Google open sources Gears

Google has open sourced it's web plugin Gears under a modified BSD license. Normally I wouldn't comment on something like this because it seems unrelated to what I'm doing with EarthBrowser. However I believe that it could be very important to the future direction of EarthBrowser. A web plugin that supports all major browsers on all major platforms is a *very* large project, one I would never attempt myself. I am kind of in shock that Google would make it so easy for others to make web plugins by giving this away under such a permissive license.

A really long time ago, way back when in the days of Netscape before Internet Explorer even came around, I had a version of EarthBrowser working as a web plugin. It had too many problems with memory limits on the old MacOS 7 and 8 so I canned the project and went with a desktop app. So now there is an open source web plugin code base that I can use to port my OpenGL version of EarthBrowser right into a website. I probably won't tackle that particular project until next year, but it is good to know that it is now possible.

I am very impressed with the release of this code, this is such a different way of doing business. I don't see any benefit for them in doing this, but there isn't any harm either. Way to share knowledge Google!

EarthBrowser is Adobe site of the day, Google talk

I don't have the marketing megaphone that a Google has but EarthBrowser is starting to get a little attention in the Flash world. I was just notified today that earthbrowser.com was selected as the Flash site of the day. There was also a nice article recently on RIApedia.com titled EarthBrowser - 3D AIR App in Flash.

Google, via Michael Weiss-Malik, has invited me to come down and deliver a presentation about EarthBrowser, KML and whatever else I want to talk about. I guess it will be something like the Google Tech Talks where they make a YouTube video of the presentation. I've been consolidating things on version 3 for the past month so I haven't set a date yet but I'm pretty sure it will be mid July if that is available for them. Hopefully those guys aren't too miffed about my KML criticisms, or my out of date Google Earth criticisms. Perhaps I should bring a rotten tomato shield.

I've got a little project I'm hoping to unveil at or before the talk, but I'll leave everyone in suspense about what that could be...

EarthBrowser 3.0, 5 days in

Version 3 is doing very well over the past 5 days. It's selling better than I'd hoped for, the django based system I am using for the main website and for the separate data server have held up incredibly well with just a few hiccups. Amazon S3 really helps me to take the load off of my servers. I've got a handle on the tech support emails over the weekend, there are still a lot left however. I try to answer each and every person with a question or problem with a personal message. I think that kind of respect and care for each customer has really helped the business over the years. My goal is to have no unhappy customers, if I can't fix your problem or you are still not satisfied, you get a refund, it's pretty simple.

Thanks for the mention James, Mickey, Lxnyce and Bull.

Some people are wondering why would they should support EarthBrowser as shareware when they can get Google Earth, Microsoft's Virtual Earth and NASA WorldWind for free. Well you get EarthBrowser for free too, you are just reminded to help support the future development of the shareware if you like it enough to use it. Google Earth is great but it isn't your computer's operating system, you CAN use more than one virtual globe at the same time.

EarthBrowser may not have 2 inch resolution datasets, but the weather layers really blow away anything the other globes offer, in fact the weather forecast layers blow away most of what I've seen from the major weather providers offer. I'm talking with CustomWeather to see if we can do some sort of exchange of data for perhaps exclusive use of EarthBrowser on their website. I think that would really make them stand out from their competitors.

KML is great! New datasets are being added to EarthBrowser all the time, if you only know where to find them. Today I noticed from one of my favorite blogs Frank Taylor's Google Earth Blog that there is a new dataset available from NASA showing the total electron count in the earth's ionosphere. I like it so much I think I'll add it to the Featured Datasets in EarthBrowser. The red areas indicate a large concentration of electrons which may cause problems with communications. It is neat to see that the electrons build up on the daytime side of the earth and disperse shortly after darknes.



If you want to see the animated link of the ionosphere for the past 24 hours in EarthBrowser just drag this link onto the EarthBrowser window. Or if you are reading this blog with EarthBrowser's embedded web-browser, just click on the link. There is also a light weight version of this file that just shows the current condition.

EarthBrowser 3.0

EarthBrowser 3.0

Finally, it's out. Thank you to all of my wonderful supporters!!!

