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Google Earth + sectional overlay

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Google Earth + sectional overlay

You all may be familiar with Google Earth, the free mapping application that allows you to do a variety of fun stuff. Last time I overlayed my GPS track from a morning of skiing onto a Google Earth 3D representation of Slide Mountain, NV. This time I was able to overlay a sectional chart onto the virtual relief of the Lake Tahoe area:

Image

It's pretty easy.

First, open Google Earth(it's a program that you have to download and install, http://earth.google.com)

Second, in Google Earth, right mouse click on the "My Places" link in the Places pane on the left menu. Hover over "Add>" and select "Network Link". Copy/Paste this URL into the link field. Provide an arbitrary name in the Name field. I chose the random name "Sectionals." Click OK to add the link.

It should take a minute to preload the chart data. Expand the newly added "Sectionals" section, which also has a sub-section titled Sectionals underneath it, and select the ones you want to display. Don't choose too many or they'll bog your connection down while they attempt to load.

On my high-speed connection it took probably 30 seconds before the overlay appeared. You might have to be patient, even more so if you're on dialup. Make sure you've panned the map to the location of the sectional so you can see it appear when it's done loading. If you're zoomed out, the sectional image may look fuzzy, but zooming in, while allowing time for the image to stream the image data in and re-scan, you'll notice the resolution improving. At the bottom of the screen there is a "Streaming |||||| xx%" progress meter.

Then click the Camera Angle and lower your 'camera eye' down closer to the surface of the earth (it's a +/- control on the bottom right. Hover to see the tooltips.) You'll magically see the topographical features of your area push thru the sectional chart to make a 3D chart. It is so cool.

One thing that I like to do is set the Elevation Exaggeration to a factor of 2 or 3 in the Options of Google Earth. It makes the topo features much more noticeable.

Here's another screenshot of the Klamath Falls chart overlayed on the Grants Pass, OR area. I pulled the overlay opacity back just a hair to make it a little bit transparent. Click the image for the large version.

Image
Last edited by Zzz on Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:43 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Zzz offline
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Zane,

That is really cool! I will have to try that.

DEGJR
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That is really neat. Thanks for sharing.
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Zane:

Your link is outdated and no longer works.

If you go drill into FBO Web you can get the newest version plus some other neat things. The sectionals overlay now also has the special use overlay imbedded so you don't have to load both. It also has all kinds of weather imbedded.

Very cool.

375HandH
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H n H, Thanks for the heads up.

This is the new link for sectional overlay maps, I changed it up above too. They renamed the map files to the actuall sectional chart names, much better.

I did some more Google Earth geeking last night:

Skiing on saturday at Mt Hood Meadows, top view:
Image

Oblique view with exaggerated terrain, looking NW:
Image

This is pretty easy to do. I found a cool program called GPSBabel that runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows. You can suck the track data right off your GPS into a kml file, then open that in Google Earth. I will do another How To soon on the topic.

Z
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Zane:

Do you know of anyone doing USGS 7.5' Quad overlays on Google Earth?

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375handh wrote:Zane:

Do you know of anyone doing USGS 7.5' Quad overlays on Google Earth?

375HandH


Not off the top of my head, but I'll keep my eyes peeled.
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Zane:

Here it is, USGS Quad overlays, very cool.

375HandH
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I'm amazed at the resolution google earth can provide.

Image

Google Earth Image



Image

My digital camera image from approx. the same place. (Little more fuel involved to get this shot ;-) )
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Nice, Mark. Now you just need to download your track file and overlay it in 3D! :D
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Zane:

Where do you find the time to learn how to do this stuff?? It would take me all day just to follow the instructions you graciously laid out. Pretty darn neat though.

Joe.
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mtbowhunter wrote:Zane:

Where do you find the time to learn how to do this stuff?? It would take me all day just to follow the instructions you graciously laid out. Pretty darn neat though.

Joe.

Thanks Joe. I have to spend all day at a desk so I have to find a way to do something fun. Glad you got it working!

When i get my 496 I will do a tutorial on downloading track files for overlay on Google Earth (if it can be done, I'm sure it can.)
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I added an updated link to the sectional data. This new one is pretty good, as it has sectionals, terminal area, and airspace in a hierarchical layout.
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