Virtual traveling real search

It wouldn't be that long from now, when one would be able to travel into New York city in a 3D racing game with spatial data consisting of real people (on the street).

Volkswagen and Google is already teaming up to produce such system where where a nagivation system based on Google's technology would enable drivers of bird view of the road ahead. This is of course fun and cool.

The idea of virtual traveling has motivated by many evangelists and other technologist for long. But none is quite successful because one would have to come up with a good GIS system which can represent actual maps in 3D.

Only those with priviledge technology can afford to venture into such game. Particularly, those with satelite mapping technology.

Satelite Mapping Technology
Conventionally, GIS was developed based on data collected from the real world. In the high end, we would be able to anticipate GIS system which uses light as the plotting device where a plane would fly over a lanscape radiating lights which would be reflected back to the plane. This light is not common light. 9 Dimensional(3D, color and etc) data would be collected and used to create 3D view of a landscape. However, such practice is expensive because the cost of flying an aircraft coupled with the need for database update is tremendous.

Then came those with satelite-scanning capability which uses it to create GIS for the application of car tracking system.

Google Earth then made its debut and everybody was like WOW...

Potential:
However, Google Earth is not opening up its API for public. End-users get to be evangelists and marketing agents for them by using the free version. As the matter of fact, the system (full) is reserved for commercial usage.

This is terrific method of marketing software or solution. There is no other way than collecting end-users and marketing agents or ambassadors. Behold the word of mouth, it is even better than blogelist (blogger evangelist).

If there API would be made open source, many virtual applications would be unearthed. For instance, virtual tourism, virtual property and etc.

Last but not least, those with priviledge access to great technology win. otherwise, one would just need to create a GIS from scratch based on object technology - who cares to update and maintain it ?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hmmmm what kind of API you are hoping for Google Earth?

Google Earth uses KML (Keyhole Markup Language) a file format for modeling and storing geographic features such as points, lines, images and polygons for display in the Google Earth Client. KML gives you the ability to do amazing things with Google Earth.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/entrance.php/

A community of people adding and hacking Google Earth.
Brandon Teoh said…
I wanted to be able to create another application based on Google's Earth database.

If they open up the API, anyone should be able to do that. But it is very unlikely because that would be too cheap for them.

Great information... how do you use the KML with Google Earth Client ?
Anonymous said…
Oh I see,.. something like the Google Maps API. I don't think Google will do something like that tho, beside they already open up Google Maps.

KML is actually a XML type file that you can specify coordinates and plot points, draw lines, polygons and stuff on to of the maps on Google Earth.

http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_tut.html

KML tutorial ;) I'm just trying out Google Earth on Mac so not really an "Expert" on the subject, just thought I share some info with your readers ;)

http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_tut.html

KML tutorial ;) I'm just trying out Google Earth on Mac so not really an "Expert" on the subject, just thought I share some info with your readers ;)
Brandon Teoh said…
ooi... thanks man.
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