Ok, this isn’t a serious business recommendation. But, I sure wish the cool data Google has been generating for Google Earth could be combined with World Wind. Google’s quality aerial photography, and 3D buildings are really nice to look at. It’s just too bad the Google Earth user interface isn’t better. Google has been spending an enormous amount of money acquiring the technology, buying the airplane time, and the computing resources to process and host their imagery. And, the results are really spectacular. This week, Google released a ton of new imagery, and new cities with 3D buildings.
Thanks Google! Now, would you pretty please create an API for your data for World Wind?
We would just be happy if Google raised the limitations that prevent people from using their data outside their own APIs – then you’d find many people writing the APIs for World Wind. The problem is: Google wants to keep the control of the channel. With their own channel they can e.g. push advertisement whenever they want, with somebody else channel they can’t. The problem is just here.
It’s the age-old maxim, cash rules. Bottom line is, Google put up the dough for all that stuff, and if everyone only cares about the content rather than Google as a middleman, then Google loses out on their investment and doesn’t get value for it. In the long run, it would likely be unsustainable for them.
Not to mention – the imagery and content providers who Google pays end up losing potential market if Google is out there giving away all their content as well.
Whether you like it or not, even in the free data and open source worldview, at the end of the day, people need to be able to put food on the table. Investment of time and money needs some viable return at some point or another in order to be sustainable.
Yep.. have to respect the bottom line.. Google is spending the money for the imagery so that they can make more money in the long run.
Umm, this is a slightly modified version of a Google Earth Blog post. Your stealing content, which is a bad thing. All you did was replace Microsoft with Google or World Wind.
Anyways, I think sharing with Virtual Earth sounds much better. World Wind has nothing special, and could really learn something from Google or Microsoft.
If Frank has a problem with my post he will let me know, it was done as a tongue in cheek post, we are rivals with Google but in the blogosphere it is a friendly rivalry, and I meant no disrespect to Frank.
As far as Google Earth being better than World Wind you are entitled to your opinion, but one thing you can’t argue with is that World Wind unlike its competitors is FREE.
Bullsworld:
I am the founder of an ‘exergame platform’ startup, and I’m trying to add ‘virtual cities’ capabilities to our rendering environment without building them ourselves, or locking ourselves in to a proprietary and ad-laden API.
I think we just need the city data, but I’m the vision guy and I don’t truly understand the technical aspects of the three options. Got any suggestions for me?