanks for reading
Daz

[glb]Ps. to the moderators: Im sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this in , but it seemed the most relevant one. [/glb]

[gassius_maximus]

Hi daz1,

I have to agree with you on the quality of google earth - it is simply amazing - you can even make out the so called "Area 51" around Groom Lake.

I'm just wondering if you know if its possible to import images from google earth as terrain mesh for fs?

Gaz

[daz1]

Im not sure, i wouldnt have thought so, as the images themselves are in different filetype- but yo'ud have to ask someone who knew what they were talking about

[DJ_Zephyr]

Nice pics, wish the FS9 Grand Canyon was that detailed... wait, we have SRTM meshes!

But ya, my Dad showed me Google Earth one night and it was pretty sweet.  As to the terrain mesh detail, it's probably on par with or better than FS9, since Google keeps it all on a multi-terabyte server that is accessed by the program.  The building mapping is far more accurate, and you can actually search a place by address or street name.  I noticed the lack of buildings in a lot of areas, but the program is still in beta, and will probably be updated as time goes by.

Pretty cool stuff, daz, and thanks for the heads up!