Clicked just to see the message saying Chrome only. Nice to see the devs at google still don't give a shit about browser diversity and standards.
In the past this would have been a standalone app like google earth itself was. With a big download and an icon on your desktop.
Or, they could simply bundle Chrome into the app as electron to give people the exact same thing but avoid snarky hacker news comments.
Or, better still, they could do what they did and ship it as is.
The correct response to this used to be "wow, that's pretty cool that they can make this work in a browser".
It's a pro tool, not a website. Be happy it wasn't adobe releasing it as a desktop product and charging $1,000 per year to use it.
Yes, but that would way too non-cynical for the HN psyche.
"Our 3D rendering engine currently uses a Chrome-only technology called Native Client to power Earth Studio. However, we’re closely tracking the evolution of WebAssembly (especially threading). Stay tuned!"
Google is heavily involved in WebAssembly planning and implementation in Chrome/V8. They have threading enabled chrome://flags
The people who can do Google Earth Flybys might not be the same that could implement WebAssembly Threading, even though they work at the same company.
Lots of companies don't give a f*ck and only do it if the market share are big enough.
On the project on which I'm working, no f_cks are given about browser diversity, we're just supporting IE, because we need activX to communicate with a smartcard reader and there's plan to start next year on support both FF and chrome