KML and Google Earth API: Recent updates and resources

KML and Earth had a really great year in 2010. Toward the end of the year, we added a bunch of new stuff, and wanted to recap it to let you know what we’ve been up to.

New in KML

Google Earth 6.0 was launched on Nov 29th, and with it came a whole host of new features. Trees, a new Street View mode in Earth, new measuring tools. But along with the product features, it came with some new KML extensions as well:

• <gx:altitudeOffset> allows you to easily change the altitude of a <LineString> or <LinearRing> using <Update><Change>, without having to change each and every coordinate.


• <gx:delayedStart> allows you to delay the start of a <AnimatedUpdate>.


• <gx:viewerOptions> allows you to enter or exit the new Street View mode and turn on or off historical imagery.


• Finally, <gx:outerColor>, <gx:outWidth>, <gx:physicalWidth>, and <gx:drawOrder> give you much more control over <LineString> style and placement. Josh Livni goes into greater detail in his article Complex Styling for LineStrings with DrawOrder.

New in the Earth API

• In the Earth API, we added the ability to enable/disable building selection and highlighting through mouse input in GEOptions.


• New class KmlViewerOptions, to set global render state (Historical Imagery, StreetView, and Sun).


• Added ability to enable/disable street view in GENavigationControl.


• Added ability to enable/disable automatic transition to ground level view in GEOptions.


• Added ability to enable/disable 3D tree rendering through new layer LAYER_TREES.


• Added altitudeOffset functionality to KmlLinearRing and KmlLineString. This allows ability to set altitude for all vertices through a single function call.


• Added copyAsLookAt and copyAsCamera conversion to KmlAbstractView.

Of course you can also check out the KML reference, check for things marked New!, and the Earth API release notes for more info.

Posted by Mano Marks, Geo APIs Team