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Comment by WhompingWindows | Hacker News Reader

Google Earth may be one of the most wondrous things ever created. When else in human history can you zoom in on the entire geography of the Earth, and now the timelapsed geography of the Earth? Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton, Galileo, or Darwin would say using this tool?

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Many years ago I visited the International Spy Museum in DC, and one of the last exhibits was a terminal with this brand new amazing thing by a little company called Keyhole, and somehow it was more amazing than any number of hidden bugs or weapons.

Later, seeing Google Earth, I was like "Wait I've used this before."

Visualising the Earth at planet scale is incredible. I was blown away when the first wind map [1] made it's way onto HN almost a decade ago. I always thought of wind being localised but to see all the currents flow across the USA was soooo cool. It's inspired me to work on my own map of live mountain shadows across the Earth (link in my user profile if you're interested)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3767889

Woah, your shade map is awesome! I was playing around with it for a long time there, lol.

That shade map is awesome!

Does it include buildings? (Could it, if not?) I’ve been dying for this for ages.

Including buildings in urban areas and choosing a custom date to see how shadows change over the course of the year are next on the backlog. Contact info is in my profile if you want to keep in touch.

Shade map is cool, which data source are you using for the height map? I've been working on something similar (link also in user profile).

Mapbox free-tier for Digital Elevation Model (DEM) map tiles. suncalc NPM library to calculate the position of the sun. OSM buildings (hopefully) for buildings in urban areas.

Your app looks great. I like the way you visualise twilight/golden hour on your map. There is another project called shadowmap.org you might like.

The two biggest "wow" reactions I ever heard at Google's company wide meetings were from the Keyhole/Google Earth demo right after they were acquired, and the first Google Maps demo with scrollable maps. IIRC the Keyhole demo started with the full planet view from space and then did a smooth continuous scroll into the Grand Canyon. Pretty mindblowing back in 2005 or thereabouts.

Interesting to think: What demos are happening now that elicit a similar response?

Looking at the last ~8 years of “technology” releases but I’d deign to say no demos are eliciting that response.

I don't believe this was the UI that was eventually released, but I got a demo of an Glass prototype where the way to interact was to focus your vision on the buttons in the corner of the virtual screen to click. When the guy told me that, at first I thought "you've got to be kidding me" and very shortly thereafter it was "holy shit this is awesome."

That reminds me, a couple years ago I ran into a guy working for a company that could wirelessly power displays in a contact lens. Not remotely practical and I think it was maybe a couple hundred pixels at most, but definitely more of that living in future vibe.

There have been a few but they were mostly marketing bullshit. The google glass announcements impressed many even though they never delivered the initial demo. There was also that demo where they showed googles AI calling a store for you to book a haircut which also ended up being fake and never delivered.

Boston Dynamics maybe.

Automatic booking of restaurants via telephone

It’s amusing how quickly Maps overtook Earth and then absorbed it.

The practicality of having a total guide to location via search/address/direction far outweighed the appeal of a visual location you can find.

Agreed. I remember Google Earth's initial release (called Keyhole at the time I think) as one of the times my mind was genuinely blown by technology. "Holy shit I can zoom in to my front yard!!"

Funny enough I also remember thinking that it was only a matter of time before they changed it to a live feed and we would all have to be more careful about drawing our curtains a little better.

> Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton, Galileo, or Darwin would say using this tool?

"Does it run on Linux?"

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