Google Earth¶
This section contains information on Google Earth support in GeoServer.
Google Earth is a 3-D virtual globe program. A free download from Google, it allows the user to virtually view, pan, and fly around Earth imagery. The imagery on Google Earth is obtained from a variety of sources, mainly from commercial satellite and aerial photography providers.
Google Earth recognizes a markup language called KML (Keyhole Markup Language) for data exchange. GeoServer integrates with Google Earth by supporting KML as a native output format. Any data configured to be served by GeoServer is thus able to take advantage of the full visualization capabilities of Google Earth.
KMZ output¶
Alongside raw KML, GeoServer can generate KMZ (compressed KML) responses by requesting the application/vnd.google-earth.kmz output format. The resulting KMZ package is a zip archive that contains the KML document and any bundled assets, such as icon PNG files stored inside an images/ directory. See Requesting KMZ output for practical usage notes.