Very cool script! ...though I have a few issues with it;
1. It is designed primarly for using the gamepad as interface, most people I know (including myself) primarly use the Microsoft DVD-Remote Kit (ei. an ir-controller). It isn't clear how exacly to use this script using a infrared remote controller, so it would be nice if instructions was included for that on the screen and/if using the script a infrared remote controller was more intuative/selfunderstod. (rememeber that many people also have replaced the Microsoft DVD-Remote with an programmable Universial Remote Controller, one that the share with their TV, VCR, etc.).
2. I doesn't seem to detect which resolution or view-mode I run my Xbox skin in and thus do not scale properly on my screen. I am using a 720p display (ei. 1280x720 pixel resolution), but I would assume that those with 1080i displays have similar issues. The script need to account for if you are running in 'normal' 4:3 aspect-ratio, or if you are running in 'widescreen' 16:9 aspect-ratio, and if you are using a standard-definition NTSC TV/skin (720x480 pixel resolution), or a standard-definition PAL TV/skin (720x576 pixel resolution) and scale itself accordingly. Thic might help:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=13202
3. Preferably (if possible) when the script detect you use a 720p or 1080i display then it not upscale low-resolution images it downloads from google but instead should grab higher-resolution images instead (that match 720p or 1080i as close as possible so it do not have to scale as much). That way those with 720p and 1080i display will enjoy better resolution maps.
TIP: If you do not have a 720p and/or 1080i display to test and develop your script on then you should use XBMC_PC.exe on your Windows computer which is designed for this purpose, see:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=23235
asteronimo Wrote:If anybody out there knows how to make Google believe their satellite images are accessed by a regular browser, please let me know.
Which interface are you using to download the images and information from googlemaps?, are you using google's open API or are you scraping the HTTP webpages? if you are scraping the HTTP webpages then you might be bombaring their server and that is the reason they have blocked it. I remember when we first implementing SHOUTcast in XBMC, we used to scrape their website for playlists via HTTP and that was too much for their servers so they blocked us, so we contaced them and they created an API to their database search so we did not have to scrape their website, making our listing faster and their servers did no longer get bombared as all XBMC scraped their website, a win win deal.
Fortunatly Goolgle Maps alreasy have a similar API, see this topic-thread for links to information about it:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=13195
It could of course be some other reason, I think I recall XBMC scripts have been banned/blocked before because they did not emulate a normal webbrower (like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox). It could maybe also be that you don't use cookies or something?