Virtual Worlds

For my Virtual Worlds blog this week, I would like to do a discussion on Google Earth Pro. This was the program that I did my work for project 2 on and I have to admit that it is an amazing piece of software. My project was supposed to be on golf courses of the reno area, but I encountered some technical difficulites and lost my work on one of the computers. With all that aside, this was the progress I achieved before I lost the info. My project was based on a common starting point that both locals and tourists would be able to identify; the Reno/Tahoe international airport. I had designed "least resistance" routes based partially on google's recommendation, and my general local knowledge of streets in Reno. These routes were then highlighted in a light purple to produce a distinctive figure/ground relationship and not be overly distracting. Next, I created manual fly-by's for each route (11 total) and labled intersections that were junctions in the routes. This produced "mapquest" like directions right on the map for the viewer to put a name with the surrounding area as they took the virtual drive from the airport to their golf course of choice. In order to keep the street visible as well as the surrounding area for landmarks and reference points, I used 300 ft elevation with a 50 degree angle. This provided enough of both to be able to point out distinctive features that one could recognize from both a real drive and the tour. When I showed people this tour, they were very impressed with my ability to use this program, but in reality I was impressed at how amazingly easy it was to use. Most things are very straight forward for the beginning user and once you become a little more familiar with it, some very amazing products can be created. So, my hat is off to Google for producing such a program and I can't wait for Higher-resolution immagery to come out so that even more things can be done. I know you can download your own remote sensing photos, but it would be nice to have them already in the database for use by all.