Here is SRI’s project from 1994 that showed similar capabilities (and the same name) and was one of the reasons the court decided against the claimants in their lawsuit against Google:
I wonder why the footer said it is dated to January 26, 1995 (after ITU in Kyoto 19 September, 1994) while the first page said April 22, 1994?
This PDF file is encoded PDF format version 1.3 witch was released in 2000. It is coherent with the informations stored in the PDF heather fields telling us this file was created 02.02.2000, 10:20 and last changed 02.02.2000, 18:20 by Acrobat Distiller 4.0 .
So at lest we can say this PDF file here is not an authentic one from 1995, witch of cause not necessarily means there could not be another PDF file somewhere else(?).
I need to check this site more deep but on first impression the SRI TerraVision I in 1997 and SRI TerraVision II in 2000 as shown in the linked videos are kind of inferior in sense of performance and capability compared to Art+Com TerraVision in 1994. Especially the videos from 1997(running on SGI) looked really bad and more like an early prototype. Just the 2000(on PC) videos SGI TV looked a bit better. All the TerraVisions programs may share the same name for whatever reason(?), but I would assume they do not use the same Algorithms. If Keyhole/Google "borrowed" ideas for Google Earth I would guess they did not copy them from SRI TerraVision, but from Art+Com TerraVision. But how knows?
If Brian from SGI was the connection to Keyhole/Google he could be also the connection to the MAGIC project from SRI since they use the same SGI Onyx at the beginning as Art+Com.
The same name is a really good question. But since SRI TerraVision and the Art+Com TerraVision both seems to be started at the same time around 1993 and both use the same SGI hardware (an Onyx) I could image that Brian from SGI was in contact with both teams.
This PDF file is encoded PDF format version 1.3 witch was released in 2000. It is coherent with the informations stored in the PDF heather fields telling us this file was created 02.02.2000, 10:20 and last changed 02.02.2000, 18:20 by Acrobat Distiller 4.0 .
So at lest we can say this PDF file here is not an authentic one from 1995, witch of cause not necessarily means there could not be another PDF file somewhere else(?).