Out Standing in the Field

http://mason.gmu.edu/~adement/Northern_Arizona_University.kmz

This isn't fancy but I had some interesting shapes that made things kind of tough. In particular, the circular building is actually a dome but I could not figure out how to do that despite checking out lots of stuff in "Help". I think it might be part of the advanced version you have to pay for. I think this has lots of potential...it was just frustrating because I had to experiment a great deal to get it to do things beyond what was in the tutorials.

Also, whenever I bring the file back up in Google, it zooms in too far and whips past the model. I couldn't figure out how to get it to stop doing that.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~adement/AnneDement_Lab8.kmz

Here's my Google Earth stuff. A couple of comments:

1) I went down to a fairly low level when placing the place markers for the 10 favorite places. However, on my cruise ship route, I was covering such large distances that creating the path at an extremely detailed level within each of the ports didn't seem appropriate. The cruise ship route is best viewed when all ports are visible on the route; so, the finer detailed placement of route points/place markers didn't seem necessary.

2) Also on the cruise ship route, I played around with altitude on the route but I found that it tended to blank out parts of the route when I used anything other than zero meters. So, the route has no altitude component. I also couldn't figure out how to put in arrows to show the correct order of the ports; so, I numbered them.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~adement/Invasion.html


It works but I'm still not happy with it. I've got over 30 hours invested in this and I just think it's time to move on. Comments:

1) I only did the main army branches, not the little off shoots.
2) Two of the armies didn't show any movement on the reference map; so, I just let them stay in the rear as reserves.
3) The different projections used between the reference map and the boundary file made it hard to locate where things belonged. I think I'm close, though.
4) Flash would not let me add points to the tweening polygons despite my reading the Help manual. (This isn't the first time Flash has lied to me...nasty little program!) As a result, I had to create the more complicated last front first (25 Aug) and then work backward to the original front (22 Jun). Of course, the thing tweened in all sorts of perverse ways. I figured out how to stop it from overrunning Odessa and Kiev using the Shape Hints function but I can't get it to quit making an amphibious invasion of Estonia. In my version of history, the Germans used their Navy.
5) I figured out the little tricks using the Ease function to slow down the armies so that they don't get ahead of the front. Some of them are still a little anxious to advance but overeagerness isn't necessarily a bad trait for an invading army.

I must admit that there is value to this kind of map. One can't help but notice how Germany dashed across Eastern Europe and then ground to a halt inside Russia. It gives one an appreciation for the flow of events and the awful toll the Eastern Front took on everyone involved.

Finally, I now despise Flash on entirely new levels. I'm so looking forward to the final project.