I’ve been playing a little bit more with Google Earth, but I still have problems with my video card. It makes nasty things like the picture below when I try to show terrain that is too steep. With slight elevations, I don’t have any problems, but when the terrain gets rougher, I have problems. Below is a shot of Grand Canyon, or should I say, a big blue glitch over Grand Canyon. I have roughly the same problem when trying to show the roads overlay.
However, at times it works well, such as the nice picture of Mount St. Helens I captured.
I’ve also tried placemarks to convey information to one of my friends. I must say that this feature is really weel made. The placemarker list can be exported as a .kml file (1 ko for the dozen of markers that I had) and I sent it via my gmail account. It was straightforward and worked perfectly.
I have also found that there is a mini web-browser integrated in Google Earth that can be used to access more information about markers on the map. Nifty feature!
However, as I checked today, it was still impossible to download the software. I think they discovered some bugs and will launch it again later. It is still officially in beta-testing and no one really knows when it will be freely available again.
July 4th, 2005 | Earth Sciences and Geomatics