(The following is pure speculation, so feel free to ignore it if you’re here for news)

It’s 2008, and Google Earth has evolved. It now comes with simple SketchUp tools in the free version, and many people are building virtual structures on Google’s Earth. How might this work, practically? Specifically, what happens when several different people want to build on the same spot?

Sources will be plentiful: Already today, Google provides a default layer for its buildings. You can also import structures via static KMZ files, such as those provided by ZNO and Digitally Distributed Environments. These files usually involve a single structure or collection of related structures, because file sizes for KML structures can grow large very quickly.

But there is no reason why 3D structures can’t be returned as part of a dynamic network link that polls your location, so that only the nearest structures are rendered from a much larger library, much as how Google’s building layer manages it now. And so I imagine that a third breed of content provider will emerge, serving up dynamic 3D content across the globe from a large library of available structures.

Who might these content providers be? There’d be an open source movement, of course, with user-contributed content systematically filling in gaps in its library. There’d be free content offered by commercial businesses, funded by virtual billboards and rooftop ads. There’d be pay services, offering premium works for those who want the highest fidelity models. There’d be content offered free by architecture firms as a way to ply their wares. Real Estate companies would release their beachfront condos onto Google Earth before building them, to generate buzz and sales. Other sources: City councils, hotels, artists making fantasy constructions, roadside franchises, architecture magazines…

Who decides which layer gets precedence in case of an overlap? Google? I don’t think so; I think it will be you, but it will require a control panel interface that lets you rank your 3D content. At the bottom might be Google Earth’s default layer, followed by the free layers, followed by the one or two premium ones you might subscribe to; at the top would be your own creations. But you order them as you wish, and you add only those you like.

Google might of course sell access to its base layer, or offer other layers as default options (for a fee, akin to browsers coming with pre-made bookmarks or Windows coming with pre-made desktop icons). In the end, however, each user’s Earth will be unique.

One further consideration: With OGLE able to copy 3D structures wholesale, it won’t be long before intellectual property battles come to Google Earth. Will there be pirated versions of paid content? Is re-using Washington’s virtual head from somebody’s version of Mount Rushmore fair use? Who owns a virtual 3D model of a famous living architect’s work? The maker of the model, the architect, the architect’s firm, or whoever paid for it to have it in their Google Earth?

Just noticed that photo geocoding app RoboGeo is up to version 3.4 — it can now export your GPS tracklog as AutoCAD 2000 DXF files (in addition to doing ESRI shapefiles, blogged previously).

What’s so special about DXF files? SketchUp supports them. This leads to some interesting possibilities. Thinking aloud, you could, for example, take geocoded pictures of existing buildings, and then try to recreate those buildings inside SketchUp using your tracklogged image locations as vantage points, for comparison. (Caveat: I haven’t tried this.)

De Standaard, Belgium’s paper of record, writes up Google Earth (in Dutch). After namechecking Ogle Earth (wees welkom, landgenoten!), the article points to GeoBrussel, a new service by Brusselnieuws, a Dutch-language local news portal for Belgium’s capital.

GeoBrussel is the best implementation I’ve seen to date of a city-focused service for Google Earth. It’s in Dutch, so I’ll annotate and link directly to the KMZ file… The site comprises a large collection of useful network links, including a virtual helicopter ride over Brussels landmarks; An overlay of Brussels in 1858; the location of all speeding cameras (guaranteed to be a popular download); and Brussels’ subway system.

But the best network link by far (and the one that would gain most from an English version) is the one that puts Brussels’ trendiest bars and restaurants onto Google Earth. These placemarks link to the latest reviews (and are automatically updated). Every city should have one of these, because deciding on a place to eat is one of the most ubiquitous location-sensitive activities the urban dweller performs. (Previously, Ogle Earth reported on similar services in Cape Town and Stockholm, and why they make good business sense.)

