Control Google Earth from Manipulate

One reader asks: could one drive Google Earth from a set of controls within a Manipulate? The answer is yes, however, I only know how to do it with Windows platform through Google Earth COM API. In the past, this issue is covered in this post: Control Google Earth from Mathematica.

The example here is very simple, rotate the camera from Manipulate.

Needs["NETLink`"]
InstallNET[];
(* start up goolge earth *)
ge = CreateCOMObject["GoogleEarth.ApplicationGE"];
(* get the camera object *)
cam = ge@GetCamera[0]
(* define a function to rotate the camera *)
runcam[{lat_, lon_}] := Module[{},
   cam@FocusPointLongitude = lon;
   cam@FocusPointLatitude = lat;
   ge@SetCamera[cam, 2]];

Manipulate[
runcam[{lat, lon}]; {lat, lon}, {lat, -50, 50}, {lon, -180, 180}]

Visualize underground structures with texture mapping

The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) has many radar images which show underground ice bed elevations both in north pole and south pole regions.

In the following image, the red line marks the ice bed underground (6000 actually means 6000 m under the earth surface). Radar signal is acquired from the plane, each image has the flight path information (red line in the second image).

The task here is to combine flight path and radar image to display 3D underground information directly. It can be achieved in the following two steps with Mathematica 8’s texture support:

f = BSplineFunction[flightpath]; (* flight path {{x1,y1}, ..{xn, yn}} *)

ParametricPlot3D[Flatten@{f[x], z}, {x, 0, 1}, {z, -6000, 1000},
BoxRatios -> 1, BoundaryStyle -> Green, Mesh -> None, Axes -> None,
PlotStyle -> {Texture[radarimage]}, Lighting -> "Neutral", ImageSize -> 600]

The radar image has to be cropped in advance, and we only keep part as deep as 6000 meters. There are some rough parts on the image, especially close to the boundaries (check out the update for the solution), the general quality is good enough. We can make the same thing for another radar image, then put them together, make the following product to show the intersection. It is not perfect solution, however, it is nice to have something in just several lines. 

No notebook this time.

Updates: Someone asks how to get rid of zig-zag boundaries.

It can be done with two options, one is PlotPoints, the other MaxRecursion, check the ParameterPlot3D documentation for the details.

For example,  MaxRecursion –> 4