Google Earth puts the world at your fingertips

The part of the screen that shows the globe and aerial views of the earth is called the 3D Viewer.

You can use your mouse to easily navigate to locations. Using the mouse left click button allows you to “grab” the Earth and move it up and down, or sideways. Using the scroll wheel allows you to zoom in or out. Pressing down on the scroll wheel and holding while you move the mouse will tilt/spin the terrain.

Search Pane: You can type addresses or famous landmarks into the search box, then hit Enter on your keyboard, or click the magnifying glass to “fly” to thatlocation, and see the aerial/satellite view of that location.

This is the aerial view of Ramay Junior High School after I typed in 401 S. Sang Ave., Fayetteville, AR into the search box, and then hit Enter on the keyboard.

This is the aerial view of Big Ben after typing the words Big Ben, without the need to type in an address.

When you move your cursor around over the scenery in the 3D Viewer, the latitude/longitude coordinates change accordingly. The elevation is also shown.

If you have a location that you want to save, it’s easy to do. Much like setting a bookmark or favorite on your Internet browser, you can set a Placemark in Google Earth that will allow you to quickly and easily go back to the location(s) of your choice.

To set a Placemark, simply navigation to a location, and then click the Placemark button (it looks like a push-pin: ). Note: You will also want to zoom, tilt, etc. as you desire before clicking the Placemark button. Zoom level and terrain tilt will be saved as part of your Placemark, along with the location.

A New Placemark dialog box will appear with a push-pin. You can click and drag the push-pin to the exact location you desire. In the Name box in the dialog box, you can give your Placemark a name.

The new Big Ben placemark is now set, and is now permanently in your Places pane (unless you choose to delete it). Now, anytime you want to go back to Big Ben, all you need to do is double click the Big Ben placemark in your Places pane.

You can edit your Placemark, move the push-pin, etc by right clicking on the push-pin, and then choosing Properties.

If you want to set up folders to organize your Placemarks to make them easier to find, RIGHT click on My Places > Add > Folder. Type the folder name into the dialog box that appears, then click OK.

The new folder titled England is now in the Places pane. You can click and drag any of your Placemarks and drop them into your folders.

This shows 2 Placemarks that have been dropped into the new folder titled England. You may need to double click on the folder to see the Placemarks.

Tip: Any items that have a checkmark beside it will show up in the 3D Viewer. For example, Big Ben has a checkmark beside it and you see the Big Ben push-pin in your 3D Viewer.

Tip Part 1: If you uncheck the box beside Big Ben, the Big Ben push-pin won’t show up in the 3D Viewer.

Tip part 2: With the box beside Big Ben unchecked, you no longer see the Big Ben push- pin in the 3D Viewer. (You’ll notice that one Placemark titled googleplex is checked, but you don’t see the googleplex push-pin because the 3D Viewer is not currently showing the area in California where that Placemark is located.)

The Layers Pane: The Layers Pane contains a lot of content that can be shown in the 3D Viewer. Let’s explorer some of the different layers. (Note that some layer content does not appear until you zoom into an area). To hide a layer or layer folder, uncheck it.

The Geographic web layer shows clickable boxes on the 3D Viewer.

The Geographic web layer shows clickable boxes on the 3D Viewer. Clicking on these boxes will open a popup window showing either photos or information about that specific location (click the “x” in the upper right hand corner of the box when you’re ready to close it). This layer can lead to clutter in your 3D Viewer, however, so you can uncheck this layer when you want to get a better view.

The Geographic web, and most of the other layers in Google Earth, have sublayers you can choose to show in the 3D Viewer by leaving them checked, or you can uncheck them to hide that layer from showing in the 3D Viewer. You will know if a layer has sublayers available if you see the + sign showing. If you click on that + sign, you will see the sublayers, and the + sign will turn into a – sign. When you have the main layer checked, all the sublayers will also be checked, unless you uncheck them. If you uncheck a sublayer, the content for that sublayer will not be shown in the 3D Viewer. You can hide these sublayers once again by clicking the – minus sign again.

Sublayers

The Roads Layer shows you The Road layer shows Interstate highways when zoomed out

The Roads Layer shows you The Road layer shows street names when zoomed in.

The 3D Buildings layer shows 3D models of buildings, stadiums, bridges, castles, and much more. Click on the model to see more details. Tilt the terrain to get a better view. You can spin the terrain to see all sides of the building.

The Street View layer shows what an area looks like from street level, just like you were standing on that street, looking around. These pictures were taken from a fleet of vehicles driving around taking continuous 360° pictures as they drive.

Here is a picture of a Google Earth Street View car

With the Street View Layer on, you will see camera icons on the streets where you can view Street View. If you click once on the camera, a popup window will appear with a thumbnail view of the street. To go into Street View, click the Show full screen link.

When you first enter Street View, it will look like you are going into a picture globe.

After you enter Street View, it shows the street just like you were driving down the street. You can click and drag the Street View photo around to see a 360° panorama view. To move further up the street, double click one of the camera icons.