Less successful perhaps is the weekly news roundup: It’s a static file, and I like my news fresh. For news, where is nice, but when is more important. Integrating support for live updating will probably require some retooling of the reporting and editing process, however. It’s time to hand journalists GPS trackers, obviously.

• Stars and Stripes reports on a suspect peace symbol discovered on Google Earth’s image of the grounds of the US naval station in Rota, Spain. Nobody fesses up to the deed, and the symbol isn’t there anymore, but notes the magazine, Rota was part of the peacekeeping effort in Liberia and the humanitarian aid to Pakistan after last year’s earthquake.
• Information Week’s article Google Earth Catches On In The Business World is just the kind of article about buzz that creates more buzz. Nothing really new — it was precipitated by last week’s spurt of Google Earth news — but it’s good to see the press taking note of grassroots momentum.
• The most recent issue of the newsletter of the Center for the Study of Architecture/Archaeology has an article entitled Google Earth and Some Practical Applications for the Field of Archaeology. It’s more of an introductory piece, highlighting what uses of Google Earth might be most useful to archaeologists.
• Have you tried figuring out how old the imagery of your house in Google Earth was by looking at the smallest details? You were performing historical analysis, says the Journal of the Association for History and Computing. (This link and the previous one via Swedish science blogger Gustav Holmberg.)
• (Not quite media, but still: Yet another GPS sports tracker supports Google Earth: TrainingPeaks.com)

• Delaware’s Office of State Planning Coordination announces it now offers some of its GIS datasets as KMZ files, and links to them. They always have to be first, don’t they?
• If Microsoft acquires a company, and there is nobody there to blog it, did it really happen? Microsoft bought Vexcel a week ago and forgot to mention it, much as did with Geotango.

  Like Geotango, Vexcel brings photogrammetric knowhow (definition of photogrammetry) to Microsoft’s toolbox. This suggests that Microsoft’s preferred route to populating its Virtual Earth will be via automated processes. Google, on the other hand, seems to be leaning towards user-contributed content, produced with tools like SketchUp.

• Speaking of Sketchup, @Last founder and now Googler Brad Schell responds to the open letter in the forum blogged previously.
• chtiGPS is a GPS tracker for PocketPCs and Smartphones, in French, with data for 7 European countries.
• Turkish online paper Zaman contacts Google with a complaint about a missing border between Turkey and Armenia in Google Earth (and it’s true, it’s missing). The result: “Google, in a statement clarifying the issue to Zaman, accepted that some data in Google Earth is missing and/or incorrect.”

A LifeHacker story currently doing well on Digg highlights this free service, which will track any US flight for you in Google, live:

Closer inspection reveals that the information is in fact provided by fboweb.com, previously featured on Ogle Earth for their airport tracking network links. A trip to fboweb.com led me to their Quick Track, a free service very much like the one dugg above, only that now, you not only get your flight, you also get every nearby flight, live.

Nervous fliers are probably grateful this isn’t yet available on the in-flight entertainment systems.

How could a browser-based solution possibly compete with the 3D graphics of a dedicated program like Google Earth?

Like this.

I’m stunned. I’m getting 60 frames per second on my Mac G5 using OpenGL in a fully responsive highly detailed network-based multiplayer first-person shooter that has wide open vistas… in my web browser. It’s platform independent, and it also supports DirectX.

How? It’s a Macromedia Shockwave game, and it loads a technology called Phosphor, which is now in Beta. Phosphor is built by Rasterwerks, which is really “Nick Kang”, probably a pseudonymous programmer from Germany — though it’s hard to find much detail on the internet as this seems to have been flying under the radar screen. He put up an alpha of Phosphor a year ago that got some web attention.

Until I saw this in action, I did not think it would be possible to build a 3D virtual globe in a browser that would be “good enough.” But the Rasterwerks game is much better than “good enough,” with the added advantage that it requires no separate installation.

Now it makes sense for France’s Géoportail to say they will do 3D mapping in the browser in 2007. Ditto if Microsoft says it will do Virtual Earth in 3D soon.