Introduction

At the core of the Liquid Galaxy experience is the ViewSync feature for Google Earth which synchronizes multiple Google Earth instances across a network. This page talks about various aspects of that feature, and how to operate it.

If you just want to get up to speed quickly, check out the QuickStart.

Drivers.ini

drivers.ini is a file in the google earth installation directory that affects the behavior of the client. In the "Settings" section, the following commands enable the viewsync feature and affect its behavior:

   ViewSync/send=          <-- put true/false here to enable/disable sending viewsync messages over the network
   ViewSync/receive=       <-- put true/false here to enable/disable receiving
   ViewSync/hostname=      <-- put the host name or IP to send viewsync messages to
   ViewSync/port=          <-- put the port to send/receive viewsync messages on
   ViewSync/yawOffset=     <-- the yaw offset for receiving agents, in degrees
   ViewSync/pitchOffset=   <-- the pitch offset for receiving agents, in degrees
   ViewSync/rollOffset=    <-- the roll offset for receiving agents, in degrees
   ViewSync/horizFov=      <-- the horizontal field of view to use for display
   ViewSync/queryFile=     <-- the query file to poll for commands

The queryFile feature is documented elsewhere. Also see the LinuxSpaceNavigator page.

Offset Rotation Order

Rotation offsets from the master are applied in the following order: yaw -> pitch -> roll. In other words, the slaves first synchronize to the viewport of the master then yaw by the specified offset, then pitch, then roll.

ViewSync packet format

The UDP datagrams used for view synchronization are human-readable strings, comma-separated:

counter, lat, lon, alt, heading, tilt, roll, time start, time end, planet_name ("sky", "mars", "moon", empty "" is Earth)

5090,-33.54948434838393,150.99967479537557,523818.98127554677194,-0.28372808067457,0.00000000000000,0.00000000000000,63454496156,63454496156,