I'm importing a .kmz file into google maps, however google maps only displays a 2D projection of the path and seems incapable of displaying variation in altitude. Is that simply a limitation of the program, or is there a way to retrieve and present the height (typically displayed as a transparent vertical green rectangle with vertical yellow bars running through it in google earth)?
Thanks
KML has some limitations in Google Maps.
In particular, extrude element is not supported in Google Maps.
Reference: KML Elements Supported in Google Maps
https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/kmlelementsinmaps
You could instead use the Google Earth API to embed Google Earth in a web page if that is what you want to do and maintain the 3-D look and feel.
Related
Unable to let Google Maps show my imported 3D KML objects in 3D
I can import a KML file to "My Maps", but when I go to Google Maps, My maps, to view the KML file, I only get to see a "flattened" version where everything is projected onto the ground.
Can anybody tell me if (and how?) it is possible to convince Google Maps to show my imported 3D objects in 3D?
Google Maps can not show 3D KML objects, nor 3D Models, like Earth can. The Google Maps Platform documentation has a page on using KML and GeoRSS Layers in Maps, with a list of Supported KML elements. In there, you'll see that both the and elements are not supported, so no 3D in Maps, unfortunately.
As you can see my KML layer doesn't look good in Google Maps: https://maps.google.com/?q=https://sites.google.com/site/agri2agri/home/test1.kmz
It's obviously not stretched and wrong proportions. However, if I download this same KMZ (https://sites.google.com/site/agri2agri/home/test1.kmz) and I use Google Earth to view it, it views correctly.
What is happening?
The area it is defined to cover is wider than the diameter of the earth (430 degrees)
<LatLonBox>
<north>107.999210376</north>
<south>-107.999928216</south>
<east>215.998420752</east>
<west>-215.999856432</west>
<rotation>0</rotation>
</LatLonBox>
Google Earth must handle that better.
My end goal is view and print a document (eg, PDF) with business-specific info on it along with a map. The map must have
The aerial imagery background
The features from a KML file.
Google Static Maps works perfectly for this until the KML gets too complex to fit in the URL. I've already shrunk the URL by reducing long/lat precision and encoding the polylines.
Ideas:
I could get the aerial imagery from Google Static Maps, then programmatically draw my KML features onto it, but I'm not sure if that's allowed in the Google Maps Terms of Use.
Are there other ways to coerce static maps to give me what I want?
Does Google have a different mapping service that could ultimately convert a KML into an image with the aerial image background?
Any non-Google services that might help?
I know about google styled maps, which allow me to control the look of the google basemap.
I want to be able to pull in the aerial imagery from Google into my application, but have it displayed as greyscale as opposed to colour?
Is it possible to retrieve the aerials in greyscale from google via the default v3 API?
Have you seen this example by Odoe which uses css filters on the maps? Might be limited outside of chrome
http://www.odoe.net/apps/mapstyler/
https://github.com/odoe/MapStyler
I have a program that generates a .shp file, and exports this as a kml file. I would like to be able to display my output using the standard google map 'map' style (gray background, yellow streets, etc) in google earth, or in the google earth api.
Is there a style guide or method that I should be using?
Any thoughts appreciated - I wasn't sure how to structure this question.
Thank you.
Here is an ArcGIS style that will mimic the Google roads style.
http://conversationswithmyself.com/181/
Well, you can load KML files into Google Maps using the API:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#XML_Overlays
It'll certainly look like Google Maps then :-)
Doesn't help you much if you absolutely need the data visualised inside Google Earth though.
You can define styles in the KML and then apply them to the lines. I don't think there's any predefined styles that look like roads in google maps.
If you define the appearance in ArcGIS before exporting to KML, doesn't that set the appearance in Google Earth?