Week 12 - Google Earth

This week in GIS3013 we created maps using Google Earth... or more specifically, created tours using Google Earth.  Data was added from ArcMap by converting our dot map density maps and associated data (from Module 10) to KMZ files.  Afterwards we created a video tour of various urban areas in southern Florida.

A typical street scene of downtown Tampa, as depicted by Google Earth.

Some thoughts...

The main objective with this lab was to familiarize ourselves with Google Earth, and become comfortable adding information generated in ArcMap to the Google Earth program. Converting the maps and individual shapefiles was easy enough, although the difference in output within Google Earth was striking. I found it interesting that there are more options to manipulate the data when it's been converted to KML as an individual layer as opposed to having been imported as group of layers associated with a map.

My biggest struggle with this lab was with the video tour... I mean, that should have been so easy, I'm almost ashamed of how difficult I found it to be! I did my best to keep the view going smoothly - not too fast, not many sudden movements - but that turned out to be for naught when nothing played back the way I thought it would.  During all my video takes I had turned off the southern Florida dot density data (reused from Module 10) during the zoom in to downtown Miami, which was the first stop on our list.  However you'd never know it because that data either wouldn't show up at all during subsequent playbacks, or it would stay turned on the entire time.  What gives?

Another minor snafu was with the importation of the dot density data from Module 10... I had suppressed the mini-dramas involving the dot density mask and so it took a while to figure out why those dots weren't showing up the way I had remembered them.  Plus the legend or the labels wouldn't import either, as they had been converted to graphics/annotation.  Since we had an example dot map included with this lab I used that, but I believe that I could have gotten around my issues by importing the mask as an individual shapefile... and also by completely re-doing the legend and labels on my original map.

Overall I do feel more comfortable adding data to Google Earth and using it generally.  It is an internet needy program though - on my slower connection all the downtown scenes looked like warped views of Gotham city, with small items eventually popping up like bugs once the graphics were loaded... which was kind of neat to me, but probably not in the way the designers intended.  To compensate for this I tried to steer my video tour well clear of too many 'detail' views!