This is an update to the release notes that have been discovered since the client was released. Please also refer to the release notes installed with the client - they're accessible from the menu Help->Release Notes.


Known Issues Discovered Since Release
-------------------------------------

- The Search / Places / Layers panels may be hidden at startup. This occurs if they were hidden in your old Google Earth 3 client before you upgraded. To workaround this uninstall and reinstall the client. A fixed version of the client will be available soon.

- You may see some performance issues if you have loaded numerous or large overlays or detailed 3D models (especially since models can easily include a lot of geometry and textures). To improve performance, increase your memory cache using the menu Tools->Options..., then switch to the "Caches" tab and adjust the memory cache. Try 64 or 128, the client will limit the amount if you set it too high. The next version of the client will automatically increase this to help address the problem.

- Opening and saving a less commonly used format ("kmz") may not work on certain versions of XP if you have a non-ascii username. If you are using the Japanese or Chinese version of Windows XP and also have a non-ascii username (such as one that uses Kanji characters), then saving something as filetype "kmz" may produce a file of zero size. If you then open that same file you will get a warning that the file is empty. Opening and saving with filetype 'kml' works correctly. A fixed version of the client will be available soon.

- Linux users may see imagery corruption where an 'image tile' from one location appears in another. This predominantly occurs on video cards with low or shared VRAM and with particularly sets of drivers. For many users, this has been fixed by using the menu Tools->Options... and setting the "Detail Area" to 256. A fix for some graphics card will be available soon. We are working with the graphics card manufacturers to address any driver issues.

- Linux users may encounter more crashes depending on your Linux distribution. This is an area we are investigating and hope to continue to improve over time.


Changing Language
-----------------

Currently the client supports English, French, Italian, German and Spanish languages. This also changes the layers data that is shown, tailoring it specifically for the United Stated, France, Italy, Germany and Spain according to your language. You can change the settings using your operating system preferences:

- Windows XP:
Go to Start->Control Panel. For the "Category View", select the
"Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options", then the "Regional and
Language Options" link. On the first tab "Regional Options", change
the 'Language (Country)' combination to your preferred choice.
Restart the client.

- Mac
Go the 'Apple' menu and selection "System Preferences", then click
on the button marked "International". From the left panel, drag your
preferred language to the top. Restart the client.

Do you know when Google will out the next release ?
Will Random crash correct ? (on Linux)

Thanks

The programmers are working on the problems and are also Linux supporters themselves... when they have a solution, I am sure the fix will be shared quickly.

Lrae

Thank you for your great program... Regarding rendering problems, as a workaround on nVidia card I switch textures from 32bit to 16bit. It helps. Perhaps, same memory problem...

Another problem was detected on a notebook running Fedora Core 5 with ATI Radeon IGP320M card. After starting googleearth the message appeared:

Code:

---

 
do_wait: drmWaitVBlank returned -1, IRQs don't seem to be working correctly.
Try running with LIBGL_THROTTLE_REFRESH and LIBL_SYNC_REFRESH unset.
 

---

And then googleearth runs very slow...

In fact, neither LIBGL_THROTTLE_REFRESH nor LIBL_SYNC_REFRESH were set. I wrote a small substitute for drmWaitVBlank. Save the following as drm_nowaitVblank.c:

Code:

---

 
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>

#define	DELAY	33333

int drmWaitVBlank(void)
{
	static struct timeval last = { 0, 0 };
	static struct timeval now  = { 0, 0 };
	int udiff;
	
	gettimeofday(&now, NULL);
	udiff = (int)now.tv_usec - (int)last.tv_usec;
	if (udiff < 0)
		udiff += 1000000;
	udiff -= DELAY;
	if (udiff < 0)
		usleep(-udiff);
	memcpy(&last, &now, sizeof(struct timeval));
	
	return 0;
}
 

---

Then compiled it with

Code:

---

 
gcc -o drm_nowaitVblank.so -shared -fPIC -ldl drm_nowaitVblank.c

---

Then copied resulting drm_nowaitVblank.so file to ~/google-earth/ and changed ~/google-earth/googleearth script:

from
Code:

---

# Let's boogie!
if [ -x "${GOOGLEEARTH_DATA_PATH}/googleearth-bin" ]
then
	cd "${GOOGLEEARTH_DATA_PATH}/"
	exec "./googleearth-bin" $*
fi

---

to
Code:

---

# Let's boogie!
if [ -x "${GOOGLEEARTH_DATA_PATH}/googleearth-bin" ]
then
	cd "${GOOGLEEARTH_DATA_PATH}/"
	LD_PRELOAD="./drm_nowaitVblank.so" exec "./googleearth-bin" $*
fi

---

It seems to work well for now...

I have also a question... Are you planning to add GPX files support in Linux version? Now exporting GPX file does nothing...

Thank you.

Hello everybody,

first I am really happy that GE is finally ported to Linux. Thank you!

I have a few questions. I use GE on SuSE 10.0 on both a P4-1800 desktop with ATI Radeon VE700, a PM-1800 notebook with Intel 855GME, and an Athlon XP2600+ with NVIDIA card. I have a few issues to report:

+ GE keeps complaining that "Bitstream Vera" is not installed, and thus doesn't use it - although it is! My whole KDE desktop uses it. It is listed by "xlsfonts". The "bitstream-vera" RPM is installed.

+ I can only use Google Earth on the primary screen (my ATI Radeon VE 7000 has two outputs and I have a second TFT connected to the analog output and use Xinerama). If I use it on the secondary screen I simply don't see the globe (or any maps). If I move the window over to the first screen, the map appears.

+ Starting up GE, especially if it is maximized, will keep display corruptions on the screen (see www.jensbenecke.de/temp/GoogleEarth-shot1.png). Also, only part of the screen is actually used. Resizing the window and remaximizing will fix this.
(I also had this problem with earlier versions of GE running under Wine.)

+ Are you planning to package GE (ie., provide RPM and possibly DEB package files)? This would ease installation and maintenance considerably.

+ I noticed that GE cannot start an email client under Linux. Starting an email client is handled by an appropriate command line. To enable sending mail from Linux, the easiest option would be to provide an option to set this command line. The most popular ones are KMail, Mozilla Thunderbird and Evolution, and these should be pre-configured defaults, perhaps depending on which window manager / desktop is running (KMail for KDE, Evolution for Gnome, Thunderbird otherwise). All these clients provide parameters to attach files.
Alternatively, you could check for the desktop environment (KDE/Gnome) and then read the default mail client out of the DE configuration files, and fall back to the above method when no desktop environment is detected.


Thank you!

Jens

I just noticed, the Google Earth for Linux version has risen substantially, to 4.0.2091. :-) Pending a test on Fedora FC5 with Matrox (the darned X.org MGA driver problem), this is the best version I have yet seen.

At least it runs out-of-the-box within a VNC session (which has GLX extensions). Horrible performance there though. ;-) Out-of-the-box on SuSE SLES9, and with a little tweaking (requires Xrender.so.1) on RedHat 8.0. Ancient, I know!

Are there recent changelogs available?

gibso(n)

Ohm... Oh... Ohm....
Was it normal, that I have to download the "win"- Version even if I chose to download the version for Linux? It seems the same like if I chose to download the windows-one?! http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthWin.exe
Where could I get the Linuxviewer?!

Hello,

I can't think why it would offer the Windows version but here's a page with a link to the Linux .bin file:
http://earth.google.com/tour/thanks-linux4.html



Cheers,

Simon.