I transferred over the domain name to the development server and within about 20 minutes VersionTracker picked it up and I'm getting sales already.

Steve Wozniak was the 11th person to register version 3. He's been great to me and has bought several site licenses for schools. Maybe someday I'll be able to talk with the guy...

I have to give a tip of my hat to the Papervision 3D guys. They were my initial inspiration for the flash version, and although I wound up writing my own specialized rendering code, they deserve a lot of credit for what they have done! I'll go into details about how I did some things in flash in future posts, it has never been easy or fast to do software rendering. I'll also talk about some of my plans for the future.

Right now I'm sipping on a Paulaner Salvator Dopple Bock and basking in the euphoria of 4.5 years of hard work coming to fruition.

EarthBrowser 3.0 goes live tomorrow

Hopefully people will like it.

It's shareware, which means you can use it for free for as long as you like. However, I'm funding it out of my own pocket, which is pretty much empty at this point. So if you want all the features and don't want to be annoyed by reminders to register please pay the modest fee and help me to make it better and better. Upgrades discounted for current users of course. Oh, by the way, registered users will be able to embed EarthBrowser with their own content on their personal websites within the next several weeks.



I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been so encouraging to me over the past few years; my wife, children and friends. I couldn't have done it without you.

EarthBrowser 3.0 Imminent

EarthBrowser 3.0 is currently in beta testing and I think that it might live up to my prediction to revolutionize virtual globes. It should be released within the next two weeks.

Floundering In The Past

I have been working on version 3 of EarthBrowser since 2004 and it is finally coming to fruition. Up until about a year ago, I was still working on a version that was based on OpenGL with a Python scripting engine. It was basically a new platform that would do seamless version updates, enable users to extend the interface programmatically, do extremely fast raster and vector map projections on multi-gigabyte data files using JPEG-2000 incremental decompression. Use a hexagonal dataset grid to feed the fragment shader based clipmap engine for smooth panning around the poles with no perspective distortion. I was also downloading, pan-sharpening and color-space correcting the Landsat 15m dataset. Bit-torrent distributed datasets were integrated, relief mapping and atmospheric diffusion were supported. It really is a masterpiece, but then Google Earth was given away for free and sales of version 2 began to dry up as I was digging myself deeper and deeper.

The Turning Point

Then along came Modest Maps which introduced me to Flash programming. Once again plunging into yet another new technology, I decided to make a quick sliding map with a few datasets for people to put on their websites for free advertising. Then I saw Papervision3D and realized that I could do a globe. It was a little too slow for my needs so I ported my C++ game engine kernel over to Flash. I kept adding features expecting to hit the limit of what was possible with Flash and I never did. Around June I put the OpenGL version on the back burner and began working full time on a web version of EarthBrowser.

Unexpected Windfall

This February Adobe released Adobe AIR which enabled me to bring my EarthBrowser back to the desktop. AIR has some *really* nice features that make EarthBrowser much more powerful than I imagined it could be in my last post. There is an integrated web browser, right within EarthBrowser 3.0 now. That is huge and you won't really understand how easy it makes things until you browse some geo-websites and drag and drop KML links right into your placemarks folder or look at the Wikipedia page for a city or country.

Weather Datasets

There are a lot of other nice features that you won't see in Google Earth or Microsoft's Virtual Earth. I've been creating a lot of real-time datasets generated from the NOAA Forecast Models to give regions of rainfall, snowfall, humidity, temperature and many other measurements which are all animated across the globe with an intuitive time slider. Continental US doppler radar, earthquakes, volcanoes, webcams and many more datasets are all there and animated too.

Finally: KML Integration

KML support in EarthBrowser 3.0 is really nice and intuitive. There is a Panarimio KML file that allows you to see pictures from all over the world as you zoom in closer. You can download a KML or KMZ file directly within the embedded browser or drag and drop it from your desktop. EarthBrowser even has some extensions to the KML format that I felt were missing and greatly enhance the expressiveness of the format. But I'll save that for another post.

