Google Earth Drop Zone Project -- Ideas and Discussion

[darkwing 4]

Quote

Skydive Miami. Check out the canopies AND shuttle in the landing area Amazing detail

I thought you meant Space Shuttle. No room for it on a grass strip. Where is the landing area in relation to the airport? Ditto the kmz.

DZ seems to be here: 25.6089947N, 80.4758894W

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[OSOK 0]

My bad File attached.

BTW, the Perris file seems to be empty when GE opens it.

[darkwing 4]

Interesting, because that isn't the location shown on their website, as linked from the DZ.com dropzone database. It shows a grass strip, at the coordinates I posted a couple of messages above.

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[OSOK 0]

Where did you get that loc from?

[IanHarrop 37]

Quote

Where did you get that loc from?

he said "as linked from the DZ.com dropzone database"

Look here http://www.dropzone.com/dropzone/Detailed/316.shtml

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[OSOK 0]

Weird... that's really a glider field... dunno what that's about. The actual DZ is SW of that field, if you follow the canal South, you'll see the airport on the right side just off of it.

[kjarv 0]

A few Dropzones in Italy--- My favorite is Skydive Tortuga in Arezzo; Great Vibe; good food, Rides to 15k, awesome pace, and in the Chianti region of italy...

[McDragon 0]

Hi

Which ones are missing from my list - just so I know which to add :-)

[Muffy 0]

um, how about some 3D Google tracks of skydiving at SkydiveToronto.com in Ontario Canada?

http://tinyurl.com/277okc

[darkwing 4]

Purple asked me to post this on the Google Earth DZ project, so I'll put it here, and at the
Google Earth DZ Place

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[scuba5k 0]

New York: Skydive Long Island

[Eule 0]

The site has been updated. There are 155 dropzones listed.

I did this update on Tuesday so it doesn't yet have the two entries posted by darkwing and scuba5k. I should get those added by the end of the week.

In response to some questions...

McDragon: Your list for the UK had more dropzones than I had. All of the ones I had were already in your list, and your list had a few dropzones that I didn't have yet.

OSOK: I checked the individual file for Perris and Perris' entry in the big file of all dropzones and both of them worked for me. I also manually unzipped the file for Perris only and the contents look OK to me.

This thread also got a mention on this week's show on Skydive Radio.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[OSOK 0]

How long before this becomes a sticky?

[OSOK 0]

Hey, just heard the show... my DZ has canopies on the ground right after landing... I'll post a pic.

http://ronin.redback.inficad.com/osok/sites/misc/canopies.jpg

[scuba5k 0]

Thanks Eule.

[Eule 0]

The site has been updated. There are 157 dropzones listed.

For this update, I added the entries posted by darkwing and scuba5k.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[Beatnik 2]

Adventure Skydiving in Canada

[tucoxn 0]

Skydive Orange (in Orange, VA)
Skydive Mesquite (in Mesquite, NV)
Duanesburg Skydiving Club (in Duanesburg, NY)
and
Skydive Pennsylvania (in Western PA)

Skydive Orange is da bomb!

"Moderation in everything - even in moderation!"

[Eule 0]

The site has been updated. There are 163 dropzones listed.

Beatnik provided the entry for Manitoba, while tucoxn provided the entries for Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. I also added one that was sent via PM.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[OSOK 0]

bump

[dorbie 0]

YOU guys know you can create your own high resolution client side images and all sorts of informational overlays for your dropzones right? If there's no high resolution data you can simply add it, take an image as nadir as possible and just drag & drop it into the Google Earth window.

You will then be able to position it. PNG images with alpha are supported. http links are also supported. See the attached kmz file, it links to an online image using URL but it can also use images from your disk with absolute or relative paths.

Bear with me I need to create this message, get a URL then use that URL for the image location so until I edit this post will have no markup file attached, just the png image.

OK I gave up trying to host the image on dropzone.com, instead I've used a picture hosting site, but this could point to your own web site or it could point to a file on your disk.

If you want DZ information this is a good way to go.

You can add transparency to fade in & out also.

Many more features are possible in kmz files but this is a pretty easy way for anyone to photoshop information about your DZ and share it using Google Earth. I'll post a better example in a few minutes, but the attachment shows some of what is possible :-).

[dorbie 0]

Please don't serve them as zip files, they're small and the way your site has packaged them it completely defeats the ease of use of just clicking on the kmz & auto launching Earth Viewer.

Raw kmz files *PLEASE*.

[dorbie 0]

OK here's a better example. I think you need a decent graphics card to load this one as it is a relatively large texture it could be made smaller with a simple resize at the cost of some crispness, but the client may do this anyway I haven't tested this.

It's a bit busy and quite basic at the same time. You could have multiple overlays stacked and blended, you're only limited by your imagination. You could fade a hazard overlay in then out then fade in alternate landing sites etc. I just threw them all in a single example image.

[Eule 0]

The site has been updated. There are 163 dropzones listed.

No new dropzones this time, but I was advised that Sylt is part of Germany, not Denmark, so I moved it.

For those of you just tuning in, I am collecting all of the files posted in this thread and putting them online at the above site. At that site, you can also download one file that contains all of the dropzones that have been posted so far.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[Eule 0]

Quote

Raw kmz files *PLEASE*.

I think I understand what you want. I have created a test page with different placemark files.

Under Firefox, the first option will open GE but it won't fly to the site. The second option opens GE and flies to the site, which I think is what you're after. The third and fourth options result in the raw KML file being displayed in the browser window.

Under IE, the first and second options just open in XP's native compressed folder (zip file) handler. The third and fourth options result in the raw KML file being displayed in the browser window, just like Firefox.

Another part of the problem may be that I am not completely free to set file associations (on the client end) and that I cannot modify the Content-Type header for the files (on the server end).

Can you check out the test page and advise which option works the way you want?

As far as including images - this has been done for at least one of the placemarks listed. I agree that these can add useful detail, but it's probably better if these can be included in the placemark file instead of hosted remotely. It has already happened once that the remote host became unavailable (a domain name expired and wasn't renewed right away) and this caused error messages in GE when it tried to load that placemark. I had to go in and disable the link to shut up GE - it really wasn't a big deal, but I didn't want to answer lots of questions about why GE was spitting out error messages.

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.