Google Earth, Haiti, and my computer

M

mm

I hope you can help me.

I installed Google Earth, bought a "new" (to me) video card to make it
work, and I still can't go closer than 3200 feet or more and still
have the picture in focus. I can get much closer than that with
maps.google.com . At least I think so. I checked again and I'm not
sure. Has anyone else had this?

I have winXP SP3, with 1 gig memory, 800 MHz, and an ATI Radeon 7000
series video card with 64 megs of memory.

A) Don't they use the same photographs?

B) I'm not trying to do anything fancy, just zoom closer.

C) Someone on the tv said the damage was so great in Haiti, one could
see it with Google Earth. Weren't the pictures taken months or
years ago?

D) I don't think so but maybe she said you could see evidence of the
fault line, but like I say, I can't focus well. With
maps.google.com everything is clear even at the closest zoom, when the
runway at the Port-au-Prince airport is 1 inch wide on a 17" monitor

Is there something wrong with my computer set-up?

Thanks.
 
R

R. McCarty

Google Earth is not a real time ( or recent ) satellite image. The view
of Port-au-Prince is dated March 4, 2008. On most images you can
have a useable view down to around 1,000 feet. ( Eye Alt shown in
the lower right corner of the app ). There are a few news sites that do
have "Before & After" satellite views of the affected areas.
If the 800 Mhz is your CPU Clock speed you likely do not have the
necessary processing power to render the Google Earth images in the
highest detail. The app itself has some settings for detail but I doubt
they would improve the view you now have.
 
A

Andrew McLaren

In addition to R. McCarty's good advice ... Google Maps is sending you
pre-formatted pictures of the data. So if you come down too low, you get
the "We're sorry, we don't have have imagery at this zoom level for this
region" message tiled across the page. They don't have any pictures
ready to send, at that high resolution. Google Earth, on the other hand,
is rendering the raw ground data into images, right on your local
machine. The results may end up blurred if you zoom too low, but you can
go all the way down to 2 metres.

Using Google earth on my machine, I can zoom down to about 50 metres
over Port au Prince, before it gets blurry. That's the same as the
lowest zoom level I get on Google Maps. I have a pretty standard
graphics card (GeForce 7000 series, 512MB) although it's probably a bit
more powerful than the one you're using.

Google Earth has options to adjust the quality of the rendering. Go to
the Tools menu, Options, to see the choices. For best results, choose:
- True Colour (32 bit)
- Anisotropic Filtering: High
- Graphics Mode: DirectX
- Terrain quality: Highest

This may make it quite slow to draw the images, but the quality will be
the highest you can get.

But as R McCarty says, the latest satellite photos of Haiti are from
March 2008, so you won't see any current conditions. However you can
identify locations, if you're looking for some particular place.

I hope you don't have friends or family caught in Port-au-Prince; my
sincere best wishes, if you do.

Hope it helps,

Andrew
 
M

mm

Thank you both.

As to my rather slow processor, I thought that just meant that it
would take an extra 2 or 3 seconds to show the picture, but that it
would be the same. The picture does get better after about a second.
In addition to R. McCarty's good advice ... Google Maps is sending you
pre-formatted pictures of the data. So if you come down too low, you get
the "We're sorry, we don't have have imagery at this zoom level for this
region" message tiled across the page. They don't have any pictures
ready to send, at that high resolution. Google Earth, on the other hand,
is rendering the raw ground data into images, right on your local
machine. The results may end up blurred if you zoom too low, but you can
go all the way down to 2 metres.

Using Google earth on my machine, I can zoom down to about 50 metres
over Port au Prince, before it gets blurry. That's the same as the
lowest zoom level I get on Google Maps. I have a pretty standard
graphics card (GeForce 7000 series, 512MB) although it's probably a bit
more powerful than the one you're using.

Google Earth has options to adjust the quality of the rendering. Go to
the Tools menu, Options, to see the choices. For best results, choose:
- True Colour (32 bit)
- Anisotropic Filtering: High
- Graphics Mode: DirectX
- Terrain quality: Highest

I will try these.
This may make it quite slow to draw the images, but the quality will be
the highest you can get.

I'll probably only use them when I want to see something in
particular.
But as R McCarty says, the latest satellite photos of Haiti are from
March 2008, so you won't see any current conditions. However you can
identify locations, if you're looking for some particular place.

That's what I figured. I don't know what that woman interviewed on
the news was talking about.
I hope you don't have friends or family caught in Port-au-Prince; my
sincere best wishes, if you do.

No. Thank you. In a way I was embarrassedd to mention Haiti in the
post, because my interest is only that of one who's interested in the
events of the day. I had this question even before the earthquake
there. Yet it was that woman on the news who gave a standard I wasn't
finding.

My heart aches for those people.

I heard that it's directly affected (damaged the homes of?) 2 milllion
of the 9 million people in Haiti.
Hope it helps,

I'm sure it will. Thanks.
 
L

Lem

mm said:
Thank you both.

As to my rather slow processor, I thought that just meant that it
would take an extra 2 or 3 seconds to show the picture, but that it
would be the same. The picture does get better after about a second.


I will try these.


I'll probably only use them when I want to see something in
particular.

That's what I figured. I don't know what that woman interviewed on
the news was talking about.


No. Thank you. In a way I was embarrassedd to mention Haiti in the
post, because my interest is only that of one who's interested in the
events of the day. I had this question even before the earthquake
there. Yet it was that woman on the news who gave a standard I wasn't
finding.

My heart aches for those people.

I heard that it's directly affected (damaged the homes of?) 2 milllion
of the 9 million people in Haiti.


I'm sure it will. Thanks.

Although the Google Earth imagery date is March 4, 2008, some
post-earthquake photos have already been uploaded to Google Earth
(Panoramio). For example
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31040481
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31048665
 
M

mm

Thank you both.

As to my rather slow processor, I thought that just meant that it
would take an extra 2 or 3 seconds to show the picture, but that it
would be the same. The picture does get better after about a second.

What I meant is, it gets better but not good enough, good as I think
it shoudl be. Sorry.
 
A

Andrew McLaren

Google has just updated the images of Haiti on Google Earth. They now
show satellite images taken around 17 January 2010.

The devastation around Port au Prince is easy to see, and pretty
horrific. A quick look should convince us all to redouble our prayers
and donations for this terrible tragedy.
 

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