Updates to Google Earth COM API

Well, they haven't documented it yet, so I am guessing it's still not stable, but there are additions to the API in the recent versions of Google Earth, and the library has been renamed to EARTHlib, versus KHlib. For starters, it looks like they are renaming the objects to have a GE suffix, versus a KH prefix (e.g., KHFeature to FeatureGE). By keeping the old ones around, they may be doing a quiet kind of deprecation. The new GE objects have more properties to access and support some more methods, but don't really add a massive amount of new capability at first glance.

The ApplicationGE class which is the primary class used to inspect and modify the current state of the running application adds a few features to the old KHInterface class. You can now access the lists of items in the layers controls, the current status of the streaming, login/logout and do a few things with popping up balloons.

FeatureGE adds the ability to highlight, get the feature's name, and get parents and children to the old KHFeature class. A FeatureCollectionGE class has also been added, it's just a strongly typed list.

CameraInfoGE adds the ability to grab the FocusPointAltitude and FocusPointAltitudeMode (absolute or ground relative) to KHViewInfo.

We've seen this interface get a lot of use from things like the cool SketchUp! integration and a lot of the remote control plugins. I am still waiting to be able to use Google Earth to control other applications. I understand their reluctance to open up their beautiful interface to the button overload that will surely result, but I really don't think your average user will be downloading all of the plugins...