concept3D Blog

Google Earth has provided a new group of developers with the opportunity to build virtual ‘geowebsites’ specific to vertical markets. “Armageddon Pills”, a travel book by John Higham, combines this power of Google Earth and a printed book to illustrate the tale of one family’s journey around the globe in 52 weeks.

The focal point of “Armageddon Pills” is its onscreen and balloon navigation systems. After creating numerous kml files, clients shared that they would like to have a browser look and feel while in Google Earth. The result was an attempt to simplify the Google Earth experience for a broader audience.

When opening the file, you will find a main menu, or in this case the table of contents, of onscreen buttons. This menu is broken down into chapter groupings that contain submenus of icons related to the book. This allows the reader to find ‘where they are’ in the book, and gives them the ability to ‘read’ the kml from start to finish. Each balloon along the traveled path offers an interesting snippet and sometimes a photo or video associated with their locations. Navigation arrows were added to each balloon to allow the information to be chronologically documented and experienced by the end user, and a “home” button to get back to the main menu. Additionally, there are “menu” placemarks scattered around the globe that will help you find the main menu if you are lost in space.

We rely on feature anchors for navigating between balloons and a very high altitude (12680000 meters) to create the effect of a menu. You can download our full KML here.

One thing we constantly ask ourselves at concept3D is; who cares about the geoweb besides Google and Microsoft? As a start-up, we don’t have billions to spend on creating and buying new applications opportunistically…we have to think about revenue and cash flow (short and long term). As a result, we look at and pursue markets that we believe would benefit by leveraging geo-referenced 3-D (and other) content. What we’ve found is that identifying these markets is done through evangelism and working with early adopters in location-based businesses/vertical markets. Besides the obvious real estate development opportunities, we’ve been working on projects (large and small) in the tourism space, travel business, large event marketers, and others. The activity continues to grow as more people realize the value of an open geoweb world - where KML meets 3-D content which then meets the web (i.e. Google Earth/Maps meets SketchUp/Picasa which then meets Flash or other rich media format). It’s easy to draw a parallel between early web development and the geoweb - the primary difference is that the development environment is much broader, and more open with greater tools, resources and opportunities.

So, we’ve found that there are many who care about the geoweb as a commercial medium outside of those creating the platforms with which we work. These clients are pursuing the geoweb because they believe in its key components - better visualization, improved search/eyeballs, and an immersive customer experience.

Check out our latest travel book KML project, Armageddon Pills, or read about it on the Google Earth Blog.

When presenting in Google Earth, exporting a video fly-through, or when you just want a cleaner look, it is helpful to know some tips and how to set options for the best presentation. Here are some basic tips for setting up a KML Google Earth file to be used as a presentation. (The file extensions for Google earth are KMZ & KML)

Toolbars, Windows, and Options

• Turn off the Tool Bar, Compass, Time, Navigation, Grid, Overview Map, and Scale Legend
  • These are turned on/off in the View menu
• Leave the Status Bar and Atmosphere on, as the status bar gives a good indication of loading times for imagery, and the atmosphere gives Google earth a more realistic look(when off the sky appears black like it’s nighttime).
• The navigation toolbar can take up valuable screen space and distract attention from the presentation.
• All navigation can be performed with a mouse (it’s difficult to use the touchpad on notebooks)
  • Click and hold the middle mouse button then drag the mouse = Rotate view
  • Click and hold the left mouse button then drag = Pan
  • Scroll the middle mouse button = Zoom
  • Click and hold the right mouse button then drag = Smooth Zoom
• Set tour speed to .2500 and set tour pause to 0.0, this can be changed slightly but is a good starting point for smooth transitions between tour place marks.
  • (Tools/Options/Touring
• You may want to make sure your sidebar is showing.
  • (View/Sidebar)

Sidebar

Your sidebar consists of three main sections; Search, Places, and Layers

Search

Click on the title bar to minimize the window. In most cases you will not need it unless searching for known areas or existing places. This can always be maximized by clicking on the Search title bar again.

Places

This is where you will turn options on and off. These options are what makes a saved .kmz unique and allows you to interface with the options you are presenting. Think of the structure as being similar to Windows Explorer which uses a window/file tree for organization. Each option can be turned on/off with the folder. If there is a + sign, the folder has more content within. The content within can be turned on/off individually.

Layers

Only check Terrain & 3-D Buildings, then click the Layers title bar to minimize the window.
**Other options can be checked if necessary to your presentation but the most common and necessary layers are terrain and 3-D Buildings.

