Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Google Earth 5 is now available for download, and they have added some great new features. Most notable among them is the new data and imagery for the oceans, historical imagery, 3D Mars, and tour recording. The ocean stuff is beautiful, and there are ways to go beneath the waves. Check out the video...

You can download Google Earth 5.0 here, but do also check out the various posts highlighting different features on the Google Earth blog. As for its relevance to biblical mapping and visualizations, there is perhaps not so much to note. I checked quite a few archaeological sites hoping to use the historical imaging feature to see progress that has been made at places like Herodion, Ephesus, Corinth, or Beth Shean. Unfortunately, there is not much to see. Satellite images only go back to about 2003, and often the earlier images are of insufficient detail to see much of what was going on. At least one can now sometimes choose between images taken at different times of the year, or different lighting or different quality.

HERE is a 30 second screencast I did using the tour recording feature showing Ephesus in 2003, 2005, and 2006.

If anyone finds a good example of historical imaging related to a biblical site, let me know!