Google updated their “Earth” software yesterday. There were a number of improvements made, including a redesigned interface to help navigate the globe.
You can see the difference in the images and video below, or better yet, “go use it.”:http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
The new design incorporates the compass into the widget. It was easy to get disoriented before with the compass and rotate tool being disassociated. Because the map can be manipulated by dragging and keyboard actions the widget is really secondary. They did a nice job of making it a secondary item that only expands on hover, rather than taking up valuable screen real-estate even when not in use.
The old widget resides at the bottom of the application taking up real estate.
Another interesting part of this tool is the directional jog. It allows 360Ëšpanning without having to use a click and drag method which requires a ton of mouse movement.
written by Geoff Teehan
I really like the new controls – the one feature I wish they would add though is the ability to change the pivot point for rotation.
Right now rotation always occurs around a point some distance “in front of the camera”. Useful in many cases but sometimes in the big terrain mapped areas or cities with 3D buildings it would be useful to be able to switch into a mode where “you” are the pivot point.
Currently you are persistently looking at an object (ie. in a helicopter flying around something). It’d be nice to have the option to also look around (ie. standing on the ground and looking out at everything around you.)