DescentBB

not just maps... but satelite photos of the entire world (not just the USA), at the highest resolution in colour i have yet seen.

eg: centered on my house in Brisbane Australia
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-27.3236 ... &t=k&hl=en
you can see the pool
(as proof of it's national location, at fullscreen i can count 4 cricket pitches on the screen )
the maps can also be click-dragged - try it.

this is good news. in previous years i had been looking around the internet for free high resolution satelite images and found that they only existed for the USA. but now it seems google is supplying them for the entire world.

there is actually a hack for the NASA WorldWind program that makes it use googlemaps' data instead of NASA's satelite image datasets - thereby making it even faster and higher resolution.
but as yet i havn't found the hack - only mentions (and screenshots) of it. maybe tomorrow i'll track it down.

my goodness google is useful.

Just goes farther to prove what I've always said.

One day Google will own the internet.

Oh yay, can't find my school because they don't have the high res images there. -_-

Microsoft's Terraserver has higher-res images of certain parts of the world. It's like google maps, but you can zoom in 2 or 3 more times.

http://www.googlesightseeing.com/ is freaking awesome.

ah this explains some things.
Google bought out Keyhole software.
that's why they are now offering the keyhole highres dataset for free via googlemaps.

also i think why i'm finding it so hard to track down the worldwind-googlemaps hack is because of GOOGLE-EARTH http://earth.google.com . google's new (beta atm) subscription based 3D earth rotation program - which seems to be exactly like WorldWind in everyway but subscription based and they probabaly use high res googlemaps data.
they asked the worldwind-googlemaps hackers to cease and desist

how very strange for google to be beat at their own game by a free program (thx nasa).
normally it's google providing the freeness.
i wonder if this signals a change in the google empire.

Good lord that iss impressive. You can see my bloody house.

Impressive. I especially like how you can toggle between the satellite image and a map of the region. Look up someplace like Washington DC and it tells you where to find all the major landmarks on the map.

ive been using google maps for several months at work. the satellite part is really cool but the maps are better done than any others ive seen. its helpful because i often need to get directions to homes. google maps helps me know those directions are valid.

cool incident from the other day...

i had a report for CPS and the caller said she didn't know the street address of the family's apartment but could see the apartments from her house. the name of the apartments she provided came up with no hits at anywho.com

so i searched anywho.com by zipcode for apartments with similar names and then used google maps to figure out which of the apartments with similar names would likely be visible from the caller's house. then i was able to pass that on to the investigator.

You might also want to check out Microsoft's Terraserver. The aerial photographs usually zoom in a level or two farther than google's.

Keyhole is a nice program to use. just pretty expensive

I tried to find Ayers rock... I think I may have found it, but I'm not sure:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ayers&ll= ... &t=k&hl=en

Then I zoomed out, scrolled to America, and found my house!

<- Elite ;P

Sergeant Thorne wrote:I tried to find Ayers rock... I think I may have found it, but I'm not sure:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ayers&ll= ... &t=k&hl=en

Nope.

http://www.googlesightseeing.com/index.php?s=ayers

Zoom both out to one notch more than the "middle" zoom level and you can see how close you were from the overlap. (At zoom level 4, it's 64 screens south and about 45 east...)

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.

hmm, well it seems googlemaps doesn't have complete 1meter coverage
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.11815 ... &t=k&hl=en

GoogleMap's aspect ratio is off, though. :\

ya, they seem to be taken at a slight angle

You can see my deck around the corner of the house as well as the blue Ford Taurus parked on the driveway to the side.

Well, I was specifically responding to Palzon, who is very likely in one of the high-res areas on terraserver. Also notice my statements in my first post.

Just one example:
Carhenge - Terraserver
Max zoom on google maps in the same area

Good to have both resources available.

I've noticed that the terraserver images are quite outdated, for my area.

This stuff is so cool! Being able to get a birds-eye view of the places I've been to over the years...

Here's a great view of a state park we've been to a lot, surrouding a man-made lake: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Alliance, ... &t=k&hl=en
They recently introduced two families of Ospreys--one on either end of the lake. I've seen 'em dive for fish once or twice. Made a terrific splash.

Never knew there was so much farmland in Glasgow...

Poppy Crops HD, it cuts out the transport costs.

Gosh you people are behind the times, that's been out for at least 4 months!

Google maps has been *so* useful so far, and for things besides directions even. I was trying to find a friend's house but the only thing I knew was the general location that he lived in and what his house looked like. So, put on sattelite images and trace the roadways from his house to mine. I was trying to find the quickest way from my house to my work, Google maps for this too!

This thing's crazy awesome cool. They demoed it at the National Space Symposium back in April. Anybody seen Keyhole 2? *that*'s some amazing software. Each of the pictures are taken at different angles as the sattelite crosses a strip of land, and in Keyhole you can move a slider to change the angle - 3d sattelite photos. It's freakin awesome.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:I've noticed that the terraserver images are quite outdated, for my area.

i looked at the images of my place and my parents place, they are almost 3 years old.

Nitrofox125 wrote:This thing's crazy awesome cool. They demoed it at the National Space Symposium back in April. Anybody seen Keyhole 2? *that*'s some amazing software. Each of the pictures are taken at different angles as the sattelite crosses a strip of land, and in Keyhole you can move a slider to change the angle - 3d sattelite photos. It's freakin awesome.

google bought out keyhole

try Google-Earth. it will make you "craip in the pants".
may as well make it a new topic though...