Changing Views

You can change how you view the satellite imagery in Google Earth. Some of the things you can do are include an overview map, change the appearance of the status bar and compass on the image, optionally display latitude and longitude lines, and plan a tour.

Overview map

Google Earth has a small inset overview map that can appear above the satellite image. To launch the overview map, select Overview Map from the View menu. A red indicator square appears above a view of the entire Earth in Mercator projection rather than as a globe. As you zoom in and out, the square indicates the amount of area you are viewing. When the area is too small to represent with a box, it changes to a red indicator cross over the spot you are viewing.

You can make large changes in location by double-clicking on a location within the overview map and the satellite image changes to display the area where you clicked.

Zoom in and out of the satellite image by right-clicking in the overview map and dragging the cursor up or down. Right clicking changes the mouse cursor to an up and down arrow. Drag the cursor up to zoom out; down to zoom in.

Close the overview map by deselecting it from the View menu. You can adjust the size and various features of the overview map in the Google Earth options. This topic is covered in the section “Customizing Google Earth” later in this chapter.

Changing the display

You can cause the compass, which appears to be hovering in the upper-right corner of the satellite image, to appear and disappear. The same is true for the status bar along the bottom of the image. Select and deselect these options from the View menu. When you turn off the compass display, place your mouse cursor over the area where the compass would normally appear to reveal the navigational controls. Moving your mouse away from the compass area causes the compass and navigational controls to disappear once again.

You may want to turn these features on while finding a location, and then later turn them off when viewing your image without these features in the way. Also, if you save the image while the tools are displayed they appear in your saved image. You may want to have features, such as the status bar and compass, appear in your saved image to further describe your image. The same is true for the overview map. When the overview map appears in the display while saving an image, it is saved as part of the satellite image.

You can superimpose latitude and longitude lines over the satellite image. A display of the latitude and longitude are included over some of the lines. As you zoom in and out of the image, the latitude and longitude lines increase and decrease in accuracy resolution. For example, at lower altitudes (zoomed in) the display reads in degrees, minutes, and seconds. Zooming out the display changes to degrees and minutes and finally to just degrees. The Equator, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Arctic Circle, and Antarctic Circle lines are marked in yellow.

A small but visually appealing feature is the display of the atmosphere. When you zoom out so that you are looking at the globe you see that a blue haze, which represents the atmosphere, appears around the Earth. Zooming in and then tilting the image so that you can see the sky shows the sky as blue unless the atmosphere is turned off, in which case it appears black. Turn the atmosphere on and off in the View menu.

Applying layers

Without layers, Google Earth is little more than an interesting view of the Earth from space. Layers are data points of geographic interest. They mark locations such as roads, restaurants, hotels, borders, and more. Google Earth provides a variety of preinstalled layers along with the ability to build your own layers or include layers created by other people. Some of the preinstalled layers include:

• Lodging: Locate hotels, motels, inns and other places to spend the night.

• Roads: See highways, streets, and roads.

• Terrain: See terrain, like mountains and hills in 3-D.

• Dining: Find restaurants.

• Borders: See where all the national, state, and provincial borders are.

• Buildings: See 3-D buildings rendered in the location of the actual buildings.

Select other layers from the Layers panel in the lower-left corner of the Google Earth window by selecting the check box next to the layer name. In the Layers panel is a list of folders designated by a folder icon. You can select the folder by selecting the check box next to it, automatically selecting all the layers within the folder, or open the folder and select individual information types. For example, the Roads folder contains detailed road maps for the U.S. and additional road maps for much of Europe and Canada.

Most importantly, the Google Earth layers include Points of Interest or POIs. For example, the Travel and Tourism folder has a layer called Tourist Spots. Selecting this layer places little camera icons in all the locations where there are tourist POIs. Clicking on the camera icon pops up a bubble that tells you the name of the location, provides a link to more information, and also helps you plot driving directions to and from the location.

Select one or many layers. You may find that selecting too many layers crowds your display with icons and makes viewing of the satellite imagery difficult.