# KML Tour creator



## Martin22 (Aug 3, 2009)

Just wanted to share a tool that will let you re-live and share your rides virtually using Google Earth. This site will convert your KML or GPX track file into a KML virtual tour file. You can then view your tour within a web browser if you have the Google Earth plugin installed or you can download the new KML file and open it with Google Earth itself.

http://krolik.net/KMLTours/


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## bellullabob (Jan 8, 2004)

really cool.....


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Eh...not that great, really. No music...perspective never changes...and the beginning of each one is a bunch of crap that just makes you motion-sick.

I did one about a year ago....a combination of flybys, changing perspectives at panoramas and such, background music, and seeing an ACTUAL track. I'd post it but it's a huge file and I'm not going to create an account at vimeo just to post it here.


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## Martin22 (Aug 3, 2009)

NateHawk said:


> Eh...not that great, really. No music...perspective never changes...and the beginning of each one is a bunch of crap that just makes you motion-sick.
> 
> I did one about a year ago....a combination of flybys, changing perspectives at panoramas and such, background music, and seeing an ACTUAL track. I'd post it but it's a huge file and I'm not going to create an account at vimeo just to post it here.


I think you are missing the point. This is an automated tool that takes your GPS coordinates and automatically creates a tour out of them. I'm sure you did an excellent job putting together your tour last year, but my guess is that YOU DID IT MANUALLY by recording your keyboard controlled "flying" session in Google Earth itself. If I am wrong, please share which tool you used to convert your GPS tracks and how you did it. I'm sure others here would benefit from your kind knowledge sharing. Did it take you days to do? Not everyone has as much free time on their hands. This tool creates a virtual tour in seconds. The quality is as good as the accuracy of the input data provided. If the tour that you created had issues with accuracy maybe it was the GPS accuracy / signal quality. Which tour did you create on KML Tours?

This tool lets you customize your vantage point by setting the tilt, range, altitude + mode, fly mode, and timing / accuracy. The picture provided of the camera model helps explain how things work. One thing that doesn't work out too well is "doubling back" and tight switchbacks if you set a high range and choose a camera angle from too low down to the ground. You'll end up swinging around too much when your heading changes drastically. Don't do this and you won't get motion-sick. The site contains user uploaded content, so the quality differs with each user's capability, understanding of the camera model, and data quality. Track data can come in various intervals and heading change magnitudes and Google Earth sat image resolution and quality can vary greatly from location to location and make a huge impact on quality too. This all means that no tour is like another. If you put in a good quality clean tour and adjust your camera model parameters to match your situation and environment, you can have a good quality tour created in a few mouse clicks.

Also, you can add music afterwords to any tour: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1249758&page=1
However, distributing your tour with embedded music can make it huge and therefore impractical when it comes to sharing online. 
KML Tours hosts your tour for you for free without having to create an account. I guess that's better than vimeo.

If you want your perspective to change, you can create multiple small tours and splice them together manually. The Google KML spec is very well documented for this type of customization. Again, many cool things can be done manually if you have the time to invest; the problem is that most don't.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

I used a variety of applications. I did need to manually record a portion, for which I did not have a GPS track. I could have done better, because the speed is a little jumpy. But primarily, I used ArcGlobe for the track. I then brought my 3d flyovers into Windows Movie Maker, added the music, added photos, and tweaked the timing.

I viewed some already-made tours posted on the site. The perspective starts out in space (pretty standard), but the transition from space to ground level on all the ones I viewed was TERRIBLE. Then, it took a long time for the resolution of the imagery to catch up, so part of the tour was rendered useless. It was like that on all the files I viewed.

What if I wanted to play with camera angle, height, and those things? I've gotta upload the track all over again every time I want to try something new. 'tis better to handle all that on your local PC before you finalize everything.

My file is 65MB...actually within YouTube's criteria, so I will upload it and post it since I already have an account there. This was an assignment for a GIS course at the master's level. The prof thought it good enough to share with the class.

My point was that your little online tool doesn't necessarily make for an interesting vid. A dead silent flyover is pretty dull. I found myself ready to turn the playback off on the ones I did view...there was nothing keeping me interested. Furthermore, I didn't see a visual representation of the track file in the flyover. I looked at one in the desert, and you could see the trail on the imagery...but where I ride that's not possible, so seeing the track would really be nice.


