![]() ![]() I don’t know when Google Maps acquired the capability to display a KML/KMZ file. But although Google Earth could display a GPS track from a KML file, Google Maps couldn’t. Is a lot more work than just clicking a link and instantly seeing the map in your Web browser. And, of course, downloading a file and opening it with Google Earth on your own machine But Google Earth, while very cool in its own way, didn’t contain a topo map view. They could then open that KML file on their own machine, using Google Earth, and thus examine Google Earth’s display of the track, projected onto satellite imagery of the world. It’s part of the great Google Maps cartographic overview of theĪn alternative, in the old days, was to give someone a KML file (or a KMZ file it’s the same thing as a KML except that it’s compressed) containing the track. A Google Maps map is dynamic and interactive. That’s okay, but you can’t scroll or zoom a screenshot what you see is all you see. ![]() I discovered immediately that showing such a record to other people was not at all easy! I had to resort to mapping my tracks on my own computer and then posting a screenshot. I was a late adopter, as usual, but as soon as I had a GPS tracker, I wanted to use it to make a record of the various places I like to go dirt biking. But it does to me, because I remember when this feature of Google Maps didn’t exist. Perhaps this doesn’t seem miraculous to you. ![]() It’s a Google Map, as provided by Google - but the path I followed as I was dirt biking is projected onto it. You can change to Satellite view, to see the area photographed from above. You can zoom out, to get a better sense of what part of the world all this happened in. You can slide the map around, to view more of the route I took. #Google earth gps tracks full#For the full effect, though, you should look, not at a screenshot of the map, but at the map itself to do so, please click this link to view my route as portrayed by Google Maps (don’t forget to come back here afterwards!). Instead of describing where it was and telling you how the road climbed in switchbacks from the Old Ridge Route to a mountain ridge above the Mojave high desert and parallel to the San Andreas fault, I’ll show you: the start of my route looks like this. I went on a little dirt bike ride the other day (that’s “dirt bike” with an internal combustion engine, not a pedaled mountain bike).
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