Why doesn't ArcGIS Earth support layer packages?

EricEagle — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 02:02:40 GMT

Please, someone help me figure this out. ArcGIS Earth has a chance to finally move people away from KML, which is a little like storing your spatial data in Powerpoint.

Esri could do this by supporting their excellent format for storing both vector/raster content and symbology: LAYER PACKAGES.

But when you go to drop a .lpkx on ArcGIS Earth, it says "unsupported format."

I'm getting close to giving up on ArcGIS Earth because years later, it is still behind the (very stale) Google Earth EC Client. It is less flexible (i.e., you can't export a straight KML file from ArcGIS Earth because ArcGIS Earth doesn't know how to reference remote icon links! It has to stash them all in a "files" subfolder and zip them into a KMZ!), and it still doesn't approach parity even in basic symbology.

I just got done writing a geoprocessing tool to "Esrify" KML output from Google Earth (e.g., remap icon symbology/styles, etc) only to find for example that the icon <href> won't understand anything remote (https) or local (file:). Probably, I shouldn't have to do this anyhow. It seems to make no sense when Esri has a perfectly great storage format which could free us all from KML. So what is the deal?

Re: Why doesn't ArcGIS Earth support layer packages?

Pål_Herman_Sund — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 06:55:10 GMT

Layer packages in ArcGIS Earth gives much sense. Thumbs up

topic Re: Why doesn't ArcGIS Earth support layer packages? in ArcGIS Earth Questions

Why doesn't ArcGIS Earth support layer packages?

Re: Why doesn't ArcGIS Earth support layer packages?