How to view large data in Google Earth Pro?

Question

I have a dataset with 32,000 location points and I need to view all the points in Google Earth Pro (v. 7.3.4.8248; 64-bit) at the same time. I have tried exporting my data (from R) as a KML and as a shapefile, but Google Earth Pro keeps freezing and/or crashing. I've removed dates and other columns from my data file so that it is just location points and an ID number. However, I still get the below error.

I have tried "import all" and "restrict to view", but both of these still cause Google Earth to not respond and/or crash.

Is there any way to view a large dataset in Google Earth Pro?

For extra information, my computer is an MSI (i7 processor 8th gen, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB storage) running Windows 10.0.19042.

Answer 1

Google Earth Pro can easily support display a KML file with 32,000 points or larger.

Below is a display of a KML file with 100,000 random placemarks spanning a strip over the ocean.

The KML structure in image above is a series of simple placemarks.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">
<Document>
<Placemark>
<name>P1</name>
<Point><coordinates>98.92,45.29</coordinates></Point>
</Placemark>
...
<Placemark>
<name>P100000</name>
<Point><coordinates>178.93,23.03</coordinates></Point>
</Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

Recommend to create minimalized KML output using R or Python code, etc. to streamline the KML output rather than try to import a large CSV or shapefile directly to Google Earth Pro. The GE Pro import wizard will create KML with BalloonStyle, Schema, and ExtendedData elements which works well for small datasets but creates problems for large ones.

If number of points is very large and still causes performance issues or crashes Google Earth Pro, here are three options to further structure the KML to make it work.

1. Subset/group the points into multiple KML files splitting the data into whatever smaller groups make sense and view the data one KML file at time.

2. If data is temporal then add a <TimeStamp> or <TimeSpan> to each of the placemarks and add a <LookAt> element with a <gx:TimeSpan> to the KML with a small time slice to show only a portion of the data at startup.

3. If data is spread over a large geographic area then splitting the placemarks into Folders and adding a Region to the Folder can help auto-display a subset of the data at a time. Likewise, the subsets can be created as sub KML files and the Region added to the NetworkLink in the master KML file with links to the sub KML files.

For more details, here's a tutorial on Regions in KML https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/regions

For large data, you can customize your KML adding Styles, Schemas, ExtendedData, descriptions, etc. after it correctly loads in Google Earth.

Answer 2

I recently tried to import a KML with an "outerBoundaryIs" object containing 80,000 points, and although it appeared to successfully import, it didn't display. I had to whittle it down to 1/3 of those points. Fortunately it didn't affect the look of the object much.