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I love Google Earth and, like everybody, the first thing I do is to
zoom in on my house. I also like the way that the images are more-
or-less seamlessly stitched, so that I can zoom from outer space to
my back garden.
What I'd like is a piece of software - or an extension to Google Earth
-
that gives me an extreme fisheye view. In the middle, at
maximum resolution and filling perhaps a third of the screen, would
be my house (or any chosen target). At the periphery, it would be
more compressed and at lower resolution. Around it, in less detail,
would be my village. Around that, in still less detail, Cambridge and
its environs, then the rest of the British Isles compressed into a band
maybe an inch wide, then a tiny Europe, and a minuscule rest-of-
the-world.
In other words, a seamless composite in which the scale decreases
smoothly from the centre outward, not unlike the famous "New
Yorker" cover (see link).
Ideally, the software should also generate a high-resolution
downloadable image file that I could print, and should accept
uploads (for example, an aerial photo of my house) to augment the
detail in the centremost part of the picture.
(?) Sort of like this...
http://graphicsopti...tion.com/blog/?p=28 ..but photographic. [MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 06 2009]
Max, your first link is dead now
https://www.google....PU-yrGauB7Qb5k4DAAQ [pashute, Jul 23 2014]
[link]
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This sort of centre-weighted magnification view would look cool, and also would be useful for displaying the maps on sat-nav displays. |
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I would just like to state, for the record, that I do not immediately zoom in on [MB]'s house when on Google Earth. Visualisation of this idea is good, provided you could get the extremities in a good enough resolution for meaningful navigation. |
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It's not so much for navigation, more for art (hence the
desire for a printable file). I think the periphery would be
limited by the printer resolution, and the centre by the
original image resolution. |
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Nearly always - essentially this is a map where the scale of the map increases exponentially with the distance from the centre of the map. So, at the edge of the map the scale is large enough to include the entire known universe. As Cambridge is within the known universe, it will always appear on the map. The only times it will not appear on the "periphery" of the map is when it is chosen as the centre of the map - although as we are blessed with redundant Cambridges (e.g. Cambridge, Mass.) it is axiomatic of this mapping technique that there will always be a Cambridge on the periphery of the map. |
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It doesn't have the fisheye view, but Google Earth does have the capability described in the last paragraph. You can take maps and aerial photos and lay them on top of the existing photos for a better view. |
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//Why is Google Earth so compelling?// <cautiously, wary of being suckered into a bad Christmas cracker pun> I don't know [UB], why is Google Earth so compelling? </cwobsiabccp> |
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I like this concept - got my vote. Although I don't see any real practical applications, it would be neat. The only problem is, you wouldn't be able to accomplish it from satellite, so how would you do it? |
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The idea is to use the existing images that Google Earth
uses; the processing of them to acheive this extreme fish-
eye look should be fairly easy. |
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I swore off Google Earth when I found that it would not let me look at the heads on Easter Island. If you can't do that, what's the point? |
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