How To Create A Virtual Field Trip Using Google Earth

Creating a Narrated Tour in Google World Desktop

Tutorial Contents

Prerequisites
Let's Become Started!
Create a KML Tour
Re-record a tour to add together new actions
Recording Narration
Tips & Tricks for Touring
Word and Feedback
What's Next

Prerequisites

Absolutely no programming skills needed!
In April 2017, Google Earth on Web was released, which puts Earth on the browser. All the same, for this tutorial, you will need Earth for Desktop installed on your figurer. Download the latest version here.

Let's Get Started!

Open up Google World.
Download the sample data to use during this tutorial, and open up it in Google World.
For this exercise, make the Terrain layer visible. Go to the Layers panel, and scroll to the bottom. Check the box side by side to Terrain to make it visible.
Now, let's record a bout!

Create a KML Tour

Click the Add Tour push button in the toolbar, or go to the Add together card, and select Tour.

The tour recording tools appear in the lower-left corner of the 3D viewer:
Click the Record button to start recording deportment and movements in Google Earth. The button changes to carmine and the time counter begins counting upward, showing the duration of your electric current KML Tour.
Create your tour past flying, zooming, panning, and rotating the globe. Do what you lot would do if you were showing your Google Earth project to a user or audience in person. A 3D Space Navigator, like the one created past 3D Connexion, can exist extremely helpful for navigating smoothly beyond the earth.
Double-click on placemarks in the Places panel to motion to their unique camera angle or view. In this instance, double-click on the placemark 'Flirt', then 'Patti', then on. You tin can as well pop placemark balloons and turn on and off your placemarks, paths and polygons in the Places panel.
When you are finished creating your bout, stop recording by clicking the Record button over again. Your recording stops, and the Tour Thespian appears in the bottom-left corner of the 3D viewer. The KML Tour that you lot merely created automatically begins playing.
To save your KML Tour, click the Salve to File button in the Tour Player, and give your KML Tour a proper name.

It is then stored in the Places panel.
To relieve it to a permanent .kmz file, right-click the bout in your Places console, choose Salve Places Every bit…, and save your .kmz file to a location on your calculator.

If you lot used content in your tour (clicked on placemarks, popped balloons, etc), you must put that content forth with the tour into a single binder, and salvage that entire folder as a KMZ. Otherwise the file will have the tour simply, and no content.

Re-tape a tour to add together new actions

Want to add together more actions to your tour? Yous can change and extend a previous tour past re-recording a new tour while playing dorsum the original tour.

Make certain your original tour is in the Places panel.
Click on the Add Bout push in the toolbar to add together a tour. The tour recording tools appear at the lower left.
Click the Tape push to showtime capturing a new tour. Afterwards clicking the tape push, the fourth dimension counter starts advancing, showing the elapsing of your new tour.
Now start your original tour by double-clicking on information technology in the Places panel, or select it with the mouse and click the Play Bout push underneath the Places console. You are now recording a new bout while playing back the original one.
You can pause the original tour, add some new actions or photographic camera movements, so united nations-break/play the original tour to continue. Note: if you lot move the earth during the interruption of the original tour, when yous hitting play on the original tour the camera will jump to the where the original tour left off.
In one case the original tour is done playing back, since you are still recording a new tour, y'all can continue to add new deportment or even first playing back another bout!

To run into what a completed tour looks like, download the finished product here

Recording Narration

When creating a new bout, if y'all click the microphone push button instead of the tape push button, recording will start and Google Earth volition get-go capturing sound from your computer'south microphone. You tin can also turn on/off audio recording by clicking the microphone push button again.

Audio recorded through your microphone is captured as an .mp3 file that is saved with the tour when you relieve it as a KMZ file.
Brand sure when saving a Tour with sound narration to set the 'Relieve as Blazon' option in the Salve window to KMZ, otherwise the sound will not exist included in your file.

Tips & Tricks for Touring

When calculation an iteration to an existing bout, you can click and concur on a location on the world (i.e. building, mountaintop, etc.), and the camera will stay on that location, swiveling around information technology. When you un-click from that location, the previously recorded bout volition go on as earlier.
Navigation through time is captured in the tour, so if you drag the time slider while recording a tour, any actions that crusade changes in the 3D viewer (actualization/disappearing points, animations, etc) will be recorded. For example, if you accept Historical Imagery turned on (link), or have a time-animated KML in My Places, attempt recording a tour and also manipulating the time slider (in the upper left of the 3D map view). This allows you to make tours of fourth dimension-animated layers, like the Declan Butler Avian Influenza map, and too showing historic imagery from different time periods.
KML Touring allows for more advanced actions than tin be recorded past the simple Add Tour feature in Google Earth. This includes dynamically moving placemarks, lines and 3D models, adding pauses to the tour, and changing the styles of your features during the tour. However, you lot will need to hand-edit the KML to create these actions. Delight encounter the Touring in KML documentation on the KML documentation site for more information.