Google Earth introduced an update to its amazing Timelapse feature which showed Earth from 1984-2018. The cool feature which allowed users to see public infrastructure projects and the rapid pace of urban development is making its way to mobile devices and tablets, starting today.
With the new update to Google Earth Timelapse, Google is adding support for mobile devices and tablets. The new design of the Timelapse interface leverages Material design with simple and clear focus areas for easy navigation on the dataset. It also adds comes with a feature called “Maps Mode” that allows users to toggle to navigate the map using Google Maps.
Up until recently, mobile browsers disabled the ability to autoplay videos, which is critical for Timelapse since it’s made up of tens of millions of multi-resolution, overlapping videos. But, Chrome and Firefox reinstated support for autoplay with the sound muted recently and this has allowed Google to add support for Google Earth Timelapse on mobile and tablets, finally.
Google Earth Timelapse is a global, zoomable time-lapse video that lets anyone explore the last 35 years of Earth’s changing surface from the global scale to the local scale. Timelapse provides a comprehensive picture of our changing Earth including some stunning phenomena.
According to Google, using Google Earth Engine which is the company’s platform for petabyte-scale geospatial analysis, they have combined more than 15 million satellite images to create the 35 global cloud-free images that make up the Timelapse.