KML Mashup Tool

EarthBrowser 3.0 has really been designed to be a KML authoring and mashup tool. If you want to save a single feature from a dataset, just drag a placemark icon from the globe right into your placemarks folder and it will make a copy. You can drag out any combination of items in your placemark folder onto a text editor to make a custom KML mashup file to post it on your own website or share it with your friends. Version 3.1 will extend EarthBrowser from your desktop to your website. It will be easy since it is based on Flash technology. A simple and seamless way of creating and distributing your personal or corporate geospatial content.

I'm Not a Machine, Or Am I?

Is it possible for one man to compete with Google and Microsoft? Not really, and I'm not trying to. I want to make EarthBrowser an excellent tool for education, weather watching and KML authoring and have it be just enjoyable to use. Google and Microsoft are working hard to... hmmm... put buildings in... add more resolution... see star texture tiles and some other stuff. It takes a team of coders and a multi-billion dollar company to give this kind of software away for free. That's why I have to charge for it. I've spent countless sleepless nights and many evenings and weekends away from my family. I've gone into debt while sales of version 2 have dropped to almost nothing, trying desperately to get this new version done. I really have to thank my wife and children for their patience in allowing me to pursue the dream of owning my own business making virtual globes. Once sales pick up again with version 3, crossing fingers, I can focus on adding even more great features, but I'll talk about those later.

EarthBrowser 3.0 to be released soon

It's been hard keeping quiet about it for so many months, I'm really excited about all the great new features.

Some of the major new features are:
- Supports 90% of KML
- US Doppler radar
- Rain/Snow/Temperature forecasts

Version 3 is not just another 3d globe, but will revolutionize virtual globes for reason's that will be obvious when you first run it.

If you are a customer and would like to participate in the Beta program, please drop me an email and state any relevant testing experience (not necessarily required, but helpful).

Here is a small preview:


That's all for now.

Dynamic Relief Mapping

EarthBrowser 3.0 is starting to shape up nicely. I've created a normal map generator using a Sobel filter and SRTM data. Normal maps are just a texture respresenting compressed normal directions and they enable one to create the illusion of very detailed geometry with the help of hardware accelerated shaders.


Africa Relief


Asia Relief


Using the mosaic and raster classes that I described in my previous post, I generate a normal map in the gnomonic projection and put that together with the texture map and a wgs84 ellipsoid and it is starting to look pretty nice. The great thing about it is the shadows move where they should when the light source moves. Someday I'll make a youtube video to demonstrate that effect.

Project Kraken and EarthBrowser circa 1998

For the past two weeks I've been working on a secret project (codename Kraken); and it will be the perfect compliment to the next version of EarthBrowser. I'll give out some hints and details in the coming weeks about it's potential uses and capabilities. However before I reveal the future, I wanted to share the earliest snapshot of EarthBrowser caught in the wild...

I haven't kept many records from the time, but I looked up my old website from Dec 6, 1998 in the wayback machine. It featured the first version of EarthBrowser which was called Planet Earth at the time. I couldn't get the domain name for that so I changed the name to EarthBrowser at the end of 1999. Anyone who is interested can take a look in the wayback machine here. Unfortunately there are no images saved, they were pretty cheesy anyway. Once Planet Earth started selling, I quit my job and have been working on it full time ever since.

Here's the main text:

Planet Earth 1.0
Have you ever wanted to see the Earth from space? Now you can see what it looks like right on your desktop. Planet Earth displays a realtime 3-dimensional model of the Earth with the current cloud information downloaded directly over the internet. Night and day shadows are updated continuously and you can rotate it to view any spot on the Earth.

Features

• Cloud information updated every 6 hours.
• Areas of night and day are updated continuously.
• Real 3-dimensional model can be rotated to reveal any part of the earth.
• Zoom in or out
• Position viewing location over any spot on Earth
• Rotates freely or stays in fixed position

Requirements

• Macintosh with PowerPC processor
• Internet connection (for clouds)
• System 7.5 or above
• 1 MB Disk
• 4 MB Ram

Mac System 7.5, that's old!! I remember trying to get it to work on the Motorolla 68000 processors but they were just too under powered in floating point...