SketchUp: Discover Your World in 3D

Today, we’re unveiling a totally redesigned Your World in 3D website. If you’re new to geo-modeling — the term given to creating 3D buildings for Google Earth and Google Maps — the Your World in 3D website has all the tools and info you’ll need to get up and running quickly. The new website showcases several examples of what fellow modelers are building and will help connect with other geo-modelers around the world.

So that’s the what, here’s the why. Five years ago, Google acquired a Boulder-based startup called @Last Software, which was making waves in the architectural world with their 3D modeling software, SketchUp. Google had an ambitious idea to add a 3D model of every building on the planet to Google Earth, and SketchUp was a tool up to the task. Not only that, by opening SketchUp to a wider audience, users would have the opportunity to help build a virtual mirror of their world.

Times Square showcases some of the very first user contributed models

Today, the 3D virtual world is in full bloom: hundreds upon hundreds of villages, towns, and cities have been added to the 3D map representing hundreds of thousands of 3D buildings from every corner of the globe — truly, a testament to the power of open collaboration.

In the intervening half decade, we’ve introduced several new ways of adding buildings to the 3D map, including Google Building Maker and the Cities in 3D program. And you may have noticed 3D buildings surfacing on Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile as well. With so many different ways of creating and viewing 3D models, we realized we needed a destination that would demystify the process of geo-modeling,

Enter: the new Your World in 3D website. We call the website Your World in 3D because it is you, the user, who is helping build this virtual world, and perhaps more importantly, it is you who is finding innovative and surprising ways of using this data.

Your World in 3D has been redesigned from the ground up

Why geo-model? When asked, most geo-modelers say they do it because geo-modeling is just plain fun, but building your town in 3D can also be a great way to show civic pride and encourage tourism for your town. It can also provide an interactive way to promote your business or contextualize the urban planning. 3D modeling has also been used in crisis response situations as we saw in the grassroots modeling effort that happened after the earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy.

App Engine 1.5.2 SDK Released

 

As the summer heat descends on the Northern Hemisphere we thought we’d release our newest App Engine version with some changes that are sure to keep you playing around in the cool, air-conditioned indoors (hey, you don’t want your computer to overheat, right?).

Production Changes

  • Adjustable Scheduler Parameters – As we previously discussed, we are introducing two scheduler knobs (okay, they actually look like sliders) that will allow you to control some of the parameters that influence how many Instances run your application. Today you will be able to set the minimum pending latency and maximum number of idle instances for your application.

Datastore Changes

  • Advanced Query Planning – We are removing the need for exploding indexes and reducing the custom index requirements for many queries. The SDK will suggest better indexes in several cases and an upcoming article will describe what further optimizations are possible.
  • Namespaced Datastore Stats – Now, in addition to getting overall datastore stats, we are providing a new option to query datastore stats per namespace.

Task Queue Changes

  • New Task Queue details page – We’ve revamped the Task Queue details page in the Administration Console to provide more information about the tasks being run. You can now see the headers included in the enqueued task, the payload, and information from previous task runs.
  • 1MB Pull Task Size – It’s our belief that there is only one way for size limits to go – and that’s up! So with this release we’ve increased the size for pull tasks to 1MB.
  • Pull queue lease modification – We’ve introduced a new method for Pull Queues that allows you to extend the lease on existing tasks if the initial lease on the task was insufficient.

Lastly, we have some exciting news related to the experimental Go runtime. While it still remains experimental, starting with 1.5.2, all HRD apps will have access to the Go runtime in production.

As always, there are also some small features and bug fixes, the full list of which can be found in our release notes (Python, Java). We look forward to your feedback and questions in our forum.

Victor’s Vectors: GTN 635, 625 and 725 now available!

 

GTN750 RFstack1

The GTN 750 and GTN 650 were announced and available for shipping March 23 when Garmin unveiled them at the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) Convention. Also announced at that time were the GTN 635, GTN 625, and GTN 725. As of July 1st these GTN models are now available for purchase and shipping. So what is the difference between the different GTN models? Basically, the GTN 625 and GTN 725 are GPS only, while the GTN 635 is a GPS/COM. The GTN 650 and GTN 750 are GPS/NAV/COM. For a more detailed list of the differences I’ve included a comparison chart from the GTN mini-site. The GTN 625 is priced at $9,595, the GTN 635 at $10,495, and the GTN 725 at $15,000. Now the full line of GTN models are available in a price range for your budget, so to start your panel upgrade visit a Garmin Aviation Dealer near you.