Google Maps vs the Rest
Competition is great for consumers, especially in the world of emerging technology. With graphics processors and memory becoming cheaper and cheaper, more applications that utilize these technologies are being developed.
Last year we saw several new applications that brought 3D imagery of the world to our desktop and several more are in the development stages. The most marketed of these, however not the first, was Google Earth, followed closely by NASA’s open source solution, World Wind.
These applications allowed users to view already available imagery in a way that no other freely available application had done in a three-dimensional view.
Several years ago, Microsoft released a tool to browse satellite imagery. Terraserver, as it was called, made available imagery from a then recent declassification of the United States images by President Bill Clinton. Of course it was really Robert Gates, Director of Central Intelligence, who launched the CIA’s openness program, which led to the declassification.
Since then, digital mapping has become more mainstream in both commercial and consumer products allowing for applications that varied from complex analysis of urbanization to better driving directions.
Sites such as MapBlast, MapQuest, Yahoo!Maps, and Google Maps began offering driving directions to the consumer showing detailed maps of the area. Eventually these services offered local information in addition to the maps, giving you locations of restaurants or retail shops in the vicinity of your destination.
It was not until Google Maps released the satellite data along with their mapping services did the focus shift to more three dimensional mapping. Until this point, satellite imagery was only available to the digital mapping community, the commercialization of which put a whole new perspective on geography.
People began searching their neighborhoods and houses to get an aerial image of their homes rather than searching for a destination. Commercially available products offered more robust features than Google Maps and the newly redeveloped Yahoo!Maps, but many were still much too expensive for the average consumer.
With the open source revolution looming, software engineers were designing programs to enable three-dimensional imaging for the desktop and ultimately the average consumer. When NASA started releasing images from their Mars rover, more people downloaded the software to get an idea of what Mars looks like on their computers rather than on the nightly news.
Although the application was still designed for the more technologically savvy than the average user, that all changed when Google Labs unveiled Google Earth in June of 2005.
Google Earth impressed most users. The “blue marble” image of the Earth from space was enough to wow your senses, but typing a location and zooming to a specific location certainly amazed the masses. I remember the excitement in my office over imagery that had been available for several years, just not the way Google presented it.
Much of North America was available through EarthSat imagery even in high detail. But with Google Earth, a user can research an area and look for landmarks. Websites chronicling interesting locations started popping up, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty, and locations around the globe were all displayed in high detail.
Certain cities also contain three dimensional representations of buildings, giving the user a bird’s eye view of their favorite city. The user can tilt and rotate the perspective allowing them to examine the landscape in an entirely different way.
Ultimately, people realized the full potential of Google Earth and many began developing applications based on the technology. Google Earth will not replace high tech programs like AutoCAD or ESRI’s ArcGIS, but they’re providing a free service to the general population, something never done before.
Developers then used Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to start placing their own points on the maps, identifying areas of interest for their projects. From potential customers to the various geographic locations of family members, personal projects started popping up all over the web.
KML is a derivation of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and is described as “an XML grammar and file format for modeling and storing geographic features such as points, lines, images and polygons for display in the Google Earth Client.”
Not to be outshined by Google, NASA began marketing their product World Wind. Although NASA’s release of World Wind preceded Google’ by more than six months, the impressive marketing of Google made Earth’s release monumental, and NASA realized this fact.
World Wind contains much of the same functionality of Google Earth, including a smooth zoom and place finder. NASA’s 3D engine is very similar to Google’s although the usability of World Wind is not as simple as Earth’s.
Regardless of the features of each browser, the data is the most important aspect of the application. While Google uses primarily one source for their imagery, World Wind has numerous governmental sources, including Land Sat 7, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, a tool that catalogs fires and floods among other data, and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, SRTM, which gives the user a eye level view of the Earth, as well as several other tools.
As with Earth, World Wind is adding a set of tools to aid in development of web services for greater flexibility and analysis. World Wind will be integrating XML in upcoming releases to give the developers the necessary tools.
Other products currently in development are Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, which is showing great promise, Motherplanet, Inc’s Earth Explorer, and Earth Systems Research Institute’s ArcGIS Explorer, although the latter is a consumer product from the commercial leader in geographic information systems (GIS) products.
ArcGIS Explorer will not be available publicly until the second quarter of this year, but it is already showing some promise. Developed essentially for the GIS community, the developer tools associated with it are more advanced than the tools available for Google Maps or Google Earth.
Appearing late in the game, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, still in Beta, has some interesting features that may compete with Google Earth and World Wind. Utilizing NAVTEQ technology and USGS images, users can view road maps, aerial maps, and a bird’s eye view of available locations.
What may give an edge to Virtual Earth users is that there is no need for an external application, allowing for viewing within the user’s web browser. Lately the load time of Google Earth has plagued many users, and Virtual Earth may prove to be a viable alternative.
Virtual Earth has many of the same features as the other software, adding pushpins, directions and various viewpoints, although it lacks the scrolling that many Google Earth users drool over. Virtual Earth is still in Beta so these features could be included in future releases.
With the cost of storage decreasing and more powerful graphics cards being integrated into consumer computers, many companies interested in mapping solutions will be adding three-dimensional mapping to their products.
It is, however, unlikely that companies will be able to move in on the market that Google Earth already owns. The addition of advertisements to Earth, however, may be the only thing that can damage earth right now. Google, being the advertising giant that they are, has indicated that the free version could include targeted ads, giving the open source World Wind the opportunity it needs to take over the market.
Regardless of the provider, satellite imagery of our planet is a service that many consumers desire. Whether for directions, business, or general interest, looking at the Earth from a bird’s eye view is a technology that will continue to shape the way we access geographical information for years to come.
Source : ShortFlip.com
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