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Celebration Town

While Disney is famous for their theme-parks, did you know that they also built a town? Google Sightseeing takes us on a brief tour of Celebration, the town that Disney built in the mid-1990s.

The city was was designed around its downtown, to encourage walking rather than driving. The town has some very cute buildings it in, such as the post office seen below. However, Disney was careful to keep it generically cute, and not include any Disney-like features such as Mickey Mouse ears or Dumbo-shaped bushes.

Once complete, as planned, Disney sold the town to a property investment corporation. You can learn more about the city on their official website.

As they typically do, Google Sightseeing has created a KML file to showcase all of the locations found in their post. The city has sharp aerial imagery from 2010 and very comprehensive Street View imagery, making it a fun town to explore in Google Earth!

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Strange structures in the Chinese desert

As reported by a handful of readers, a popular story about “strange lines in China” is making its way around the internet. There are a variety of odd-looking items in the area of the Kumtag desert, but this one is the most striking:

You can view that location in Google Earth by using this KML file.

The big question is: what is it? Some theories I’ve seen floating around online:

• Calibrating grid for a Chinese spy satellite.

• Lines drawn with white material.

• Dust dug by machinery.

• Street map of Washington, DC.

There’s certainly other possibilities as well. What do you think it is?

(via Gizmodo)

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Google Earth on 48 screens

Back in 2009, Google developed the first Liquid Galaxy, an entirely new way to display Google Earth on eight screens – which creates an immersive experience of virtually flying around the globe. Since then, we’ve built dozens of Liquid Galaxies all over the world and open sourced the code so anyone can build their own.

Late last year, the Paris Center for Architecture and Urbanism: Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal, approached us asking if they could use Google Earth to power a new interactive display highlighting the Paris metropolitan area in 2020 with upcoming buildings in 3D. Naturally, we were excited about the project, especially when they shared that the display would be 40 square meters – posing a fun and unique challenge.

A year later, we are excited to share that the first 48 screen Liquid Galaxy is now on display in Paris. We believe this to be the largest screen showing Google Earth to date!

Photo: Vincent Fillon
What started as a 20% project to support the new Google Cultural Institute resulted in a stunning display of the Earth in almost 100M pixels – powered by 48 instances of Google Earth synchronized and operated through 4 multi-touch screens with pinch and zoom functionality. The view is even sharper due to a refresh of the entire Paris area with higher resolution imagery.

As a Parisian, it’s amazing to be able to see what the city will look like in the future. If you can’t make it to France in the near future, you can preview it at home by downloading this KML file and opening it in Google Earth.

The Canopy and Transport Hub: Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti architects
This project was a close collaboration between Google and Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal, as well as technology JCDecaux, End Point and design partners ultranoir.

Over the next few months we’ll be fully open sourcing this work on Liquid Galaxy, as well as the graphical interface. Keep an eye out on our source code page for updates.

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Google Earth

Back in May, Google Earth for Android was updated with 3D building support on tablets. Despite the additional load of the 3D buildings, the software continued to run remarkably smoothly and continues to be an amazing way to view Google Earth.

At the time, the 3D buildings didn’t show up on phones; it wasn’t even an option. However, on the Galaxy Nexus the 3D buildings are in there and they look great!

There was no update to Google Earth recently, and the buildings still aren’t available on my old phone (a Motorola Droid X), so presumably Google Earth looks at the hardware on your phone before presenting you with that option. If so, that seems like a wise move. Here is what the options panel looks like on the Galaxy Nexus:

I don’t know what the minimal specs are offhand, but a dual-core processor seems like a good place to start. The Google Earth page in the Android market simply says “select phones”, so I don’t have a full list of compatible phones yet. As another added bonus, Google Earth came preinstalled on the phone; I’m quite sure that was not the case on the Droid X.

With the large, stunningly high screen resolution on the Galaxy Nexus (1280×720), Google Earth looks simply brilliant. More phones of this quality and beyond will be coming in 2012, which will make the mobile Google Earth experience even better.

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Google Earth Imagery: The end of October

What do Elvis’ Graceland and Iran’s Marmar Palace have in common? Both estates have been updated with new imagery in Google Earth and Google Maps!

Over the last few weeks, the imagery team has updated hundreds of images. To give you a taste of this new data, today we’ll look at several interesting features that have been updated with new imagery from across the globe.

First, I’d like to look at a fantastic and majestic terrestrial landform known as the star dune. Star dunes form pyramidal shapes that grow upward and are characterized by multiple radiating dune crests. Shown below is a perspective satellite image of a star dune field within the Badain Jaran Desert of China. The desert contains Earth’s tallest stationary dunes, reaching heights of 500 meters!

Perspective view of star dunes of Badain Jaran Desert, China
One of my favorite hobbies is scrambling around volcanic sites throughout the western United States, and many of my favorite areas are located in Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Within this river plain, one of the youngest volcanic flow features of the region comprises the Hell’s Half Acre lava flow field. In the aerial image below, taken this past September, you can see “windows” of older river bed material (now farmland) that were not buried during lava flow emplacement.

Farmland enclosed by lava flow, Snake River Plain, Idaho
Can you identify the unusual feature relationship seen in the satellite image below? Yes, train tracks cut to the northeast across the airport runway! Those tracks belong to the Kyber Railway, and their two vintage steam locomotives take passengers 42 kilometers to the town of Landi Kotal in Pakistan’s mountainous Kyber Pass.

Peshawar International Airport, Pakistan
Below is a fun water sport activity captured in high resolution aerial imagery of the southeastern coast of Auckland, New Zealand. You can see the kayakers paddles as well as the submerged sandbars and boulders of Thorne Bay.

Kayakers in Thorne Bay, New Zealand
We can see the Marmar Palace of Tehran, Iran, a.k.a the Marble Palace in the updated satellite image below. It is associated with the Pahlavi dynasty, and is still used today by the Iranian government.

The Marble Palace, Tehran, Iran.
In my opinion, most good things start and end with Elvis references, so our last example showcases updated imagery of Graceland, including the private customized Convair 880 jet Elvis used while hopping across the globe.

Graceland, Memphis Tennessee
If you’d like to receive an email notification when the Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your favorite site(s), we’ve got just the tool: The Follow Your World application!

These are only a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Bellingham, WA; Bemidji, MN; Brookings, SD; Davenport, IA; Emporia, KS; Grinnel, IA; Idaho Falls, ID; Klamamth Falls, OR; Lawrence, KS; Lovell, WY; Nephi, UT; Pittsfield, MA; Portland, OR; San Francisco Peninsula, CA; Scottsbluff, NE; Seattle, WA; St Louis, MO; Terre Haute, IN; Wasco, OR; Williston, ND; Wolf Point, MT

Spain: Huesca, Logrono

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Angola, Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gaza Strip, Greenland, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Jan Mayen, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, New Zealand, North Korea, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Svalbard, Taiwan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, West Bank, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

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