So here goes. I want better identification of mountains and rivers. Maybe there's a trick to this and I'm missing it. But I don't think so. The program simply seems to be much better at telling you the names of gulches, washes, flats, draws and canyons — than it is at telling you about mountains and rivers. Even with All Layers turned on.
So, for example, I just put up a photoset of our road trip a few days ago (on Flickr, which runs on Linux and is highly mashable) between Boise and Sun Valley (where I am now). Most of the shots were taken through the windshield of our rented Subaru Forrester, on a road identified on Google Maps as Sawtooth Scenic Byway and ID-75 SCENIC. That's in both the Map and Satellite views. Those labels disappear in Google Maps' Terrain view, but the names of some mountains do appear. For example, Bunker Hill and Rather Butte appear in the upper left corner of that last link. This information allows me to add that detail to the description under this picture. But what about the Mountains that appear in the background of nearly every other photo in the set? The terrain view in Google Maps helps a bit here. For example, I'm pretty sure that the triangular mountain in this picture here is Wedge Butte, because that's what I see in the terrain view in Google Maps.
Meanwhile Google Earth tells me that I was passing over Richfield Main Canal while I took that picture. It also tells me, as I follow the road north, that I'm passing by or over Reservoir Number Ninety-Three, Highway Reservoir, Square Lake, Spud Patch Flat, Spud Patch Spring, Wurst Spring, Timmerman Spring, Wood river Valley, Poverty Flat, Canal Number 45, Diebenow Gulch, Bannon Spring, Rattlesnake Canyon, Dipper Gulch, Canal Number 45, District Canal, Townsend Gulch, Lees Gulch, Bellevue Canal, Minnie Moore Gulch and Mammoth Gulch.
Wood River, which carved the valley and lies in the mist of all this stuff, is not identified — at least as far as I can tell. Nor are the mountains, unless you tilt and fly around them in three dimensions, as if Google Earth were some kind of game that hides the names of mountains behind secret doors.
Individuals can provide clues. For example, there is a little identifier (a blue lower case "i") posted at the top of one mountain near Hailey that says,
As a broadcast engineering freak, I actually find that information interesting. But as a geography and photography freak — and as a parent who wants to feed his 11-year-old son's interest in the names of every feature on the landscape — I'd really like to know the name of the mountain under the transmitter. Google Earth won't tell me. Unless I find the secret door.
Here's my spoiler: by tilting your view down to the level of the mountains' elevation and approaching the mountaintop transmitter from the southeast (heading northwest), a pair of . By this technique I was able to discover that the mountain under the transmitter is Lookout. Soon as I tilt up above the 9000-foot level, the name disappears. When I drop back down and fly toward Ketchum, I pass over several more peaks of similar height, or perhaps higher. None are identified. But every valley between them contains the name of some gulch: Peter's, Decker, Triumph , North Star, Keystone...
Pretty frustrating. What's more important: the names of mountains or gulches?
Google Earth also has $20 and $400 versions