Friday, March 27, 2009

Snapshot View Captures Historical Data

I made an interesting discovery last week of how to snapshot a view of historical imagery. Select the clock icon on the button bar in Google Earth then open this placemark:


It shows the rainforest as it was in 1975. Turn the clock off to see what it is today.

To do this for yourself:
1 - turn on historical data (the clock icon)
2 - Find a view in Google Earth that is of interest to you. Using the historical data slider in the top left of the screen, choose a time.
3 - Create a placemark, give it a sensible name and click OK
4 - right click the placemark in the main screen and select 'Snapshot View'. The view angle/distance/direction you are looking at will be captured as will the time of the historical view you are currently viewing.
5 - right click the placemark again and select 'save place as'. Save it somewhere.

If someone else turns on historical data and then opens your saved placemark they will be flown to your view and the correct time will be chosen.

Neat!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You don't have to select the clock first. You can just turn on historical imagery after you load the imagery and the right image will appear for that placemark. If some other time-keyed placemark is selected, or you change the time slider, you can come back to the time for the placemark by double-clicking the placemark.

Rich Treves said...

Frank,

re selecting the clock first, yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be the way around I proposed.

re double clicking the placemark and moving to that time, I'd spotted that feature but in advising people to do that I thought a time tour would probably be better for most applications.

Thanks for the comment

Rich