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## Martin22 (Aug 3, 2009)

Again, not many people have the time to invest in creating a movie using professional expensive software like your little video assignment. I'm not exactly sure if I agree with you that the main purpose of virtual tours is entertainment. My guess is that for most people it is more often then not focused on being informational. Flying high over freeways for the first full minute of your video wasn't entertaining either though. If I wanted that, I'd look at a map. In fact, most of your "tour" is from such a high elevation that it is very difficult to see any detail. In other words, it all looks the same and bland. I think most people, especially on this site, would more be interested in seeing trial detail so that they could gauge the trail: does it look super steep (will I have to HAB a lot), is the terrain interesting, how much downhill will I get, etc. Some of the tours on KML Tours are from as low as 100 feet up. 

Which track/tour did you upload again? You should have seen an "Edit" button on your tour to change the view properties (including showing the actual track) without having to re-upload your tour again. These options are only available to the tour creator.

If you were having trouble with the tour images "catching up", you may want to look into getting a better/faster internet connection. I haven't experienced any issues in viewing tours over various broadband connections in smaller sizes (via the plugin), but when I run in full screen 1920x1200 mode using my laptop's wireless, it does show some sluggishness. One thing I read on the Google Earth website is that GE will cache your images, so if they didn't load right the first time you played the tour, rewind it and play it again. It should look much better the subsequent time.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Martin22 said:


> Again, not many people have the time to invest in creating a movie using professional expensive software like your little video assignment. I'm not exactly sure if I agree with you that the main purpose of virtual tours is entertainment. My guess is that for most people it is more often then not focused on being informational. Flying high over freeways for the first full minute of your video wasn't entertaining either though. If I wanted that, I'd look at a map. In fact, most of your "tour" is from such a high elevation that it is very difficult to see any detail. In other words, it all looks the same and bland. I think most people, especially on this site, would more be interested in seeing trial detail so that they could gauge the trail: does it look super steep (will I have to HAB a lot), is the terrain interesting, how much downhill will I get, etc. Some of the tours on KML Tours are from as low as 100 feet up.
> 
> Which track/tour did you upload again? You should have seen an "Edit" button on your tour to change the view properties (including showing the actual track) without having to re-upload your tour again. These options are only available to the tour creator.
> 
> If you were having trouble with the tour images "catching up", you may want to look into getting a better/faster internet connection. I haven't experienced any issues in viewing tours over various broadband connections in smaller sizes (via the plugin), but when I run in full screen 1920x1200 mode using my laptop's wireless, it does show some sluggishness. One thing I read on the Google Earth website is that GE will cache your images, so if they didn't load right the first time you played the tour, rewind it and play it again. It should look much better the subsequent time.


LOL, you're a tool. The assignment was to illustrate different techniques to accomplish the flyby. I did both manual flyby for the highway part, and the automatic for following the track. It had to have a minimum length...and frankly slowing it down so much that the trail alone filled that time would have been painfully boring. And while you may not be interested in how to get from Nacogdoches to Big Bend, I do go to school in Nac and therefore the highway part is relevant. It follows the Google Maps street directions from here to there.

Furthermore, the altitude of the camera was chosen to view terrain, rather than imagery detail. Unless you spend boatloads of money, imagery is generally weak. The part in Big Bend had higher res imagery loaded, however, but only what the school was willing/able to purchase for the area. Such remote areas frequently don't get great aerial imagery coverage in the first place. Those are reserved for more densely habitated locations.

And as for my internet connection...nothing I can do there. I have the fastest cable line available in my podunk town. Connection tests show 6669kbps, which is considered comparable to a T3 line. I'm also pushing a 28" widescreen 1080p display. Quad core processor and a 500mb vid card. The computer is no slouch, either.

For example, I just looked at the Los Pensaquitos Canyon tour. Smooth zoom to start, but the imagery doesn't catch up loading until after the tour begins following the track (yes, that part does improve on second loading, but having to do that is lame). Then, the track begins way too fast and then slows to a crawl. When it gets into the hills, the camera randomly spins around in circles. Then it does more superfast flying, and then more crawling with random camera spins. No ability to change any settings to view it differently. The camera swings and fast flying variations appear to be due to imperfections in the gps track, but there doesn't seem to be any way to fix that. Now I realize mine had some issues with that, but that was during the manual part, and keeping the timing smooth with the software I had was challenging to say the least. But I at least could tweak that part.

For example, I uploaded this today for example purposes. This was a slow canoe trip on a slow river. The camera goes into random spinning mode again. Can't fix that with the limited options this site allows. I can speed it up to fix the low speed general movement, but the camera still spins (except at a nausea-inducing speed). Suckage. And at the beginning, there's time the GPS sat still...so the camera sits still. Also suckage. GPS track files are almost never perfect, and so the way this program handles them, reading EVERY LAST DETAIL and playing it as-is (adding its own interpretation with those spins) really stinks.

