On November 30 the Google Earth Blog released the following post:
Seamless Topographic USGS maps
A few months ago we showed you Matt Fox's excellent topographic maps of New Zealand, which were quite impressive. Over the years he's had many requests to create similar maps with seamless USGS topographic data, and now he's starting to roll them out on his site.
As you can see from the image above, the maps are remarkably sharp. The are distributed through a rather unique system; rather than just downloading a KMZ file, you download an installation program that adds the maps to your PC as Super Overlays. To try it for yourself, Matt is offering a free download of the San Francisco area, available here.
For comparison, you can check out our "best topo map interface" post from 2006 (a free service of USGS topo maps for the US). While they were impressive five years ago, the new maps are significantly higher quality.
For more, be sure to visit Google Earth Library and read Matt's full blog entry.
Looks like a very interesting addition to the Google Earth Library, and one that will be very useful going forward.
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