Google Earth Open Sources The Liquid Galaxy

News
By Marcus Yam
published

You can pretend you're an alien swooping down on your flying saucer.

Google Earth is pretty cool to check out on your PC and even on your smartphone. But what's even cooler is to fly around the world in an immersive, surrounding group of eight 55-inch 1080p plasma displays wrapped around you.

Google built this "Liquid Galaxy" setup was a cool thing that was shown at various conferences, and now the entire software required to run the multi-monitor has been open sourced.

Check it out in action below.

Read Google's blog post here.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bin1127
    make way Flight Simulator!
    Reply
  • proxy711
    Cool but bad choice on the TVs, the large bezel ruins the whole experience.

    Reply
  • burnley14
    That was really neat. That joystick looked ridiculously sensitive though, he was barely even touching it and the screens were flying past.
    Reply
  • @Proxy711
    The bezels arent that big, they've just got a large gap between the displays, you can see it when he's typing on they keyboard...dunno why they have a gap between them though
    Reply
  • scott_madison1
    sweet! now i just need 15 grand to come up with the hardware to run it!!! BRB, I'll let you guys know as soon as I get it hooked up...
    Reply
  • Aussie_Bear
    They used Ubuntu Linux for this setup...
    => http://code.google.com/p/liquid-galaxy/wiki/LiquidGalaxyHOWTO
    Reply
  • bv90andy
    It feels like flying with your house and looking through the windows.
    Reply
  • scook9
    You would think they would get their demo running smoother....that seemed choppy as hell to me....hopefully it is just due to the recording.....
    Reply
  • killerclick
    Not interested in clunky hardware, I want retina displays.
    Reply
  • Camikazi
    Proxy711Cool but bad choice on the TVs, the large bezel ruins the whole experience.They are the windows in your space ship and you are looking out, there you go experience enhanced even more.
    Reply