End Pointers’ Favorite Liquid Galaxy Tours
By Ben Witten
November 4, 2015
The Liquid Galaxy is an open source project founded by Google and further developed by End Point along with contributions from others. It allows for “viewsyncing” multiple instances of Google Earth and Google Maps (including Street View) and other applications that are configured with geometric offsets that allow multiple screens to be set up surrounding users of the system. It has evolved to become an ideal data visualization tool for operations, marketing, and research. It immerses users in an environment with rich satellite imagery, elevation data, oceanic data, and panoramic images.
End Point has had the opportunity to make incredible custom presentation for dozens of clients. I had a chance to connect with members of the End Point Liquid Galaxy team, and learn about which presentations they enjoyed making the most.
Rick Peltzman, CEO
One of the most exciting presentations we made was for my son’s 4th grade history class. They were learning about the American Revolution. So, I came up with the storyboard, and TJ in our NYC office created the presentation. He gathered documents, maps of the time, content (that the kids each took turns reading), drawings and paintings, and put them in an historical context and overlaid them on current topographical presentations. Then the “tour” went from forts to battlefields to historical locations to important cities. The teachers were able to discuss issues and gather the kids’ excited responses to the platform and what it was presenting to them that day. The experience was a big hit! It proved representative of the tremendous educational opportunities that Liquid Galaxy can provide.
Ben Witten, Project Specialist
My favorite presentation was one that I created, for fun, in preparation for the 2015 Major League Baseball Postseason. This was the very first presentation I made on the Liquid Galaxy. I appreciated the opportunity to combine creating a presentation revolving around my favorite sport, while at the same time teaching myself how to make exciting presentations in the process. I was able to combine images and overlays of the teams and players with videos of the matchup, all while creating orbits around the different postseason stadiums using the Liquid Galaxy’s Google Earth capabilities.
Ben Goldstein, President
My favorite experience on the Liquid Galaxy (or at least the one I think is most important) is seeing the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, which is creating a complete panoramic survey of the ocean’s coral reefs. It’s an amazing scientific endeavor and it’s a wonder of the world that they are documenting for humanity’s appreciation and for scientific purposes. Unfortunately, as the survey is documenting, we’re witnessing the destruction of the coral reefs of the world. What XL Catlin is doing is providing an invaluable visual data set for scientific analysis. The panoramic image data sets that the XL Catlin Seaview survey has collected, and that Google presents in Street View, show how breathtakingly beautiful the ocean’s coral reefs are when they are in good health. It is now also documenting the destruction of the coral over time because the panoramic images of the coral reefs are geospatially tagged and timestamped so the change to the coral is apparent and quantifiable.
Kiel Christofferson, Liquid Galaxy Lead Architect
The tour of all of the End Point employees still stands out in my mind, just because it’s data that represents End Point. It was created for our company’s 20th anniversary, to celebrate our staff that works all across the globe. That presentation kind of hit close to home, because it was something we made for ourselves.
Dave Jenkins, VP Business Development
The complex presentations that mix video, GIS data, and unique flight paths are really something to see. We created a sort of ‘treasure hunt’ at SXSW last year for the XPrize, where viewers entered a code on the touchscreen based on other exhibits that they had viewed. If they got the code right, the Liquid Galaxy shot them into space, but if they entered the wrong code—just a splash into the ocean!
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