Google Earth is now a 3D time machine

Google has removed what it says is “the biggest update from Google Earth in 2017” with a new 3D time-lapse feature. Entering Google Earth’s new “Timelapse” mode will allow you to fly around the virtual globe with a time slider that shows you satellite images from the last 37 years. Google Earth Timelapse has been around for years as part of the Google Earth Engine (which is a completely separate interface from Google Earth; it’s a weird Google branding thing), but previously it was only available in 2D. Now, Google has mapped all this data to the Google Earth 3D globe, where you can track city building, deforestation, and glacier retreat.

Google Earth Timelapse is not just a huge amount of data; its correct mapping around the globe means correcting images to find artifacts and problems. The company had to get out of the clouds, correct the images for perspective and ensure a perfect transition through zoom levels. Fortunately, it happens that Google has very large computers to handle the task.

The company explains what it took for Timelapse to happen:

Making a Timelapse video the size of a planet required a significant amount of what we call “pixel crunching” in Earth Engine, Google’s cloud platform for geospatial analysis. To add Timelapse animated images to Google Earth, we collected more than 24 million satellite images between 1984 and 2020, representing quadrillions of pixels. It took more than two million hours of processing on thousands of Google Cloud machines to compile 20 petabits of satellite imagery into a single 4.4-therapeutic video mosaic – the equivalent of 530,000 4K videos !

To access the timeline, open Google Earth on the web, click the navigation wheel icon, and press the large “Timelapse in Google Earth” button – or simply go to g.co/timelapse. With Timelapse open, you’ll get a large panel on the right, with a timeline from 1984 to the present, and a few shortcuts to places that Google says are particularly interesting. Google Earth Timelapse still doesn’t work well worldwide. Some places, such as New York City, seem hopeless, even when you set the timer to 2020. Google-highlighted locations, such as Dubai, look much better and play like a game of SimCity.

In addition to providing a new and fun feature in Google Earth, Google is launching Timelapse as a teaching tool for climate change. If you want this information in a more portable format than Google Earth, Google has created a large batch of timelapse videos of the Earth, highlighting “urban sprawl, mining impact, river meanders, mega-city growth, deforestation and agricultural expansion.” The videos are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so you are free to use them for anything you want, as long as you grant Google credit.

As in New York City, there are a few holes in Google data right now. Objects such as 3D buildings do not appear in Timelapse mode, nor does the geometry of the Earth appear to change. However, this 3D time-lapse feature is a platform for the future, and Google says it will “update Google Earth annually with new Timelapse images over the next decade.”

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