Tips on Creating a Tour in Google Earth

Creating a tour in Google Earth is a great way to show students different places. Create your placemarks ahead of time, making sure to keep them all in the same folder. If you follow a line, make the line fairly smooth, don't make it too jagged. 

To customize your tour, go to Tool -> Options. Using the Touring tab, change some of the parameters shown on the screen capture, like make the balloons pop up or not (if you have visual or textual information at the placemark, this might be useful), change the speed of the tour or the time spent at a stop. If you want really smooth playback (fidelity), keep the bottom slider bar set midway or closer to higher fidelity. My personal favorite thing to do with a tour is to make the icon "No icon" or make the line transparent.

For recording a tour in real-time you still need a folder full of what you want to record. What you can do is open and close and double click on placemarks and lines as you wish. But click on the Record a Tour button and then when you’re ready to create your tour, click the red dot. Then start your personal tour. You may need to run through your tour a couple of times to work out the timing and kinks. If you want to add voice, click on the microphone button and do your tour.

You can check out some interesting pre-made Google Earth tours available through the UNEP web site by clicking here.