Google Earth For Pirates
This is pretty cool. You’ll need to install Google Earth, and enable 3D buildings. Then open this KML file. Zoom in to ground level and hold down the arrow keys, you can walk through Burning Man in 3D. You really get a sense of how vast it is when you see The Man in the distance and head towards it. It is from Cargo Cult, Burning Man 2013, although the particular day the image was taken is unknown.
From the Google Earth Blog:
Burning Man goes 3D
Over the last week or so, Google have pushed out a significant amount of new 3D imagery. If you don’t have it already, be sure to grab our our map of areas covered so far.
One of the most interesting new additions is Black Rock City, Nevada, location of the Burning Man festival that we covered back in August and later saw animated gifs of that Skybox Imaging created. The actual festival only lasts a couple of weeks each year and is in a slightly different location each year, with different street layouts and physical structures. The imagery was essentially out of date just days after the photography was captured. There was a lot of movement, with many cars, trucks, caravans and even light aircraft moving around. There were new structures going up, tents and other structures with moving coverings and intricate shapes. All of this causes problems for the technique used to capture the imagery, which involves imagery captured from multiple angles during several passes, that works best on solid, unmoving structures with no overhangs.
To fly to Black Rock City in Google Earth, open this KML file
. Be sure to turn on the 3D buildings layer.
[Update: As pointed out by Ron in the comments, the 3D imagery is from the 2013 event.]
One of several structures with intricate detail that Google must have put extra effort into modelling.
You can also type “Black Rock City NV” into Google Earth’s search (no need for any KML file). The satellite imagery is becoming more detailed every year, and this is just what is being released for free to the public.
Creepily, all the people are missing from the city. Wonder if there was some behind the scenes facial recognition going on, as all the Burners were slurped out by the Artilect in between its trippy dreams.
Filed under: Tech Tagged: 2013, 2015, brc, city, eye in the sky, google earth, ideas, imagery, satellite photo, spy, tech
