Comments on: A Social Network for Google Earth?

By: auto

auto — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:20:42 +0000

I do not think it will work( Too much things are better around.

By: links for 2007-12-18 (Leapfroglog)

links for 2007-12-18 (Leapfroglog) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:20:49 +0000

[...] RealityPrime » A Social Network for Google Earth? On the feasibility of a Google Earth powered virtual world. (tags: google googleearth virtualworlds MMOGs socialnetworks) [...]

By: RealityPrime » Microsoft’s Virtual World?

RealityPrime » Microsoft’s Virtual World? — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:33:02 +0000

[...] almost certainly not avatars in Virtual Earth, though that’s always possible (see my comments on GE avatars for why it’s still premature). On the other hand, I would have thought [...]

By: RealityPrime » The Word on Snow Crash and Google Earth

RealityPrime » The Word on Snow Crash and Google Earth — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:07:32 +0000

[...] between Snow Crash and Google Earth. But if you read any of the other blog entries about the intriguing Arizona State University beta test without also coming here, you might have been lead astray on at [...]

By: avi

avi — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:47:06 +0000

Agreed, optimization is a big issue. There’s a good reason we dealt with the base layer as we originally did, but it also imposed certain constraints, such as cutting data in a way that makes dynamism hard.

I don’t know why things get so slow right now — there could be a number of reasons. But I doubt any of them have to do with your 3D accelerator’s actual performance limits.

But however bad it is now with buildings and overlays, it would be 10 times worse with avatars. That’s why Unype is doomed to not scale without underlying engine changes, and why Google needs to implement avatars themselves.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:09:33 +0000

Personally, I think two major things need to occur for GE. 1) Integration with existing standards, such as RSS, Atom [eg: communicating with existing sites, to present that data from the entire Web], and 2) radical optimization of their engine and rendering ability.

For instance, at the moment — I’ve been desperately trying to find a ‘best’ SuperOverlay method for imagery in GE — because for whatever reason, the way they parse tiles dramatically slows rendering. This is a huge concern when you’re talking about custom environments, let alone that it disrupts the vertical-market transition that I thought GE was more in tune with than the rest.

But the future — I think we’ll see something more along those lines. Avatars, I’m not so sure are ‘necessary’, since you’re inherently in a first-person view. GE is essentially a world browser. Integrating things like Chat, based on proximity to others roaming the area would be intriguing — which I’m sure is the reason for thinking of Avatar representations…

I don’t know, I’d have to give that a little more thought. I think GE could do similar ‘things’ without looking ’similar’, if you know what I mean.

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 22:53:13 +0000

We seem to be thinking in and around the same kind of concepts, which is encouraging, not least because that I now know someone else is thinking the same way as me, validating my own ideas.

There are all kinds of technical issues associated with opening the ‘real’ world up to a Social Network.

How many people are going to claim they live at 10 Downing Street, or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

These and other issues would persist throughout. So maybe something purely fictitious like Second Life would make more sense.

Incidentally, the graphics engines are in place for the 3D stuff, which I’ve seen used for web 3D elsewhere, albeit experimentally…