The astonishing world of Google Earth

For those who have not yet discovered it: we can now gaze upon our world through the eye of a satellite. Flying over Amsterdam, the Golden Gate Bridge or any place one can think of, is possible with Google Earth.

The program combines photos from satellite cameras with pictures made by plane. Starting with an overview of our planet, we can zoom in at mountain-ranges, woods, shorelines and the clustered forms that indicate villages and towns.

Sometimes we can even distinguish busses and cars on a road. This is mainly possible with well-known cities or curiosities. Other more rural or unknown places will remain a little vague. Yet even then the geological surface of the landscape remains a mighty sight.

A free version of Google Earth can be downloaded at http://earth.google.com/. There is a version for Windows as well as for Macintosh. This site also offers the exact info about the installation and system requirements. During the installation one can choose between DirectX and OpenGL for the graphic dispatch. In our case OpenGL did the job well.

Once installed, Google Earth proves to be very user friendly. On the right side we find the view itself and a navigation bar beneath it. Navigation is easy. Besides going into all directions and zoom in and out, we can also tilt the surface to get a 3D-effect. The combination with3D-building (a layer that can be switched on, see below) can result in quite spectacular and realistic views.
On the left side there are two clearly separated windows. The first one is an oversight of the placemarks that are already added to the landscapes. The can be switched on and off and we can also add our own placemarks. They will be saved as an KML or KMZ-file. These files can be shared with other users. We can also e-mail the images.
The window on the left below shows the layers that can be added. Just switch them on and off, play with it and find out the extra information they have to offer.

Interesting links
A lot of relevant info can be found at the homepage of Google Earth:
http://earth.google.com

Shared information and placemaps can be found at the Google Earth Community:
http://bbs.keyhole.com

Info about interesting and remarkable places:
http://googlesightseeing.com

www.keyhole.com offers information about KMZ-files.