The New Google Earth 6.2

We’re taking bird’s eye view to a whole new level with the latest version of Google Earth, released today. With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new search interface. Additionally, we’ve introduced a feature that enables you to share an image from within Google Earth, so you can now simply and easily share your virtual adventures with family and friends on Google+.


A seamless globe

The Google Earth globe is made from a mosaic of satellite and aerial photographs taken on different dates and under different lighting and weather conditions. Because of this variance, views of the Earth from high altitude can sometimes appear patchy.

Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smoothes out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data.

Grand Canyon before and after

Sri Lanka before and after

Share your explorations with Google+

Google Earth is a great way to virtually explore the globe, whether revisiting old haunts or checking out a future vacation spot. With the Google Earth 6.2 update, we’ve added the option to share a screenshot of your current view in Google Earth through Google+. If you’ve already upgraded to Google+, you can share images of the places you’ve virtually traveled to with your Circles, such as family, friends or your local hiking club. To try this new feature, simply sign in to your Google Account in the upper right hand corner of Google Earth and click “Share.” Images of mountains, oceans, deserts, 3D cities, your favorite pizza shop on Street View—you can now experience all these amazing places around the world with people on Google+.


Search improvements

We’ve also made some updates to the search feature in Google Earth. Aside from streamlining the visual design of the search panel, we’ve enabled the same Autocomplete feature that’s available on Google Maps. We’ve also introduced search layers, which will show all the relevant search results (not just the top ten), so now, when looking for gelato in Milano, you can see all the tasty possibilities. Finally, we’ve added biking, transit and walking directions, so if you’re itching for a change of scenery or looking for a new route for your regular commute, you can now use Google Earth to generate and visualize all your options.

via: Google Lat Long blog

Explore university campuses in 3D and StreetView

 

As part of the continual additions to Street View, Google has just added more university campuses around the world to the product, bringing the total number of Street View-able campuses to nearly 100.

Combine that with the fact that thousands of new 3D buildings are added to Google Earth each week, along with 3D trees in a growing number of cities, and you have some excellent tools at your disposal to help browse around your favorite college.

For example, below is Stanford University shown in Google Earth and Street View so you can compare the views:

 

stanford-comp.jpg 

Google has spotlighted a few other universities in a recent blog post and you can view the full list of Street View-enabled campuses on their site.

You can also view some extra goodies at a few schools (like the virtual campus at Northeastern University) and utilities such as Campus Bird help provide more geo context for hundreds of schools.

As good continues to add Street View at more schools, and schools continue to work on their 3D buildings, this kind of exploration will only get better!

Street View collections in Google Earth

Google has just released a huge variety of “special collections” for Street View, all of which can be seen from within Google Earth. This includes a wide variety of parks, all captured with the Street View “Trike” (a three-wheeled bicycle that has a Street View camera mounted on it). Among the parks are Kensington Gardens in London and Knuthenborg Safari Park in Denmark.

Of special note is High Line Park in New York City, an old elevated railroad track that has become a park since its closure in the 1980’s.

high-line.jpg

Not only does it look great in Street View, but Google has produced a short video to tell you a bit more about the High Line and what makes it special:

If you’re not familiar with how Street View works in Google Earth, check out this post for a quick overview. Be sure to check out Google’s “Parks of the World” Gallery to see some of these amazing new Street View sights. (via Google Lat Long Blog)