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GPS Insight Specific Commands

• When requesting a “3-D Current Status map”: In order to zoom down to the vehicles listed in your account, double-click the new Google Earth place located in “Temporary Places” on the left toolbar. If the “Auto-fit All Vehicles” box is checked, this will turn on the auto-zoom feature which will continue to auto-zoom once per minute. This is useful for an unattended “big screen” dispatch view.
  

• When requesting a “3-D History map”: verify whether “timeline” is turned on or off. A detailed discussion of this feature is available in the WIKI here.
  

If timeline is turned on, there will be a single line which starts light green and turns progressively darker until it finishes as dark blue. This line shows the vehicle’s path for the day. In order to see the history as “dots” turn off timeline mode or press play on the timeline. Alternatively open the timeline up to display the entire day. The timeline is in the top right corner, to the left of the compass. Both the timeline and the compass may be invisible depending on the settings chosen under View: [Show Time|Show Navigation].

Google Earth Specific Commands

• USE THE MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON/WHEEL: Zoom in and out by scrolling the mouse wheel up and down. Holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse up/down and left/right will tilt and rotate the 3-D view. Using the middle mouse button is critical to using Google Earth efficiently.
• USE THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON: Zoom in and out with much better accuracy and control by holding the right mouse button down and dragging up and down. Additionally, double-clicking the right mouse button zooms you out a convenient amount, just like left double-clicking zooms you down a convenient amount.
• Don’t open up too much at the same time: Google Earth is an extremely powerful program. Pulling a history for your entire fleet pulls thousands or even tens of thousands of points – on older versions, this is too much for Google Earth to handle and can cause Google Earth to crash. Make sure to use the time slider if you are viewing a large number of vehicles’ history.
• If Google Earth crashes: UPGRADE TO THE NEWEST VERSION!!! But if it still crashes, close the window (press the top-right “X”) and make sure Google Earth is selected. Press “n” on your keyboard in order to say “No” to the question that comes up to save temporary places. Pressing “n” will allow Google Earth to shut down. Choosing “Yes” will cause Google Earth to crash upon relaunch. If this happens, close Google Earth and relaunch it. Wait at least 30 seconds before restart to allow it to shut down completely. Google Earth is one of the most graphically intensive free 3-D application in existence.
• Try not to keep anything in “My Places” – other than perhaps the “current status” link for the fleet or groups of vehicles. * Avoid saying “yes” when prompted to save “Temporary Places” when exiting Google Earth as this will clutter up “My Places” with lots of old data. If needed, right-click the link from Temporary Places and do a “Save As” to disk. This allows data to be saved without cluttering up Google Earth. Open it from the local disk in the future if necessary.
• Use DirectX mode if Google Earth crashes frequently or won’t load on the computer: DirectX mode is available by selecting it from the Google Earth folder. See screenshot below.
  

• Change key options to make Google Earth faster to navigate: The commonly changed options are listed below, and available under Tools: Options (then choose the appropriate tab).
  

To make the “fly-to” go faster when moving from point to point or when opening a GPS Insight historical or current map:

To allow for quicker zooming in and out (and to reverse the direction the middle mouse button scrolls), if an “airplane” is displayed on the monitor instead of a cursor, or if Google Earth won’t zoom/pan/tilt/rotate like normal, this means Google Earth is in “Flight Control” mode(Ctrl-G). Press “Ctrl-T” to return to normal “Navigation Mode”:

• To change the latitude/longitude type shown: (decimal vs. degrees/minutes/seconds) Tools: Options: 3D View: Show Lat/Long