Google Earth Guide

Google Earth Pro is now free, download it here.

Download the "Stillwater Navigation Project" KML file from the main page. Once downloaded, double click on the file and it will open in Google Earth. Upon load, the file should fly to the reservoir, and turn on the routes and vector depth map layers.

In the left toolbar, notice that the "Stillwater Nav" layer appears under the "Temporary Places" folder. Right click on the main folder (Stillwater Nav) and select "Save to My Places". The Stillwater Nav menu item will move upward into the "My Places" section. It will now always be available when Google Earth opens.

Use the check boxes next to each entry under "Stillwater Nav" to turn layers on and off. Sometimes, it may be necessary to click a box twice to get it to appear. (The first click loads the file from this site, while the second click will display it on the map. The little green circle on the layer name will move when accessing the file online.)

Click on the arrows to the left of folder entries to expand that folder and show its contents. Click the arrow again to contract the folder and hide the contents.

For the image overlays, adjust the transparency by clicking on the "Adjust Opacity" icon at the bottom of the "Places" pane on the left side, just above the "Layers" pane and next to "Find in My Places" icon that looks like a magnifying glass. Only the layer currently selected will be adjusted. It is quite useful to adjust the opacity back and forth repeatedly to convey and compare "mashed up" layer information.

Practice navigating around the map with both the mouse and the navigation toolbar in the upper right corner of the map. Try turning on an image overlay and the routes or hazards layer, try comparing. Don't be afraid to roll the center mouse wheel. Also try pushing and holding in the center wheel in like a button and moving the mouse around. Try holding the right-click button and moving the mouse around. If the view gets messed up, hit the "R" key, or double click on the "Stillwater Nav" menu option at left. It will reset the view of the map.

In the toolbar at top, click the button with a clock and green arrow to turn on historical imagery. A scroll bar will appear in the upper left of the map. This scroll bar allows the user to scroll through the available historical imagery. Every choice is a little different. Currently October 11, 2008 and November 9, 2011 offer the lowest water levels. Other dates offer better clarity or resolution, but with higher water levels. Turn on the routes or hazards layer with this map data underneath, and it becomes apparent how I went about creating the data. Unfortunately not all the data I utilized for this project is available in this manner. I have placed examples of offline imagery I have located in the image overlays section. However, these are only screenshots, and are not placed perfectly since I did it manually.

Try learning some keyboard shortcuts for navigating.

UPDATES: To ensure the latest updates are being displayed, right click on the "Stillwater Nav" folder and select "Refresh". This replaces the cached version on the computer with the updated data from this website. Or, an even easier way is to close Google Earth and then reopen the program.

If you want to email your own recommendations, you can write them out in detail or use Google Earth to create the KML file and email it to me. There are guides elsewhere on how to add points, draw polygons, draw paths, and add image overlays.

A little something extra:

I've added the 3D polygons layer for viewing in Google Earth. With this layer on, hold the mouse wheel in like a button and drag the mouse slowly down to look at the polygons "on edge" and zoom way in almost to the reservoir surface. Try moving around the lake now, it's almost like driving through a city and having to avoid the buildings. This also allows viewing the hazards layer on top of an image overlay set to 100% opacity, which isn't normally possible due to this bug in Google Earth. This would be really cool on the mobile apps for navigation, unfortunately no mobile apps I'm aware of support extruded polygons. Google Earth also has several bugs where 3D polygons show up as floating above the terrain. There is currently no fix for this.

Try the Google Earth flight Simulator under the Tools menu. You can fly the simulator with any layers on or off. Learn how to fly and the keyboard controls in flight.

NOTE: To customize layers before loading them on a mobile device, download the individual files. For some reason, the network link does not work well with edits, and will often end up with messed up layers of all white hazards or routes.