Google Earth 6

I’ve just been paying with some of the new features of Google Earth 6 – Well, it is a Friday afternoon.

The latest incarnation of the Google Earth application has a few interesting features that I hadn’t seen before, although I’m sure some of them were available in earlier versions.

First up there’s 3D trees! Google has ‘planted’ these in areas where trees appear in real life and the update includes highly detailed models for dozens of different species of trees. So far they’ve added 80 million trees in Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo.

Street View is now integrated with the app and there is now a historical imagery feature which makes it easier to know what dates are stored for the area you are visiting. This feature was in Google Earth 5 but I’d never seen it before. It allows you to visually go back in time to see areas of the world as they were in the past. Clever stuff!

When you are looking at an area where historical imagery is available an icon will say what the oldest time period for that area is. Click on the date and users are instantly taken back in time to view imagery from that era. Here’s Westminster in 1945, Sept 1999 and  Dec. 2006

There isn’t any historical data for this neck of the woods yet, but it’ll be good to se how the sandbanks in the estuary change over time as they always look nice on aerial photos.

1 Response

  1. Avatar forComment Author Alison says:

    If you’re looking at historical photos for Ynyslas in 1945, you’ll be greeted with an army camp.

    (My dad is a native of Borth, plus his ancestors).

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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