To exit Street View, click the Exit Photo link

Here is the same location on Razorback Rd, except the view has been clicked/dragged 180° to show the road going the other way.

Sometimes Street View captures people going about their daily business. The photo above, however, was taken in front of Googleplex, Google’s headquarters, where they were ready for the Street View vehicles driving by.

The Borders and Labels layer shows different content, depending on zoom level. At the zoom level shown above, state boundaries and some cities are shown.

The Borders and Labels layer shows county boundaries at this zoom level.

The Traffic layer shows current traffic conditions on roadways. Make sure you also have the Roads level on as well. When you zoom-in on the city you're interested in, you'll see the traffic conditions of both arterial roads and highways. The colors correspond to the speed of traffic green is little to no traffic, yellow is medium congestion, red is heavy congestion, and red/black is stop-and-go traffic. You can click on a dot to see the average speed.

The Weather layer shows current weather conditions.

If you zoom into an area, you will see the current temperature and weather conditions of a city. If you click on the Weather icon as shown above, you will get more weather information for that location, including a forecast.

The Gallery layer has a lot of interesting content that can be shown in the 3D Viewer. Please note that YouTube content is blocked when a computer is logged in at school. The 360 Cities layer shows 360° photographic panorama views, much like Street View, except that you’re not limited to seeing just views of streets and areas surrounding streets.

While you have the Gallery layer open, you can click on a 360 Cities icon . When you do, you will see a popup appear, showing a preview of the panorama. Click on the picture to enter, and you will “fly” into a photo “globe” like you do when you enter Street View. Click anywhere on the photo and drag to move around the 360° panorama.

360 Cities layer has some really spectacular panorama views that you can click and drag to see a 360° view. To exit, click Exit Photo in the upper right of the 3D Viewer.

Another interesting sublayer under the Gallery layer is the Earthquakes layer. If you click on an earthquake icon, you will see information about the earthquake.

The Volcano layer shows various volcanoes throughout the world. Clicking on a volcano icon will show information about that volcano. (Please note that if you have the Earthquake layer on, you may have to turn it off by unchecking it, otherwise, the volcano icons may not show in the 3D Viewer.

You will notice that ocean bed topography is shown in the 3D Viewer. There is also a new Oceans layer. You can now see content underneath the oceans that was previously inaccessible.

If you type the coordinates N 41° 43.597', W 49° 56.900‘ into the search box and hit Enter, you will “fly” to the location where the Titanic sank (It’s not necessary to type the ° degree sign…just type the degrees and leave a space between the degrees and the minutes). You will see models of the 2 parts of the ship underwater. You can zoom in to “dive” under the water to see the Titanic models.

This image shows the Titanic 3D model. You can zoom, tilt, and pan to see the model from different perspectives.

You can also click the various icons while with the Ocean layer on to see more information about the content at that location.

You can click the Daylight button to see where it’s daytime and nighttime on the globe. (Please note that the time listed on the slider at the top of the 3D Viewer shows GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, which is 6 hours ahead of the Central Time Zone when we’re not in Daylight Saving Time). Be sure to click the Daylight button again to deactivate this view when done.

You can click on the Ruler icon to measure distances. Once you see the Ruler Control Box, you can click on your start location and then move your cursor to your end destination. The Ruler Control box will keep a running tally of the distance traveled. When you have your cursor over your end destination, click, and you will see the distance shown “as the crow flies”. Click Clear to begin a new measurement.

N 41° 43.597', W 49° 56.900'

The Historical Imagery button allows you to “go back in time” and see aerial photography of a location as it looked in years past. The above image is a current photo from a location south of Greenland, Arkansas, where a auto junkyard existed prior to just a few years ago.

Clicking on the Historical Imagery button brings up a timeline slider that has various points in time that you can click to see the aerial view of that location for that specific time. In this photo, the 1994 point in time has been clicked. As you can see, the junkyard covers a wide area of land, and is near a river, giving rise to the question of how the junkyard may have ecologically affected the watershed of the area compared with the ecology of the area today. Click the button again to exit Historical Imagery.

Tip: Sometimes you might find that you can’t find a location in Google Earth. A location that isn’t a city or well known monument might not show up in a search. For example, if you type in White Rock, Google Earth will find lots of instances of White Rock, but not the scenic White Rock that you’re looking for. To get around this problem, type in the name of your location, the state, and the word “coordinates” into your Internet web browser. You will get some results that should show the coordinates. Open a page to see if there are coordinates listed, then copy/paste into the Google Earth.

When you copy/paste from a webpage, just make sure that you put the latitude first, then a space, then the longitude. There are different formats for coordinates that you might see. For example, the example here shows degrees and decimal degrees (35.693137 -93.957143). It’s the same as (N 35° 41.588‘ W93° 57.429‘). It shouldn’t matter what format you use.

The Terrain Layer: This is an important layer to make sure you have checked and on at all times. The Terrain layer gives you a 3D view instead of 2D. If you don’t have this layer checked, you are missing out on a lot of the spectacular 3D views Google Earth has to offer.

2D View 3D ViewTerrain layer not on

Terrain layer on