Hacking Google Maps and Google Earth (ExtremeTech)

History and Planning

with Google Earth

Location Photos

I

was fortunate enough to go Pompeii during the writing of this book.

Pompeii is a fascinating place, because almost the entire town (or at least

that which has been uncovered) is intact — an amazing feat considering it

is almost 2,000 years old and was buried under many feet of volcanic ash

from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 87 A.D. As a Roman town it offers

a unique insight into Roman life.

While there I took hundreds of photos, but though I can show and describe

the contents of the photos, it is difficult to give a context in terms of the

layout of the town to someone who has never been there.

Using Google Earth, the photos taken at Pompeii can be shown in the con-

text of a satellite shot of the Pompeii site. The view can include the heading

and even the photo itself to help the viewer make sense of both the satellite

image and the photo.

Using a Photo for a Placemark

In Chapter 16, icons were used to highlight particular areas on the map that

related to specific businesses. Using a photo as an alternative mark is one

way of highlighting the places you visited while on vacation. It can also be

used with any photo to give the photos some context. For example, Realtors

could use photos of a property and a satellite image (or the view from the

windows of different rooms) to show what the real estate looks like from

different directions.

When using this method, be aware that the photos may overlap each other.

Some careful placing — using altitude and extrusion — to highlight the

points can help to make the individual items visible. Figure 17-1 shows an

example using icons in this way, and Figure 17-2 shows the same informa-

tion but with a slightly different camera angle, to show how the overlapping

of the icons can obscure, rather than help, the display of information.

To achieve this display, a number of different techniques were used.

̨Create placemarks

from photos

̨Create KMZ files

̨Generate

3D models

chapter

in this chapter