This one is for hard core flight simulator users to enjoy, but it should impress anyone: MyFsGoogleEarth is a server that provides live Microsoft Flight Simulator plane positions to Google Earth via network links. (Via this thread in Google Earth Community)

We’ve been making art intended for aerial viewing for thousands of years; there’s the Uffington White Horse from 1,000 BC, the Nazca lines, from 200 BC – 600 AD, and the Native Americanintaglios in the Southwestern US, for example. More recent geoglyphs also abound. The world’s largest is Marree Man, in Australia, made in 1998.

Until recently, these geoglyphs were intended for the gods or for the rare airplane overflight; now Google Earth users are discovering them in droves. Wherever the earth is a canvas for artistic expression, Google Earth is proving to be an ideal viewer.

My guess is that at this very moment there are plans afoot to take advantage of this newfound potential audience. Over the next three years, as satellite images are refreshed, I suspect we will see a boom in geoglyphs. Not just by artists, but also by advertisers, who will soon latch on to the idea that there is free advertising space to be had inside all the world’s mapping applications.

(Wikipedia definition of geoglyph. I’ve added Marree Man and the Nazca lines to my Tagzania feed.)

It’s not the most stunning use of KML ever, but it did get a mention on Slashdot: The Tulsa forecasting office of the NWS is now offering local forecast files wth maximum and minimum temperatures in KML.

Some of the scraping efforts already undertaken by the amateurs are truly useful, but it’s good to see government agencies adopting the format and deeming Google Earth as a popular enough platform to start publishing to. (Thanks, Ron)

Google Maps Explorer is the latest entry in a now crowded field of sightseeing sites, but this one has some great things going for it: Clean design, clever use of categories for easy navigation, the ability to subscribe to individual categories via RSS feeds, sorting by popularity and date, the ability to view the results of searches and categories on an inline Google Map, and the ability to add comments to existing locations. Very nicely executed! Comes with support for Nasa World Wind, Google Maps and Earth, and MSN Virtual Earth. This will definitely keep the other sightseeing sites on their toes.

The Associated Press covers the mini-hysterics in the Netherlands regarding Google Earth.

More commentary from around the blogosphere on the recently added Google Earth images, including some places not mentioned in the semi-official list on Google Earth Community:

Chris Dodo notes that Helsinki has new hi-res maps.

Geared up is postively ecstatic that the clouds have been lifted from Howth peninsula, Northeast of Dublin, whence that blog is authored. Interestingly, they haven’t been replaced by high-resolution images, simply images without cloud cover.

Deadly Bloody Serious isn’t completely happy with the new tiles he got in Sydney.

Patrick Strang notes that Area 51 is now natively visible, while the US government’s executive buildings around the White House and the Capitol are revealed. He has before and after pics too.

Good on Google of responding to (unfounded) criticism of selective censorship by removing those cases of censorship rather than have it be a precedent for censorship elsewhere.

Heiko Hebig in Hamburg notes that his city has gotten a makeover and now sports high-resolution maps… Indeed, over 100 new cities have been added, and the shared layers in Google Earth have also been updated to reflect their state on August 5, according to Google Earth Community’s PenguinOpus, who posts the whole list, including resolutions.

[Update 18:14 UTC: Most of Sydney is finally in hi-res, and Google’s Mountain View campus is now visible at 1 pixel per inch.]