Release Notes Google Earth 6.0.2 Out of Beta

Issues Fixed with Desktop Client:

• Fixed a problem where we were over fetching certain kml layer data and running into issuing of using large amounts of memory and slowness during zooming in.
• Fixed an issue of ruler tool disappearing. In 6.0 beta, when measuring using the path tool, if you break to add a place-mark then you go back to the path and click "save" the path and ruler tool disappears all together.
• Fixed an issue with incorrectly measuring long distances. Improved navigation in Street View inside buildings.
• Fixed a crash with elevation profile if there was empty gx:value node in KML.
• Optimized amount of terrain and imagery data fetched while viewing photo overlays.
• Fixed an occasional crash while viewing 3D buildings. Fixed broken fly-to links within local kml files.
• Fixed an issue where new place-marks added were with absolute altitude instead of being clamped to ground.
• Fixed an issue where the title for panoramio pictures no longer appeared when hovering over panoramio icons with your mouse if scale legend was enabled.
• Fixed an issue when there was occasionally a missing wall in 3D buildings.
• Optimized amount of data fetched in Street View.
• Fixed an issue where tilt by holding “shift” and moving the scroll wheel only worked in one direction on Mac.

Issues Fixed in Earth Browser Plug-in:

• Fixed a crash when getNormalStyleUrl was called on a StyleMap referencing a non-existent Style.
• Fixed some issues in using plug-in on https sites.
• Fixed functionality of disabling ground level navigation through API.

New features in Google Earth 6

• Integrated Street View: In Google Earth 6, the Street View experience is now fully integrated. You can enter Street View either by dropping pegman in navigation controls or by zooming in all the way to ground level on places that have Street View.
• 3D Trees:Google Earth now has trees. You can enable trees by turning on the check-box next to the Trees layer under the 3D buildings layer folder. You can see trees in several places, and we will add trees to more places over time.
• Easy to use historical imagery:When you fly to an area where historical imagery is available, the date of the oldest imagery will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. If you click on this date, you’ll instantly be taken back in time to view imagery from that time period.
• Ground-level navigation: In Google Earth 6, in addition to flying around features, you can now walk on the ground to explore either 3D buildings and trees or Street View imagery.
• 3D Measurements in Google Earth Pro:In addition to measuring distances and areas on the ground, you can now measure heights and widths of 3D building and distances from buildings to the ground.

Other changes in Google Earth 6

• Tour Recorder Improvements:With Google Earth 6, the tour recording feature has been improved in several ways. The tour recorder now incorporates the activation of Sunlight, Street View, and Historical Imagery modes into the recorded tour. Additionally, the quality of the recording has been significantly improved, including better motion fidelity and better synchronization with sound recording.
• Earth on PowerPC Mac:We are discontinuing support for Google Earth builds that work on PowerPC Macs. Users of PowerPC macs can still use the Google Earth 5.2 version.
• Earth on OS X 10.4:We are discontinuing support for Google Earth builds that work on 10.4 version of Mac OS X. Users of this version of Mac OS X can still use Google Earth 5.2 version.
• Earth on Windows 2000:We are discontinuing support for Google Earth builds that work on Windows 2000. Users of Windows 2000 can still use the Google Earth 5.2 version.
• Linux Builds:Google Earth Linux binaries are now based on the Linux Standard Base. This improves the compatibility of Google Earth on different Linux distributions, but requires users to have Linux Standard Base installed on their system. If your Linux system does not have LSB, please install it using apt, yum, smart or up2date. As a side effect of moving to LSB, joysticks are currently unsupported.

Issues Fixed

• Addressed issues related to slow internal browser and balloon performance
• Addressed issues related to broken images in balloons seen in Earth 5.2.
• Linux now handles KML in locales where the radix separator isn’t “.”.
• Linux fixes for Flash-induced crashes.

Google Earth Plug-in and API Changes

• Updated API version 1.007
• 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 KmlLineRing. This allows ability to set altitude for all vertices through a single function call.
• Added ability to enable/disable building selection through mouse input in GEOptions
• Added ability to enable/disable building highlight through mouse input in GEOptions
• Added copyAsLookAt() and copyAsCamera() conversion to KmlAbstractView
• Improved performance on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).