Over the weekend I went ahead and installed the new Google Earth version 5 beta. The current build version I have is 5.0.11337.1968.

The map sometimes flickers for apparently no reason when maximized (probably a rendering issue), but it hasn’t crashed on me so all is well there. Beta buggy goodness.

With version 5 there is both big stuff and small stuff the GOOG has changed around.

In the small stuff department, the first thing I noticed is that the icons at the top are far better organized and easier to work with:

I like the borders and the way they’re spaced out.

You’ll notice some features there that weren’t in version 4.

The clock icon is a really cool feature for historical imagery.

When you click it, this is what happens:

A draggable slider appears at the top left of the map showing how the map used to look years ago. The more blue lines you see, the more images are available. Most areas go back as far as 1991 and some earlier.

The video camera-ish looking icon to the left of the clock allows you to record a tour – and even record your voice while doing it if you like. Tours can be saved as small KMZ files that you can email to friends who have Google Earth installed like you do.

The last icon on the right means "see current view in Google maps". This is actually very useful when you want to send a link of a map to someone else. This has been in previous versions of Earth but it appears to execute a lot faster than before.

On the left side menubar under Layers is a new feature called "Ocean". It looks like this:

Some really cool stuff is in there. However the "under ocean" view appeared to be currently busted when I tried to use it – which sucks because I was looking forward to trying it out. However this is a beta release and the servers are getting hammered with requests, so I’m sure the big G will fix it soon enough.

The email function within the software is also currently dead. The icon for it at the top is grayed out, and if you try any other way the software reports the email feature is currently disabled. Bummer. Yet another thing on the beta to-do list.

The best part about 5 is that it’s easier to use. Google Earth has always been a bit of a monster in the fact it takes a while before you can wield it properly (try using Street Views in Earth compared to Google Maps and you’ll see what I mean). This is the only release I’ve seen that’s made a genuine effort towards better user-friendliness.

For those that already have Earth 4, upgrading to beta 5 won’t delete any of your settings or delete anything. thankfully. And it’s stable enough to use in beta form if you can deal with the bugs (some of which are obvious).

Give it a go, you may like it. Get it at earth.google.com.

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