EnlightenedOsote's blog: "TECH."

There's a new beta version of Google Earth available which features revamped navigation controls and some slick new layers like 3-D photo-realistic buildings in major cities and time-lapse views of sunsets and sunrises. Also new in Google Earth 4.3 is access to the street view movies found in Google Maps. Just click any of the camera icons and the familiar street view window will pop up. The new navigation controls take some getting used to, but once you have the hang of it they offer considerable more control over panning and tilting. Also handy is the new “North” button which quickly orients your current view by rotating until north is at the top. The sunrise and sunset movies are also quite impressive. Just fly to a location you’d like to see and click the “sun” button in the toolbar. That will bring up a small timeline graphic and you can either hit play or drag the timeline slider to watch the day unfold. Google Earth 4.3 is still a beta and certain features appear to be missing (the old “streaming” message that would let you know when the app was loading data doesn’t appear to be in the new version, which makes it difficult to tell whether something is not working or just loading very slowly). Still, if a few quirks don’t bother you, you can grab Google Earth 4.3 from the site, or by using the Google Updater. The Google Earth team has released this video of some of the new features in action: [via Google Operating System] See Also: * YouTube Is In Your Google Earth Playing Your Videos * Easter Egg: The Google Earth Flight Simulator * Space: The Final Google Earth Frontier * Google Earth Update Integrates Google Maps * Using Google Earth To Stop Genocide