This? eh. I think 3d flybys really are about entertainment. If I want to check out a trail, I'll look at a topo map or a simple aerial image. Guiding someone through on a flyby means they don't really have much ability to control HOW they see the trail. They only see it the way you want them to. That approach is great for entertainment value, but if someone is scoping out a ride they want to do, they want to scope it out their own way. And speaking of entertainment, the inability to add sounds of any sort, the inability to throw in photos (showing a different perspective than the map offers) falls short. Letting me download a regular kml of the trip is fine for letting me visualize on my own terms, but it doesn't let you download any sort of format you can even chop up, put to music, and throw into a video editing program.

And yeah, you can do a manual flyby with Google Earth. A little practice will have you able to deal with a lot of the issues with this tool. And if you want a better option, Google Earth Pro can handle it. Still, other free options can still handle it better than the site you post: http://freegeographytools.com/2007/animated-flybys-using-3dem National Geographic Topo! can create 3D flybys with topo map overlays, also. You don't have to spend thousands to do it, though that certainly makes it easier. But there are other free options and not-so-expensive options that do the job much better.

The idea of a flyby is fine, but such a tool needs more flexibility than the one you posted. The one I linked to outputs to an .avi file, so you can bring it into a video editing program, add music, photos, transitions, or whatever. The one you posted presumes an awful lot and gives you a buggy output you can't do anything else with. With an .avi, you could edit out buggy portions, work in some transitions, and nobody would ever notice. Flybys are not an exact science...they're more like art.


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## Martin22 (Aug 3, 2009)

Wow, you don't take criticism too well there Jerky. I'm sure you got a good grade on your project, I was just saying that I didn't think it was entertaining. I wouldn't want to share it with friends, or call over my wife and make a bag of pop corn or anything like that. I'm still not exactly sure why you posted it here anyhow; to show off your "artistic" skills? Who cares. How informative or reusable is this to anyone?

Just to clarify, yes, every last detail is played back. If you put in crap, you get crap. The tour that you upload was crap. You had your GPS set to record a waypoint per time interval, not per distance moved. This probably isn't needed as most GPS timestamp each waypoint anyhow and just wastes space.

Take a look at the tour that you uploaded. The parameters have been changed to smooth it out. I don't think it is any more see-sawy than your video at this point. It took me 3 seconds to do, your video took you how long?

As far as not being able to do anything with it afterward, the link that you provided actually negates that claim. Both Google Earth Pro and FRAPS will let you make it into a movie if you wish. Further, you can open the file in Google Earth (FREE) to add placemarks, more trails, voice, whatever else.

But being from a small town in Texas your not dense, right? Of course not. That "IS" in your Masters "GIS" degree stands for Information Systems, right? So I'm sure your definitely not the kind of guy that would be afraid to roll up his sleeves and tweak the XML that a KML file is comprised of. So I guess the possibilities for you are endless then Mr. Know-it-all.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Well being that vid was my first experience with the process, you might understand a bit. More can be done to improve the entertainment value through experience and additional multimedia content. It's simply there to illustrate some things that can be done if you can put the flyby into video editing software. I had a week to learn the software involved, obtain data, and then construct the flyby. That must seem like an eternity to you, but this was just a weekly assignment, not a semester project. Most of the time spent on the project was spent in video editing attempting to get timing figured out. The flyby stuff was pretty straightforward.

Ideally, I'd have loved to put some helmet-cam video in there interspersed with the flyover. But I lacked such video to add. Had the assignment been for any location, not just Big Bend, I could have collected more photos, video, and GPS data.

That's fabulous you could clean up the flyby with the file I uploaded. So how about some tips on the various settings you can change? A few of the ones are given some pretty obscure names and they have ZERO explanation on what they actually do. Figuring out which one would speed up everything was enough. Then I had to figure out what the values in the box means. No explanation of that, either...that a bigger number makes it slower and a smaller number makes it faster. The website is hardly user-friendly and expects you to already be an expert. I see the numbers you changed, but I still don't know what value accomplishes what.

Not sure how the file I uploaded was crap. It was a canoe trip down a slow river. It took about 8hrs. I had a consistent GPS signal the whole way. It did not have any extraneous points going off somewhere like many that I see uploaded on various sites. It was solid data for the river. Why should it matter what kind of data collection frequency I use? 

Not sure how the link I posted supposedly supports your claim. I already pointed out that there were other options (including GE Pro, NG Topo!, and the free program that link was for) that make flybys and output files you can actually work with. That's fine if the program outputs a kml that I can further edit by adding waypoints and such after the fact. That's not what I'm talking about. You can't take these 'tour' files and import them to a video editing program to further edit them by adding music, pictures, additional video. You can't then embed these tours into a forum or social networking site (like how I was able to embed my video flyby).

