Google Earth

[RalphVa]

I'd been accessing Google Earth from one of my old HDs using a HD/USB adaptor. Well, my wife's old HD apparently ruined it or maybe my old HD with its bad sectors made some more, etc. and ruined it. Can no longer read HDs on it.

Found Google Earth online. Just Google it and you'll find (below the ads) a URL for it. So, I went exploring. One thing was to explore places where we've lived.

They're attached. I've never figured out how to put them right here in the message.

We lived at the place in NJ for 20 years (I was only there less than 1/2 the time, what with our travelling on business, etc.). The house and swimming pool have not changed except for that butt out on the right of the house in the rear, but there've been extensive changes to the property, including the driveway. Driveway used to be very steep right straight down in front of the garage on the right end of the house. We used to sled down that driveway, making a severe right to avoid the neighbor's mailbox across the street.

The place in Singapore is called Beverly Hill. It is a condo tower. Our condo there was 5500 sq ft, bigger than this house in Va and the same size as the house in Baton Rouge parish.

The other pic is of our place on 8.5 acres here in Va just west of Charlottesville. Our property goes down to Ivy Creek. We're right near the Barracks POW camp where the hessian soldiers were kept in the Revolutionary War.

I could not get a good pic of the house in BR parish because of all the trees on that part of South Fulwar Skipwith (name of a southern general).

Ralph

 

[drssg]

That's interesting. I haven't used Google Earth in ages. I have used regular Google Maps for a similar purpose. It provides pretty good overhead terrain pictures, but these look like much higher resolution.

 

[John_Mc]

Google earth has a feature that lets you look back at historical photos of an area. On my Google Earth application, the icon to do this is in the top bar, and looks a bit like a clock. If you click on that and scroll back through time, you might find a time when the images were taken when the leaves were off the trees. That might allow you to see some of your BR parish house.

I know the historical feature does cover satellite photos. It may not cover the "street level" photos which show more detail (but haven't been a Google Earth feature for all that long).

 

[kenmbz]

I have used this before to get to the winter pictures so I can actually see my house.
There is also a fzcteature to see property lines, which looked pretty close to my survey, but not ex

 

[John_Mc]

That's interesting. I haven't used Google Earth in ages. I have used regular Google Maps for a similar purpose. It provides pretty good overhead terrain pictures, but these look like much higher resolution.

Google Earth lets you do so much more, once you learn how to use it. I made the map shown below of our trail system and wetlands on Google Earth. Just walked the trails with a handheld GPS or a smartphone running an appropriate app, and you can import the GPS/phone data into Google Earth to tweak it, clean it up, and print out if you want a hard copy.

This one shows our property and that of our neighbors and good friends with whom we share a driveway. I have another, more extensive view that shows most of the trail system on a few more properties. The neighborhood works together to maintain the trails for all of us to enjoy. On this one, I added a bit of color to make the streams and wetlands show up more.(I have a higher resolution version, but it's too large a file to upload here, with our slow internet connection.) You can turn various layers on and off. For example, I can turn off display of the trails, or my "wetland enhancements", or turn on the display showing the locations of various obstacles on our obstacle course in the woods.

And here's one where I exported the data on some of our neighborhood network from Google Earth into an online application (CalTopo) to get a better topo map than what was available on Google Earth:

 

[deserteagle71]

I've used Google Earth and Google Earth Pro for several years now as enhancement for GPS, especially for Search and Rescue uses. Although the images on Google Earth aren't absolutely up to date, they are more up to date than any topo map and I can check to find ways to access a remote area, then create a track in Google Earth and then export it to Garmin Basecamp and any GPS units we may be using. Works great for trails that are not on any topo map.

 

[Dutch445]

At one point there was a promotion for free Google Earth Pro, i have it on my home PC, it is handy!

 

[otlski]

The historical imagery in google earth is handy. Many of the images are with the leaves off the trees giving you a much better vantage point. The property lines in google maps in my area are off by 200 feet.

 

[caver]

Hate google but have to admit their mapping stuff is best. I used the historical photos to mark the approximate location of my bootcamp barracks in Florida. It is now a city park with most buildings razed.

 

[Diggin It]

At one point there was a promotion for free Google Earth Pro,

Not a promo. They just made it free. At one point you had to go to their site and get a license key to activate, but the new versions dropped that.