Google Earth is one of the best free items on the internet. Go here to download:

Google Earth

Then type in "Lolkisale, Tanzania" or "Maun, Botswana" or your home address and get a 3D aerial photo of the locale. If you have the GPS coordinates of where you killed that big buffalo, you can scroll to the exact spot and get an overhead view. Unfortunately, Africa is lower resolution, but I can see individual out-buildings on the view of our deer lease.

I'm guessing this is but a cheap imitation of what the NSA has at their fingertips.

Go have some fun.

Try going to the Grand Canyon and "flying" through it. I've been trying to find Nyamandlovu, Zimbabwe. I'll zero in on it and hopefully find my old "camp".

-Steve

Forrest,

That is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Thanks.

Google Earth is indeed one of the best pieces of free software I've ever seen but I became spoiled by the resolution in urban areas and expected it would be the same for rural areas. Unfortunately, as stated above, that's not the case. It's still pretty cool, interactive software.

Hot Diggity...I can see my yellow truck in the drive way.

Cool, Forrest...real cool!

A bloke at work put me on to this a few days ago, I downloaded it as soon as I got home.
Tons of fun!!

What a wild site; I looked up old hunting sites and looked over fishing sites for next week. Will definitely pass it on.

Good luck and good shooting,
Eterry

I've been using it for a few months now and it's really cool. Has anyone paid for any of the upgrades to see what effect it has on the resolution? The free version is useful even though you can only get no closer than a few thousand feet above ground in many instances in order to keep it clear. It's different depending on where in the world you are looking. Some areas have high detail and resoluation while others do not.

Yes it is great ///

The only down side is those with alterior motive have a good overview without crooking their way into a country ..

The price of freedom and democracy that we are all screaming at the top of our voice for

Peter

quote:

The only down side is those with alterior motive have a good overview

__________________

Boy, talk about, Peter!!! I just saw the wife's boyfriend drive away! In my Tahoe, too.

DB

Great fun. Too bad the Africa resolution isn't the same as some of the areas in the USA and Europe. Still, I typed in Mwadui, Tanzania where I have a team of engineers and it zoomed right in on it.

I've been using it for a couple months too... its one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The best part about it is you can overlay other maps on top of the satallite images... i.e. I overlaid a BLM ownership map on the area where I hunt, and faded it back so you can just barley see the outline of the property boundaries... It really helps in determining the visual location of property boundaryies, such as the property bondrary is close to this ridge or lines up with this fence line, etc... I belive you can overlay any map and stretch and rotate it to be prett close in scale. Absoluely saved me countless hours!!! I've also overlaid USGS maps for more detail... Absoluetly wonderful tool!

See these mapping sites also. Good sites similar to Google, great for directions and live camera shots in larger cities.

A9 Maps

MSN Virtual Earth

Paul

This morning on Fox news they had the dem. congresman from Queens (NYC) and he was wringing his hands about this and suggested congress should have hearings and pass some more laws about this tool that could be used for all kinds of sinister activities. My computer is not up to date enough to use but I want to update and give it a try. Oh yea the congressman was concerned about stalkers watching a woman leaving her home and he could the move on her - yea.

Forrest,

Thanks a lot. Between one of my project managers and me I figure your post cost me about eight manhours in lost productivity yesterday.