How to get a beautiful no menu-bar fullscreen Google Earth (Linux/X11)

[Andrew Leahy]

G'day,

Once everything is up and running and you're zooming around that "streak of grey" top-menu-bar becomes quite distracting. Especially if you've gone to the effort of getting matte black monitor edges!

With Linux/X11 here's a way to make it disappear -

- Install the program "devilspie", it may be in your distro's standard repository. Otherwise checkout http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie/
This is a great little app for controlling where windows get placed. I use it for forcing the placement of video conferencing streams and vis apps onto different screens and sweet spots for multi-screen setups.

- Create a config file ~/.devilspie/googleearth.ds with content something like:

 (if
 (is (window_name) "Google Earth")
 (begin
  (geometry "1680x1070+0-1")
  (undecorate)
 )
)

Tweak the geometry line to make it little taller than the size of your display. Use "xdpyinfo" to check that. The display I was using is 1680x1050. You'll have to play around with the "-1" (vertical placement), as it doesn't always make obvious sense, really it should be about "-25", but for me "-1" worked best

- Run devilspie in the background. "devilspie &"
- Run googleearth.

Gotcha's...

You may need to use a different window manager. Devilspie seems to fight with the Gnome windowmanager. I've had no problems with OpenBox, and I suspect FVWM2 will be okay. For slave displays in a LG rig you probably don't need to run a window manager at all :)

You need to make sure google-earth app starts in window mode NOT fullscreen mode. This is because Devilspie needs to re-size the GE window to be slightly bigger than fullscreen. "Fullscreen mode" will lock to the normal full-screen with the top-menu visible. Also if you run GE, then switch to full-screen mode (F11) you can make the top-menu appear/disappear this is handy. BUT the app seems to remember the mode it was it when you exit it. So make sure you exit the app from window-mode. Otherwise next time GE starts it go to "fullscreen" mode and devilspie won't be able to resize it. If that happens switch back to window mode (toggle F11) and then Exit and start the app again. argh.

To debug your script -  edit googleearth.ds, and run "devilspie -d" for debug, you will need to stop/start devilspie each time you make a change. If GE is already running (and in window-mode), restarting devilspie will act on the running GE window. So you don't need to restart GE for each devilspie restart.

Hint: to access/navigate the GE menus (without making the menu bar appear), use Alt-F and arrow keys. Esc to jump out of the menus.

Second hint: if you have a SpaceNavigator and want to turn off the X11 mouse cursor, I use the old X11 program "unclutter" this is probably also in your distro. This forces the mouse pointer to become transparent after a few seconds. Pointer becomes visible as soon as you move the mouse.


Cheers, Andrew

eResearch / University of Western Sydney

[Andrew Leahy]

update on shifting the top menu-bar off the screen for X11/Linux

wmctrl http://tomas.styblo.name/wmctrl/ is another way to manage X
window placement. It's probably also in your distro.

> wmctrl -r "Google Earth" -e 0,0,-41,1680,1071

-e args are gravity,x-offset,y-offset,width,height

to list current open windows and their info

> wmctrl -l

I'll update the wiki page when I get a moment.

Cheers, Andrew.

--
"Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know." (Lao Tzu)

My household GHG emissions from energy & transport ~4kg CO2e/day or
~1.4tonnes/year
Household daily use of Water 110L, Electricity 3.9kWh, Petrol 1.2L, Gas 0MJ

[Carlos]

Hi,

I've got google earth running in sync across our 4 screen 3D CAVE and
its pretty awesome except for the menu bars. Is anyone aware of a
solution for Windows? We have our installation running off XP 64bit.

Carlos

On Feb 17, 6:41 am, Andrew Leahy <alf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> update on shifting the top menu-bar off the screen for X11/Linux
>

> wmctrl  http://tomas.styblo.name/wmctrl/is another way to manage X

> Household daily use of Water 110L, Electricity 3.9kWh, Petrol 1.2L, Gas 0MJ- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Andrew Leahy]

Hi Carlos, don't suppose you could post some pictures of your setup?

For Windows I haven't yet found a way to remove the top-menu.

The shareware app AutoSizer from http://www.southbaypc.com/AutoSizer/
is as close as I've found.
It allows the GE window to be resized wider than the screen-width and
the top corner to be placed off the screen but, with my quick testing,
it wouldn't resize a window higher than the screen-height.
So although you can move the menu off the top, the bottom comes up short.

Cheers, Andrew.
eResearch Support / University of Western Sydney

[Carl Flynn]

Thanks Andrew, I'll take a look at that.

 

I just took a quick snap of me in the CAVE.  Apologies for the low quality image but you get the idea.  The menu bar on the vertical screens is fine and don't really interfere with the view but you can see the menu bar on the horizontal floor screen which is a bit annoying.

 

In the photo I have the 3D glasses on but for now it is only in 2D.  I'm trying to see how we can get it running in full 3D across all screens.  All suggestions/pointers welcome.

 

Carlos

[Andrew Leahy]

G'day Carl,

We used GoogleEarth as a vis app (mainly for demos) for a number of
years here at UWS. Unfortunately the Centre for Advanced Systems
Engineering (CASE) where some of this work was done is now defunct.

Attached is a photo of me in 2008 in front an 18megapixel (double that
for stereo) 3x3 tiled flat rear-projection surface (Linux based), I'm
pointing at about where I am in Sydney. So this would've been
GoogleEarth 4.3. You'll note the passive polarised glasses... which
didn't function in GE... but you know, they're cool and stuff!
Unfortunately I moved to another section of the uni shortly after this
photo was taken and didn't get a chance to bash away at stereoscopic
rendering of the GL. We had no problems with apps which were
stereo-ready, I suspect GE might have been a battle. Although, at the
time there were 3D Windows drivers for GE -
http://www.tridef.com/promotions/google-earth.html - which might suit
your setup.

Rather than a cube CAVE I'm hoping to use the surround n-sided
LiquidGalaxy-style rig as the basis for a science-data-vis rig, with
peripheral vision coverage, portability and versatility of
applications as a goal - not quite the same scale of immersion as a
CAVE - but hopefully we can build a few of them around the campus, get
them into research centres where they can be useful for, you know,
actual research & teaching!

If you're interested - at some point I'd be keen to try linking up our
two GoogleEarth/LiquidGalaxy rig views across the planet!
I've got some glue networking code we can use to send a single
viewSync stream between the rigs (either directed or multicast) and
rebroadcast it locally, so there's no issues with the long hop.
Think of it as a global virtual field trip experiment, can drag in
Skype or EVO video+audio as well.

Cheers, Andrew.

eResearch Support / Uni of Western Sydney

[Carl Flynn]

Sounds good Andrew.  We're a Research Centre based in Ireland so a linkup at some point would be cool !

In the meantime I'm going to play around with some 3D drivers and see if I can get GE working in full stereo !

Carlos