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Welcome to the Queensland Globe Tutorial Series.
In this video you will learn how to Navigate the 3D world, use basic tools to measure and find out more information directly from the map
By now, you should have google earth installed and have the Queensland Globe KML file on your computer.
Unlike Google Maps and other top-down looking mapping systems, Google earth is operated in 3 dimensions, so the controls are a little different.
You can use either the mouse or the keyboard (or even both simultaneously) to move around in this 3D environment.
To help get your bearing you will find a group of icons in the top right corner of the screen.
The top icon, which has an eye symbol is used to orientate your view. Click and drag on the outer ring to rotate quickly.
The N on the ring is where North is relative to the current view. SO if N is at the bottom then you are looking South.
N at the top and your looking North. You can double click the “N” at any time to point back to North.
Inside this ring are four arrows. The top and bottom will angle the camera view up and down.
Left and right allow more precise control over moving from north to south.
Below this icon is a smaller ring with a hand symbol in the centre.
This is the Pan tool and it lets you move slowly forward and backwards with the up and down arrow, and left and right.
Click and hold your left mouse button inside the ring and you will move around.
You can steer yourself by moving the mouse around the circle.
The further from the centre of the circle the faster you will travel across the planet.
You can also pan the map by clicking and dragging with the left mouse button anywhere on the earth’s surface.
The next icon is for Street view. This icon can only be seen when you are close to the planet surface.
Click and drag the Streetview Person Icon and the world below will turn blue wherever streetview imagery is available.
Let go of the icon where you want to see imagery from the ground level.
This is the same as streetview in Googlemaps. Click on “exit Streetview” to return to aerial view.
The final icon is the zoom control.
This determines how far your view is from the earth’s surface.
Click and hold the Plus symbol to move closer or the Minus symbol to move further way.
You can also use the slider in between to gradually zoom in and out.
For a little more control, try picking a location and using your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in or out of that point.
As another alternative you can right click and drag up and down on the earths surface to smoothly zoom in or out of a location.
Also note the readout bar in the bottom right corner.
This tells you how high you are, and the current Latitude and Longitude for the point where you mouse pointer is.
Now...you may have noticed that as you moved closer and further away from the surface that some information appears and disappears.
Roads for example will reveal Highways, then arterial roads, then local roads as you move closer.
The map would become very crowded if all the data was shown at every height.
This is called Scale Dependency, where specific data is shown only at certain scales.
You will see more of this later on as you access more data inside the Queensland globe.
OK, so the last thing to learn about driving around Google Earth is accessing information on the surface.
Notice the towns and parks appearing as we zoomed in.
Move you mouse over the small symbol that is to the left of a name. The name will turn red. This means there’s more information!
Click on the symbol and a popup will display the additional data.
Click the X in the right corner or just click outside the popup to close it.
Now let's try something a little more interesting...
Click on the Ruler symbol in the toolbar.
A popup window is displayed. You have the choice of measuring a simple straight line distance between two points...
or clicking out a series of waypoints on a path to get an overall distance.
To measure a simple line click the start and then click again for the finish.
If you have mouse navigation activated then you can click and drag to reposition the map.
The results will be displayed in the popup window.
You can alter the measure system by choosing from the dropdown list.
You can now clear the measurement from the screen using the clear button.
To measure a path is similar. Firstly, make sure the path tab is selected.
Click on the start then keep clicking points in order to get an overall length.
You can undo each point by using the right mouse button.
You can also reposition a point by moving the cursor over the point and click and drag it to its new location.
This will automatically update the path length.
You can also save a line or path using the save button.
When saving you can give your line a name, change the colour, style and various other parameters.
Once saved, the line will appear in the My Places section of the lefthand panel.
For fun, try right clicking on the entry in My Places and choose Show Elevation Profile.
You now get a cross-section of the planet under the line you drew.
You also get additional measurement details such as slope and elevation.
Feel free to have a play around or for more information on this, use the google earth help resources located in the menu.
Great job! You can now move around the Queensland Globe and use the measure tool to get more information about Queensland.
See the next video to learn how to access and work with the wealth of data in the Queensland Globe.