Post #375306 by The Gnomon on Tue, Apr 22, 2008 8:38 AM

Then you'll love Google Earth. I've been running Google Earth Plus for a long time (might get Pro soon). There is a free version. Plus only costs $20 a year. In Google Earth you can "fly" from place to place, you can create tours, and do lots of stuff with it. The Plus version lets you print out at higher resolution and the Pro version at the highest resolution.

When you generate driving directions between places, you can run a tour of the route. It will "fly" you from each turning point to the next throughout the entire trip. It would take a lo-o-o-ong time to summarize the features of Google Earth. Anyway, if you like Google maps, you'll definitely want Google Earth.

Here is the view I get when I launch it. I have my settings to view roads, geographical borders, place names, etc. It only shows you certain ones when you drill into certain altitudes where they are allowed to reveal themselves. There are innumerable defaults that can be changed to suit your preferences. For example you can change the altitude that a flight takes during a tour and the angle of view.

I've double clicked on my office, so it will begin to descend to that location. I'll stop it along the way a few times.

Here we are moving in toward the Eastern US.

Here we are approaching the Greater Washington National Capital Area & Vicinity.

This is a view of Reston, VA just outside of Washington to the west.

And here is my office complex (Plaza America) which includes a shopping center where there's a Starbucks (of course), a Food Whole, and a Michael's craft store, plus a few eateries and other stores.

[ Edited by: The Gnomon 2008-04-22 08:43 ]