google earth network link

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ideology
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google earth network link

Post by ideology » 25 July 05 12:45 am

we have developed a google earth network link on the site

it allows you to scroll around google earth and have caches automatically displayed on your screen. no gpx files to download or convert. just scroll around and it talks to our server and downloads the nearby caches.

to try it out, click on http://geocaching.com.au/xml/googleearth/geocaches.kml and zoom to your favourite location and you should see caches pop up like magic!

let us know how it goes!

** edited to change the url to the main geocaching.com.au site **
Last edited by ideology on 27 July 05 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by GEK » 25 July 05 1:07 am

Looks great! I've been obsessing over Google Earth for the past few days and I was hoping someone would do something like this.

But the caches that show up seem to be an odd mix of current and archived caches, with many active caches missing. Is it just a matter of your data being incomplete and/or obsolete or is something stranger going on?

GEK

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Post by Damo. » 25 July 05 8:10 am

Looks great. I tried a similar link that someone posted a couple of weeks ago but this one seems much more stable and displays more than just the 5 caches centred on the map.
I made the same observation as GEK though. Thought it might be displaying a limited number of caches, but even zooming in to an area before they display, some caches are missing. eg Bondi Beach area displays "Big Ben" and "Hello, Les?" but "* Bondi Beach * - Webcam cache", "Crashing Waves" and "The Final Cut" aren't there.
Now that I think about it,
we have developed a google earth network link on the beta site
answers the question of why the data seems incomplete. Once the beta site is up and running i'm guessing we will find our missing caches. 8)
Love your work i!

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ideology
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Post by ideology » 25 July 05 8:36 am

yes, that's correct, the beta site only has about 80% of the data on it. (sorry, we should have made that clear)

we did a lot of work on the beta site on the weekend and will put out another request for beta testing. if it survives the tests, we will migrate the production site to that server and the google earth link will show live data

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Post by Cached » 25 July 05 10:57 am


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Richary
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Post by Richary » 25 July 05 3:03 pm

And one of the great things about google earth is it almost removes the problem of travelling and not having maps :D

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Post by Cached » 25 July 05 3:04 pm

yeah, ADSL on-board works a treat with moving map and a lappy....

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Post by Damo. » 26 July 05 8:22 pm

Weee! Just tried it out and it looks like all the caches are up. Including archived ones which I like because you can see the history and where they were located. (But I'm sure some people will complain about!)

Used it for a few minutes and noticed in the higher res parts of the map that the icon was about 32m from where the actual cache was hidden. Seemed to be the same distance and direction for the few ones I checked. Wonder why?
I also like the new icons. Little flag for active, cross for archived. They started out as something else though then changed which was odd.
I did get a 'Fetch of networklink "geocaches" failed' message after a few minutes though.

Great tool guys! Love it!! :D

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Post by ideology » 26 July 05 8:59 pm

glad you like it. it changed mid-stream because we were fiddling with the icons. there are a couple of other icons for other types of caches. we occasionally get a networklink error as well - we aren't sure what is causing it but it seems to rectify itself if you move a little to force it to fetch a new list.

it is very addictive!

we've also added google earth links to the cache pages. this allows you to quickly jump to the cache location. then the network link takes over and populates the surrounding caches. it's very addictive!

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Post by The Ginger Loon » 26 July 05 10:38 pm

Heads up folks, it's dumb question time!

Do you really need a broadband connection to make Google Earth work?

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Post by Richary » 26 July 05 10:43 pm

Haven't tried it at home on dialup, have only used it at work so far. But put my parents onto it (found the places we used to live and they all have pools now :? ) and they asked where it came from. They have used on dialup and reckon it is usable.

The initial 10MB download might be the most painful part.

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Post by Damo. » 26 July 05 10:44 pm

The Ginger Loon wrote:Heads up folks, it's dumb question time!

Do you really need a broadband connection to make Google Earth work?
No. 10ish meg download for the program to start with. Might take a while to download maps when you zoom into a new area but it saves the data. Ask Bronze how he's going. Poor poor rural folk with no Broadband. :cry:

Now the network link displays the Terrain and Difficulty too!
Stop fiddling with it and go fix the website!!!! :evil:

Just kidding. Love your work. :wink:

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Post by Cached » 27 July 05 12:16 am

I've used it on dial-up, until well, yesterday, I couldn't get broad band in my outer metro adelaide suburb.

It's, well, OK. Slow, but bearable.

Don't try to share your net connection though.

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Post by riblit » 27 July 05 11:26 am

Damo. wrote:
No. 10ish meg download for the program to start with. Might take a while to download maps when you zoom into a new area but it saves the data. Ask Bronze how he's going. Poor poor rural folk with no Broadband. :cry:
Before Bronze finds this and plants a teapot all over it, Dubbo has broadband.

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Post by The Garner Family » 27 July 05 12:02 pm

I like the links on the new server to Google Earth and Google maps for individual caches, but a couple of suggestions:

* On the Google Maps link, it should be zoomed in closer for a map, it's current range is over 100's of kilometres... not a suitable initial zoom factor for a map.

* Google Earth links & Worldwind link should perhaps have an * or a note next to them explaining that it requires external programs - otherwise no doubt some people will wonder why its not working.

Keep up the good work!

EDIT: Removed a suggestion as it was already there <slaps forhead>

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