Tours

Saved KMZ Files can have a set tour that uses the place marks to travel from one location to another in a movie style fashion. The tour directly relates to the tour speed mentioned above, so for best performance it is good to start with the above suggestion and change the speed value to what is desired. When the tour is ready it can be viewed by highlighting the tour folder and pressing the play button. (bottom right corner of Places window) (with the pro version of Google Earth a user can export a video of the tour however speed in the video can appear slightly different than the live tour)

A few Google Earth performance tips

• A faster Internet connection is always best, as the 3D content is streamed to your PC over the Internet through Google Earth.
• When opening a file or rotating in an area with many buildings, white Buildings are common as textures may have to load or re-load on occasion
• You can keep track of loading times by checking the status bar at the bottom center of the screen.
• Try to start-up the file and let it load completely before showing, or rotate in 180 degrees as it loads- this can help allow the textures to pre-load.
• Make sure your Cache is set to default: Tools/Options/Cache/reset to default

** When you first open a saved KMZ the file will zoom to a saved location an may look like it is underground. This is because content has loaded before the terrain (elevation) information. Just double click on the main folder (Places Menu) once or twice to bring the view back to its default starting location.

For more information on customizing Google Earth, please see the Google Earth User Guide.

Google Earth is being adopted rapidly by many different fields, but increasingly it has focused on the general population who use it as another browsing application. Many new features have popped up recently to support user driven content, mash-ups, KML and 3D models. The casual user can now go beyond just picking out their house on the map and now use Google Earth to perform some of the functions typically associated with a normal web browser, like getting directions or reading reviews of local restaurants.

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There’s a reason that more buildings are not yet phototextured in Google Earth – it’s a ton of work. Microsoft has uploaded a significant number of phototextured buildings in its Live Earth, but many of them are done using aerial photography and other automated methods, and the quality difference is obvious. The InsideGoogle blog has posted on this before, noting that often the Virtual Earth buildings are darker, with a ‘melted wax’ look. To get highly realistic models for a virtual world, much of the modeling has to be done manually.

The City of Denver in Microsoft Virtual Earth Vs Google Earth (From InsideGoogle)

Virtual Earth

Google Earth

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We’re seeking a web developer for a range of new web projects. A diverse set of skills are preferred, including: Flash, AJAX, Javascript, HTML, ASP.NET, Web services, Photoshop/Graphics creation (in no particular order). This is a contract to full-time opportunity. Normal full-time work hours are kept at our San Francisco city office. The ideal candidate should be comfortable working in a small team and learning/integrating web 2.0 technologies. The candidate should have a minimum of 5 years web development experience, with examples and work references.

All open positions are listed here.

concept3D is proud to be honored as one of only 40 companies from across Colorado to represent the state’s most innovative technology at the CSIA DEMOgala 2007 on October 11, 2007.

From a working 6-axis hexapod robot and fascinating software innovations to a simulated chemical spill and advancements throughout the technology spectrum, the 3rd Annual CSIA DEMOgala, will be an immersive, sensory experience bringing Colorado’s leaders together for a night of technology demonstrations, innovations and celebration.

CSIA is Colorado’s Technology Association. With more than 700 technology companies involved, CSIA is the premier IT association in the state. Our mission is to foster innovation and a positive growth environment enabling the Colorado technology industry to compete on a global basis. We provide professional development, advocacy, industry reports, peer-to-peer connections, best practices and business opportunities for a wide-spectrum of technology companies. CSIA’s activities are funded solely by members and sponsors, and any company is invited to join the organization. For more information, visit http://www.csiaonline.com.

We welcome you to join us and the other selected DEMOgala Innovation Showcase companies at Colorado’s largest technology event. We are proud to have the opportunity to bolster the technology industry through our participation in this great event, and hope you will attend to do the same. For full details, including a list of all DEMOgala Innovation Showcase companies and information about tickets, please visit CSIA’s website at http://www.csiaonline.com.

In this posting we’ll show you how to mashup buildings into a KML layer for use in Google Earth & Google Maps.

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concept3D is hiring!

We’ve got some great projects coming up in the next few months and are looking for some new folks to work with us as modelers and photographers. This is not a boulder-based job - we are taking applicants from anywhere in the world, so if you’re interested, please visit our Jobs page and see if your skills fit the requirements.

More information can be found here.

A term we throw around in the concept3D office a lot is BPM - so often in fact that we forget that most people don’t recognize the acronym. BPM stands for Building Product Manufacturer. To date, the majority of the product modeling we have done is for McGraw Hill and the Sweets Catalog. The Sweets Network, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, publishes the Sweets Catalog, the largest catalogue collection of BPM products. When an architect or designer is looking to source a component for a building (Sink, Window, Door, Flooring, etc), he/she will most likely look to Sweets as a main point of reference.

Until this year, Sweets was 2D based, offering product schematics in its paper publication and website. Sweets decided last year that it was time to bring the catalog into the next dimension. Since then, we have set out to work with thousands of manufacturing companies to convert the tens of thousands of products to 3D. Google has played a huge role along the way, creating and hosting a special corner of the 3D warehouse dedicated to 3D building products.

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