The Good news: It’s out.
The Bad news: its HUGE!

Six months after Google released their amazing Google Earth plugin for Windows, they have now released the Mac version.

The plugin, for the non-geeks, is a small piece of software that enables your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc) to show 3D Google Earth images in a normal 2D website.

In short: Full Google Earth use, without Google Earth having to download and install Google Earth.

There is no way to describe the coolness though – you have to experience it for yourself.
Simply click on the earth button on one of our enabled maps and follow the instructions to install the plugin. Try this map of the Richtersveld World Heritage Site.

The bad news is that while the Windows plugin is about 500 KB the Mac plugin is 47 MB !!!!

That is bigger than the stand-alone Google Earth application and really bad news for South African users who always struggle with bandwidth costs and limitations.

Anyway, it’s a first step.

I’m sure our friends at Google Earth will bring the size down in the coming months, because a 47MB plugin does not really lower the barrier of entry to 3D virtual globes – now does it?

Update:

First experience

After posting above, I’ve spent a few minutes downloading, installing and testing the plugin.

There is some more bad news though. It does not seem to work!

Not even close!

It might be because our maps are at the top-end of complexity, but the Windows plugin (the small one) does work with our maps (with some minor issues).

I’ll keep on testing and get back to you, but at this (very) early stage: it’s a HUGE plugin that doesn’t work.

Anyone else with better luck – let me know….

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The new Google Earth plug-in allows you to view 3D Google Earth imagery in your browser.

It’s the most impressive and most important geo-immersive imaging development of the year and we’ve been able to make it work with the Virtual Africa interactive 360 degree images.

Let me translate that for those who don’t know what a plug-in is: There is a new piece of software that allows you to see 3-dimensional Google satellite maps on a website without even having to download Google Earth and it’s the coolest thing you’ll see all year.

Now that everyone knows what we’re talking about, a few notes about the plug-in:

• Surely the most important feature is that it works seamlessly with current Google Maps files. As you will see in this example, you simply click on “Earth”, install the plug-in and go for it.

• We’ve picked up one or two re-positioning glitched when we embed some of the Virtual Africa interactive pictures, but this is an irregular use and even these are solvable if you have enough time.

• Unfortunately the plug-in is currently only available for Windows-based machines – which is bad news for Mac users like myself. The good news is that it works without problem on Parallels and Boot Camp as you would expect.

After playing with this plug-in for the last few weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is one of the most important developments in both mapping, visualization and search in a long time.

It lowers the barrier of entry to one of the best positioned geographical displays available and will have a huge effect on the popularity and use of Google Earth.

The fact that you won’t have to open the application, will make a bigger impact than people might think.

When you find this post in a dozen months or so from now and it seems obvious that everyone from real estate companies, educational and tourism organization is embedding this into their websites – well, we told you so……..

Have a look at the map we created for our previous post about Bazaruto Archipelago to see the coolness for yourself.

The map of the Hemel-en-Aarde wine valley we created for Die Burger works just as well and you can view it here.

We’re very interested to hear your comments on this ………

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South African Tourism Google Earth layer has gone live.

The layer has been publicly available for just over a month, but now it has been included into the Google Earth Core Database.

For the uninitiated, this means that the content of the layer is available to all Google Earth users. All 300 million of them!

They now simply need to go to the ‘layer section’ (bottom left in Google Earth), navigate to the Gallery and select the South Africa Tourism layer under ‘Travel and Tourism’.

This will allow them to explore South Africa like never before. They can view the 2010 Soccer World Cup Stadiums, have a look at the different Adventure activities on offer and peruse the diverse Safari options available in our beautiful country.

To us, the best feature of all, is obviously the fact the the layer includes 100 scenic virtual tours of the most important tourism destinations in South Africa – virtual tours we made. (Yes Mom, Google likes our pictures too.)

Through the use of 360 degree panoramic photography, virtual explorers will now be able to stand on top of Table Mountain, look down Kimberley’s Big Hole and step inside a hide at Mapungubwe to see the elephants bathing.

We hope they will.

We also hope that the images will give them an idea of the beauty and diversity of this country we love so much and that it will encourage them to come visit sooner than later.

At Virtual Africa, we’re in the ‘vision’ business in more ways than one – and although the inclusion of our work in this layer is only a small part of our ultimate vision – being in Google Earth’s Core, is a big step in the right direction.

Today, for these few dreamers, South Africa is truly alive with possibility……

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Virtual Africa Tours included in new SA Tourism Google Earth layer

About the South African Google Earth layer:

The layer was created by the team at Quirk, under the watchful eye of Tim Shier.

They did a great job with the layout and styling of the placemarks and they’ve already picked up some great reviews – the layer isn’t even in the Google Earth Primary Database yet!

We’re obviously very happy to see our virtual tours given such a prominent place and it would be very interesting to keep an eye on the hit statistics in the next few months

It’s enough to make you feel all warm and fuzzy about being a South African.

To read more about the layer – head over to GottaQuirk .

You can download the layer here. (you need to have Google Earth installed to view the file – get it here)

About the virtual tours:

We shot and processed about 60 000 individual pictures in 7 months. Stitched them all into 5000 panoramic images, chose the best 2500 and dropped them into 100 location based virtual tours.

You can enjoy virtual tours of places like Robben Island , the Sterkfontein Caves and Soweto; you can visit the West Coast, check out Namaqualand in the flower season or head over to the Drakensberg – all with the click of a button.

Creating the virtual tours was a lot of work – but we’re really proud of the end result and we hope it can be used to show the world the beauty and diversity that is South Africa.

Virtual Tours on steroids – the next level

Now, if you think that’s cool – you’d be right, it is……

but we’ve been working on the next level of virtual tour integration on our side.

Have a look at our map-in-progress – we’re busy geo-location each of the individual panoramic pictures and dropping them onto Google Maps.

It’s a work in progress, so we would appreciate your comments and suggestions.

Enjoy!

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