Google Earth 4 Released Out Of Beta
Google has taken version 4 of Google Earth out of beta, making it the default install of Google’s wildly-renowned globe mapping software. Most Google-thusiasts have been running version 4 in beta since it was released back in June, and have enjoyed a number of useful new features, like a revamped, smaller navigation UI (though some hate it), the ability to draw directly on the map, and controlling the software with a video game controller and support for 3D textured buildings. Unless you can’t stand the new interface, it is worth upgrading to.
You can, of course, still download Google Earth 3, if that’s your type of thing.
Is it just me, or is Google Earth’s memory footprint getting out of hand? I turned off all the layers except terrain and 3D buildings and zoomed down to street level, and wound up with 626,068 kilobytes of memory used up. Meanwhile, Windows Live Maps 3D, which has better textured 3D buildings that you don’t have to download one at a time (and runs in a web browser) peaked at 377,592. In fact, I’ve seen Google Earth top two gigabytes of RAM used, although that may have been the fault of one of the beta versions.
