OT: mapping software for zoom in to location?

Sebaz wrote on 4/29/2010, 9:35 AM

Other than Google Earth, does anybody know if there's a good software that will allow zooming in from space (with a view of the planet) all the way to a location in the planet? Kind of like the way you see in some movies nowadays. I thought about this when editing a video from a recent trip to Wilmington, NC, and I did it with Google Earth and recording a slow zoom with a screen video capturing software called Fraps. Then I had to crop the movie to eliminate everything but the map.

The result wasn't terrible, but Google has too many satellite photos that have a different color than the rest, some look brownish while most look green, so it looks crappy. Does anybody have any idea what software they use when they do this in movies?

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/29/2010, 9:46 AM

in the movies I"m pretty sure it's done by hand.

But there's NASA Whirlwind. That's not copyright like google earth so you can even use it w/o paying $$.

jabloomf1230 wrote on 4/29/2010, 5:02 PM

The irony is that Google has "borrowed" much of the imagery from government entities and then slapped its own copyright on it.

This AE tutorial might be of interest to some here, as it could be adapted to Vegas, with a little work:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/earth_zoom/

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/29/2010, 7:05 PM

I've tried to follow that tut. With the images that are out there it doesn't always work because some areas have much better images vs others.

jabloomf1230 wrote on 4/30/2010, 8:36 AM

I'm not sure what part of the world you are trying to do this with, but many US state governments (and some other developed countries, also) have at least some orthoimagery available free for download. Here's NY's (which was "liberated" by Comrade Google):

http://www.nysgis.state.ny.us/gateway/mg/

I have ESRI ARCGIS here at work, which allows me to easily "play" with these files. GIS orthoimagery files generally use a type of compression that allows them to be displayed smoothly at various scales, so you can make a variety of still images to allow key frame zooming. Once you get to scales like portions of continents, you really don't need to worry about the image resolution.