Configuring modern versions of Google Earth to work with Digi3D.NET

May 4, 2017 google earth

On 31 August 2010 Google notified in their Google Maps blog that they were abandoning support for the API COM of Google Earth, and that means that in upcoming versions of their program they would remove support for that API, therefore it could no longer be controlled by external programs like Digi3D.NET. However, we have had to wait 7 years for this to happen. If you install the latest version of Google Earth or Google Earth Pro, Digi3D.NET shows you an error message if you run any of the commands that command Google Earth that moves to a given coordinate. However you can still do two things:

After investigating we realized that they have removed the support but partially. They have removed the COM compatibility of the program but halfway because they still allow to use a technique called Automation COM, so we have changed the Proxy code to control Google Earth (you can see the source code in our source code repository on GitHub) to use Automation COM.
You have to force Google Earth to register so that third-party applications like Digi3D.NET can access its automation capability.

The first task we have already done in the latest version of Digi3D.NET, but the second one we cannot do for you, so if you want to activate Google Earth so that it can be controlled, you have to do the following steps:

Open a DOS console as administrator.
Run the following command if you have installed the normal version of Google Earth:
```
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google Earth\client
```
Run the following command if you have installed the version Pro version of Google Earth:
```
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google Earth Pro\client
```
Run the following command to force Google Earth register:
```
googleearth.exe /RegServer
```

From now on, you can control Google Earth with Digi3D.NET. You can watch a video showing you the steps below: