Thursday, October 12, 2006

Moab Bound

Several Googlers (myself included) are headed to Moab, Utah to particiapte in the 24 Hours of Moab mountain bike race. Sponsored by Google Earth, we will be on hand to demo Google Earth and the neat features that pertain to GPS tracking.

Did you know that you can track your route (driving, hiking, biking, etc.) in Google Earth using a GPS device? This allows you to view your route in 3D terrain in the application and share this with others. To see what I mean, I've posted this file that describes the 24 Hours of Moab race course.

You need the Google Earth Pro or Plus to upload your own GPS files. To learn more about using GPS features of Google Earth, see this section of the user guide.

2 comments:

Timothy Whitehead said...

Google Earth Pro is not required for GPS tracking if you are willing to learn a little kml!

Unknown said...

No learning needed.

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/
can be used to convert the output of a GPS to KML and much much more.

From the website:

GPS Visualizer can read data files from many different sources: GPX, OziExplorer, Geocaching.com (.loc), IGC sailplane logs, Garmin Forerunner (.xml/.hst), Timex Trainer (v1.3+), Cetus GPS, PathAway, cotoGPS, CompeGPS, TomTom (.pgl), IGN Rando (.rdn), Emtac Trine, Suunto X9/X9i (.sdf), NetStumbler/WiFiFoFum, and of course tab-delimited or comma-separated text. You can also enter waypoint data or street addresses manually, if you just need to plot a few points.

GPS Visualizer can draw maps in SVG, JPEG/PNG, and Google Maps format, and can also create map overlays and KML files for Google Earth. For non-Google maps, JPEGs are easier to deal with, but SVGs are interactive -- to view them, make sure you've installed Adobe's free SVG Viewer plug-in.