Because I live in a small town in TX currently does not mean I'm an idiot. I've lived here a whole year now and you don't have a clue where I've been previously or where I grew up. Watch what you say. Unfortunately for you, my GIS education does not include XML programming. That subject matter isn't even taught. The more advanced coursework does go into a little Python, Arc Macro Language and C++. But since it's a minor for me, not a major, I get a little bit of that, not a lot. We don't play with KML files. We work with shapefiles, geodatabases, and imagery.

I was being constructive offering criticisms where due, and suggestions. If you don't want to take them seriously, that's your problem. But here's a summary of what your site needs:

Better explanations of what each "Advanced Option" does for you. A help section would be nice. A lot of the courses could be significantly cleaned up with those options as you've demonstrated...if only people knew what they did.

Output as an .avi for additional editing, especially so zoom levels could more quickly resolve so you don't have to watch it twice to make use of image caching. Realize that the way you think your site should be used may differ from your users or potential users. Give people the options to use it how they want. You've covered people who currently use it the way you want...but you're excluding people like myself who would want to do more. 

While other sites or programs do provide more options, yours at least makes part of the process fairly quick: the generation of an automated flyby. Manual flybys can be useful for some other things, but it definitely is quicker if you have a GPS file to have a program automate the process. The fact I couldn't see how to accomplish some tasks quickly and easily on your site (and I have some experience with the process) points to the fact that you really need to make it easier for users to understand the advanced options. That addressed some of my concerns and troubles. I see the changes you made, but have no idea why. Having explanations/tutorials available would be a significant improvement. 

Being able to save/export into a video format increases options exponentially. Like I mentioned before, you can add background music, photos, additional helmet cam video, stuff like that. The options are limited only by one's imagination (hence why this is art, not science). One limitation would be that rendering into video formats is quite intense on the computer hardware. That was a very time consuming step of the class project I did. It depended on video quality settings to a large degree, but also the length of the flyby. You could streamline the process by only offering fairly low quality options. For a web-based app to be rendering HD quality video would just be insane.


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## Martin22 (Aug 3, 2009)

Thanks for your constructive feedback this time. I apologize for anything that I said that was offensive.... it was late and I didn't appreciate you insulting me by calling me a tool. That was unnecessary. So I guess I over-reacted a bit.

Unfortunately some of the shortcomings that you mentioned (like the imagery not being able to catch up) are factors of Google Earth itself, therefor not much can be done about them.

You are right about the lack of documentation. Hopefully this will be remedied soon.

The data collection frequency is relevant in that it is what caused the "stopping in place" for some time at the beginning of your tour. I don't think you would have had this issue using "waypoint per every X feet/meters".

I don't think this tool will ever be able to create AVI (or any movie format) files itself. In addition to the required server resource issues that you mentioned, I'm sure this would also be a licensing issue for Google. The point that I was trying to make is that you can take the KML output of this tool and load it into GE/GE Pro to enhance it further as you like. You can then save the "enhanced" version back out as a KML file to share that way or GE Pro/FRAPS can be used to make it into a video.

As for being able to embed, unfortunately the Google Earth Plugin is licensed per site, so there is no way to make one "cut-n-paste" this html code to make it work in all sites widget. Maybe this will be something the Google changes in future releases. If you wanted to embed the tours in your own site, you can apply for a Google Earth/Maps API key for your site and set this up fairly easily.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Martin22 said:


> Thanks for your constructive feedback this time. I apologize for anything that I said that was offensive.... it was late and I didn't appreciate you insulting me by calling me a tool. That was unnecessary. So I guess I over-reacted a bit.
> 
> Unfortunately some of the shortcomings that you mentioned (like the imagery not being able to catch up) are factors of Google Earth itself, therefor not much can be done about them.
> 
> ...


The export into .avi (or some other format) deals with the imagery loading issue, at least with the software I used. IIRC, it had that issue when first loading prior to export also...but after I had the .avi, everything went smoothly.

I use the recording method that I do with the GPS because alternatives do not capture the details I want. I must have turned the GPS on while I set up my gear on this occasion. It's nice with the Edge that one can turn the GPS on and let it settle on the signal, and it won't record until you push start. This was with my handheld that has no such option. I am assuming that there was some setting that allowed the flyby to only consider every x point from the trackfile? Sort of a smoothing algorithm to fix slow sections of various sorts. The program I used for my vid allowed for something along those lines. It was a major challenge with the manual part of my flyby. I would have preferred to set waypoints along the route I wanted the camera to follow and have camera speed controlled a little better. But I didn't have the time I wanted to explore such things.


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