Google earth sequential placemarks on a time delay

Question

I have a KML file with a few different placemarks all around the globe. I would like to flyto the first placemark and display it's balloon, wait a minute or two, then flyto the next placemark, and repeat this process until all of the placemarks have been shown.

I think I might be able to achieve this by putting all the placemarks into a tour but this doesn't seem like the right approach. I'm going to be refreshing the KML from a server and I'm not sure how a tour would react to that (e.g., I think you have to always click play before starting a tour).

If this isn't possible I may have to place just a single placemark in the KML file and then keep refreshing the file with a different placemark. I think that approach might be bad though because it will be refreshing a lot more.

Kyle Bridenstine Kyle Bridenstine · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-30T14:51:10

I ended up putting one placemark per KML file. I wrote a program in Java that uses the Saxon processor and an XSLT stylesheet to create multiple KML files with just a single placemark per file then using this tutorial I was able to cycle through the KML files one-by-one.

When doing this locally on my machine I created two folders. Folder A housed all the KML files. Folder B would house only one KML file which would be the file expected from the KML NetworkLink tag. In the Java program I had a timer thread that sequentially deletes the single file in Folder B, cuts a file out of Folder A, moves it into Folder B, then renames the newly placed file the common name which the KML NetworkLink tag expects. I hope this helps and the link will help this to make more sense.

(Base KML file which is loaded into Google Earth - Basically tells Google Earth to look for the file called every10.kml every 10 seconds. If we swap that file out, say, every 9 seconds, then once it's refreshed by Google Earth it will be a new KML file thus showing the new placemark)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.1">
<Document>
  <NetworkLink>
    <Link>
      <href>every10.kml</href>
      <refreshMode>onInterval</refreshMode>
    <refreshInterval>10</refreshInterval>
    </Link>
  </NetworkLink>
</Document>
</kml>

Google earth sequential placemarks on a time delay

1 Answers