A couple of weeks ago I put together a small collection of Google Earth airline route maps for various countries. These work interactively, using mouse hovers over airport Icons to activate and reveal destinations.

The previous files each had fewer than a thousand routes, and were fairly limited in scope. So, I was wondering, how effectively do these scale up ? As it turns out, surprisingly well.

The following Google Earth networklink opens a file including 13287 scheduled routes within the USA, between 714 airports.

Flight Maps (USA) (2 MB)

Data is from the US Bureau of Transportation’s most recent monthly flight stats: October 2007. Strictly speaking it’s not really a route map in the same way as my other files - rather, it’s a map showing where scheduled airlines flew that particular month.

Viewing Suggestions:

• Because of the high number of placemarks and long distances involved, this all looks much better full screen [F11].
• To permanently lock on a set of lines:
  1. Right click on the entire file, a folder or airport,
  2. Go to Properties,
  3. Select the Style, Color tab,
  4. Then increase the line opacity.
  5. Hit OK.
  6. The only way to fully reverse this, and get the mouse over effect back,  is to re-download or re-open the file.  To do this within GE: right-click on the root folder: US Flight Maps, and select refresh.
• Don’t forget you can hold down the middle mouse button and swing the view around while keeping the flightpaths displayed.

Two new additions to the family of animated Solar System diagrams for Google Earth Sky.

These Orrerys combine KML Screen Overlays to display a top-down view of current planet positions in the top left corner of the screen, and run on a 3 month time-loop alongside the default Our Solar System Layer.

To squeeze everything into the corner of the window, the original animation showed the planets spread evenly apart - only giving part of the story about relative locations.  Here I’ve added two further options which split the Solar System in two,  and display accurate average orbital distances:

• A chart showing the positions of the Inner (Terrestrial) planets; Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
• Another for the Outer (Jovian) planets;  Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, plus the Earth for reference.

These are available alongside the original through a single KML Networklink. 

Planets in Orbit (60kB)

- Download the file and select the option you want displayed.

- Then click the Time Slider play button.

If the networklink is stored under My Places, the file will automatically update either if Google change the time span of their planets layer, or when I add  anything else - e.g. a diagram including the Moon.

This is a Google Earth, time animated version of the U.S .ZIP map in my post from a couple of days ago. Based on Robert Kosara’s ZipScribble maps. 

The KML file contains 43,000 lines connecting every ZIP code in the country, TimeStamped in ascending numerical order.  

Just a slight warning: This is a very large and detailed time animation. It runs smoothly on my 3-year old PC (the little GIF above is from a real time capture), but may not work on some computers.

ZIP Scribble Map (USA) (650kB)

Viewing the File

• Hit the play button in the Time Control, top right of the screen, or just drag the slider left or right. 
• Expand the time span to increase the number of ZIP Codes displayed at any time.
• Deselect folders in the left sidepanel to alter the scope of the animation.
• Change the visualization to a cumulative animation by selecting clamp beginning of time window in the time option dialog  - accessed through the white clock icon to the left of the time slider.

and…

• The numbers shown under the Time Control are 5-digit ZIP codes without the leading zeros.
• States are different Colours. No significance in the choice of colour - it’s just for contrast with one another and the terrain.
• White lines indicate the sequence jumping a State boundary.

P.S.  for a different take on visualizing ZIPs,  check out Ben Fry’s  Java, zipdecode.

About a year ago, Robert Kosara at eagereyes.org published a fascinating set of visualizations demonstrating the overall structure of ZIP (and post) codes in various countries, for obvious reasons he called them ZipScribble maps. Robert compiled  PDF maps of the USA,  and a dozen more countries. 

The concept he uses is remarkably straightforward:

 1) Plot the centroid of every ZIP code area onto a map.
 2) Join these with lines, dot-to-dot, in ascending numerical (or alphabetical) order.

I know several people did similar things for various parts of the world, but I don’t think anyone ever published one of these in KML (?)

Anyway, as you can see from the picture at the top of the post, inspired by Robert’s maps I’ve compiled a visualization for Google Earth, showing a complete set of 43,000 U.S. ZIP codes.  Bordering States are shown in different colours.  White lines indicate where the sequence jumps across a State boundary.

It’s interesting to combine the file with Google Earth’s default Borders and Labels layer to see how the organization of the codes relates to the underlying geography.

Download the file here:

ZIP Scribble Map (USA) (320kB)

There’s a chance this one might cause problems on some computers - 40,000 data points is a lot of information for GE to handle .   Before switching on all the States (only a quarter are on by default) it’s probably wise to close any other KML files, or complex layers like Weather and 3D buildings.

Data Source:

1999 U.S. Postal Service ZIP Codes (U.S . Census website)

Where are the busiest commercial passenger airports in the USA, and how are they distributed across the country ?

This Google Earth KML file mashes up a geographic database of FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) airport codes,  with passenger boarding totals (enplanements) for the year 2006.

Download the file here:

2200 Airports (USA) (150kB)

Icon dots are scaled in size according to number of passengers, Atlanta-Hartsfield being the biggest. Similarly, the colours run through dark blue to red - Atlanta the reddest.

• Hover the mouse over each dot to see the passenger totals and airport name. 
• Double click an Icon for information on where it ranks amongst the list of the busiest, and how the stats break down into scheduled and unscheduled boardings. 
• Navigate up and down the league table using the arrows either side of the ranking position.
• Restrict the range of airports shown by turning off folders in the left sidepanel.

Note:  There’s a chance GE might slow down some older machines with this file open - I think it’s worthwhile seeing all the information on screen at once with this one,  no attempt to dynamically limited which parts of the KML are shown at any one time (Regions)

References:

• FAA Passenger Boarding Data
• FAA Airport Data (Form 5010)