Google Earth Street View and Longside without clouds

Street View globes

For my sins, I spend little time playing with Google Earth. The main reasons are probably down to having more needs for online mapping than the facilities offered by Google Earth, they are two distinct products, but it is a processor and memory hungry application that the current hardware just can’t support efficiently, and just grinds to a halt after a few minutes use.

However, I do take the hit every now and then, if only to keep my Google Earth install up to date, and this time I found more than the ocean views I had been expecting – you can now dive into the water and find underwater locations – when I noticed that there was now a Street View layer.

Expecting to see much the same as is found in Google maps when Street View is activated, I decided to have a look at the home location and see how things compared. Unfortunately, the creation of this layer is clearly still work-in-progress, and even though they have some of the smaller street around me loaded, my own is missing at present.

A wander into those streets brought a most interesting sight into view. Normally, the Street View capture points are identified by little camera icons, but as you get down to the street level, these change into little 3-dimensional globes, with the individual views mapped onto their surfaces. It all quite fascinating and novel to see, and you can use the navigation controls to fly into any selected globe, which then opens out into a navigable view of the selected location.

The Thugs of Broughton will be spinning in their affluent flower beds at the very thought of an even better Street View!

It’s well worth a look and a play, especially if you have a half-decent computer and can have it work in real-time, and not have to suffer the delays and sounds of a hard drive trying to commit suicide as it tries to make up for the lack of speed and memory of an ageing  system, coping admirably, but not happy.

Improved Scottish views

As an aside, I happened to take a spin up to Longside, the site of RNAS Longside, a wartime naval air station. This had caught my eye as it had the Street View icons and view available, but this was not the main reason.

One of the donwnsides of Google’s current mapping, or rather aerial imagery, is that the entire northeast corner of Scotland is shrouded in cloud, and has been for years. I think it was once clear, way back at the start, but then turned white. I don’t even know if it’s covered by real cloud, as the ground seems to be visible through it if examined closely, more as if it had been hidden behind an opaque setting for some reason, rather than obscured by natural cloud cover, as can be found at other locations. I have complained, and even got a sorry from them, but no views in the mapping service.

What I did find was that Google Earth now has clear trench cutting through the northeastern cloud cover, passing through Longside and, at last, providing a clear view of the disused Longside airfield and its runways to the east of the original air station, and all the ground to the left and right, or east and west to be a bit more accurate.

While the aerial views of Google maps now follow the Google Earth views fairly closely, this has yet to make its way into the system (Update: It shows just fine, but you have to zoom in close – under the cloud as it were), however it will appear at some point, and we can only hope the clear trench through the northeastern cloud in Google Earth means that the rest of the will follow.. sometime… soon… maybe… ?