Abstract said:
So if this uses the same maps as Google maps, then its crap for places like the UK, right? Its still crap, but in a prettier packaging.
Its good for big US cities, though.
You might find that the images in Google Earth are better than those you see in Google Maps. I've noticed that for US cities the resolution is significantly better in Google Earth (than Google Maps), though they appear to be the same images. Go to this site
http://earth.google.com/data.html to see where their hi-res imagery covers.
I installed Google Earth on my PC at work, which is older, fairly slow, and has to use OpenGL, but even at that I've been able to get very little work done! I thought Google Maps was pretty amazing, and this is leaps ahead. 'Earth' preserves all the search and scroll-navigation of 'Maps', and adds much, much more. Seeing a perspective view of your driving directions overlaid on a hi-res image, from a couple hundred feet in the air, then 'flying' the route is incredible.
A co-worker that just got her computer upgraded installed it, and on a capable machine it is mind-blowing. I seriously can't wait till it's available for OS X. I've been checking the Google Earth web site every time I sit down at the computer -- "is it ready yet?!?!"
For those of you who haven't actually seen it run yet, it is almost certainly even cooler than you think.
