How Google Earth Really Works

Posted by Charles | July 26, 2007 .

Google Earth is probably one of the great data visualization tools around. Regardless we are with Flex, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight or Sun JavaFX, or even the purist AJAX camp, we all can learn something from it.

One of the co-founders of Keyhole who helped build the virtual globe which later became Google Earth is Avi Bar-Ze’ev. Avi has worked on many interesting graphics projects in his career in addition to Keyhole, he worked on Second Life, and he worked on one of Disney Imagineering’s virtual reality rides (Alladin’s Magic Carpet). He has some unique understandings of the technical inner-workings of these popular applications.

He sometimes comments on technical mis-interpretations that are being discussed about Google Earth and Second Life in the blogosphere. He recently moved his technical writings from his personal blog over to a new blog called RealityPrime. Yesterday, I heard that Avi had just published a very interesting technical description called “How Google Earth [Really] Works“. Avi was frustrated with the quality of the description at HowStuffWorks.com for Google Earth, and decided to write his own article.

Even though Goolge must changed the original Keyhole product a lot since it bought the company, I would think Avi provided great deal of insight about the geoweb technologies. Good reading.