Lothar MS-Terraserver only has 8meter resolution images of Brisbane, while googlemaps has 1meter.
(This resolution measurement refers to how many meters in the physical world are represented by 1 pixel on the image. So the smaller the better)
take this horsetrack in my neighbourhood as an example:
Terraserver maximum res (8 meter)
googlemaps approx equivalent res (8.5 meter)
and now the clincher:
googlemaps maximum res (1 meter) <- note: make sure it's zoomed in all the way (the zoom factor recorded in the URL seems to be relative to your screen's resoution)
Terraserver may have 1meter or better resolution images for USA however, but not for much outside of the USA - where googlemaps has 8X the resolution of Terraserver.
edit:
ok i looked more into it. there's 2 seperate terraservers.
the
World Terraserver -
http://www.terraserver.com/
has a few datasets but chooses automatically what one to display - depending on resolution (you'll notice it change as you zoom in/out). it's highest resolution is 8 meter - it's what i linked to in this post above.
the USA ONLY Terraserver -
http://terraserver.microsoft.com
only covers USA, and allows you to choose from 2 datasets
see
here to see what datasets are available for what areas.
as you can see, for almost all areas there is the USGS black/white images - 1meter resolution (but only black & white, BLEH!).
for certain urban areas there is also the cream of the crop images
and this is probabaly what you are referring to Lothar.
but as you can see from the
map, the areas covered by this data are few - only the dark green parts on the map.
these cream of the crop images are full colour, and go down to an amazing 0.25meter resolution.
so in summary, if you want the best:
googlemaps - colour 1meter res of the entire world.
terraserver - colour 0.25meter res of only certain urban areas of USA.
so stick with googlemaps unless the area you are looking at is one of those special urban USA areas - in which case goto terraserver coz you will get 4X the resolution.
