Kabuki wrote in Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:58 pm:I don't know what that reference to Win32 is doing in there, because the Google Earth plugin and API are platform neutral, in that the "platform" is a web browser.
The Win32 reference I made a year and a half ago was an analogy and had absolutely nothing to do with Google.
Kabuki wrote in Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:58 pm:The point is, Google is very generous with their Earth API, and nobody should think that it's "all locked up". There are many ways Google's Maps and Earth data can be used with Flightgear. If I'm reading this right, what can't be done is to make Google Earth data a necessary and integral part of Flightgear. But creating addons that use Google Data are fine with Google.
Generous isn't the right word, but yes, Google gains by having people use their API. You are right to say because of their license, we can't incorporate their data into our program - but at the same time, we can probably use data coming out of FlightGear and superimpose it on a Google Map. I'd vote for an OpenStreetMap default layer myself, but that's just me.