Google Earth 5.1

In Google Earth 5.1 zijn voornamelijk fouten opgelost die in de grote update naar versie 5.0 zijn geslopen (toen de oceaan en Mars zijn toegevoegd). Ook zijn de grafische prestaties en de opstarttijd van Google Earth verbeterd en is het geheugengebruik verminderd. Bovendien is Google Earth geschikt gemaakt voor Windows 7. Ten slotte is het predikaat 'beta' verwijderd: Google Earth 5.1 is dus een officiële, stabiele uitgave.

De complete release notes:

• fixes to icon style heading
• fixed labels in Pro hi-res printing
• honor default layer visibility for enterprise databases
• getKML now allows fetching of arbitrarily long strings of KML (Google Earth API)
• added https support for enterprise API (Google Earth API)
• fixed region fade-extent bug as reported here:

  http://http://code.google.com/p/earth-api-samples/issues/detail?id=329

• fixed issue with placemarks flashing in region-based network links as reported here:

  http://code.google.com/p/kml-samples/issues/detail?id=310

• fixed crash-on-exit bug
• PhotoOverlay now derived from kmlOverlay instead of kmlFeature (kmlPhotoOverlay.getColor() is now working) (Google Earth API)

Additionally, with this release the following changes have been made:

• removal of "beta" label from Google Earth clients
• bundling of Google Earth browser plug-in with Mac installer
• added Intel-only Mac installer package

• Improved Startup Time. The improvement is most noticeable when users launch the Earth application multiple times.
• Improved overall rendering performance. Changes include faster atmosphere rendering and using compressed textures whenever possible.
• Improved Road rendering Performance: Frame rate at places with dense road networks is three times faster than in previous releases.
• Improved memory utilization in the application.
• Significantly smoother frame-rate and less stuttering in the application compared to previous releases.
• Improved performance with large region based network link KML documents. Some of large KML documents are now processed and rendered at more than twice the speed of earlier releases.
• Improved KML document handling performance. Large regionated KML Image overlays are up to 80% faster than previous releases.
• Support for KML hint = moon or mars to switch to moon or mars based on kml document.
• Availability of one installer that installs both the Google Earth application and browser plugin.
• Desktop Application now works on Windows 7.
• Users can set the memory cache size up to 1024 MB now.