Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

jimbob666 — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:44:55 -0000

Slightly off topic but I am wondering if/when Google Maps will have the "bird's eye" feature like Microsoft Live Maps. This feature is stunning, try out the 'rotate' option! Check out London Heathrow for detail:

http://tinyurl.com/6xua4y

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Jimbob666 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:24:37 -0000

@Raj, Not noticed that before. There are a lot of 'Lufthansa' planes there :-)

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Jay K — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:07:58 -0000

@Ron: The neighborhood I used to live in is the opposite. They have fairly recent imagery (1-2 years), but the map view/street overlay is still really old: http://tinyurl.com/5dn6ge. I wish they'd just update that :) It also didn't show up on anyone's gps units, despite being around 5 years old.

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Raj S — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:04:01 -0000

@ Christopher,
I remember seeing a image, I guess in streetview. A guy tumbling down from the cycle. One amazing thing about Google is, they are offering the service for free compared to Yahoo in majority of the cases.

@Jimbo, we are able to read the names written in the airlines. Have you noticed it?

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Christopher Ross — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:43:44 -0000

Wow, I think I'm in love. I use Google Maps all the time, I don't care if it can read a license plate or not but that's amazing.

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

jennifer — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:44:33 -0000

It definitely is much better than before now.

Jennifer
Yocial.com

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Jimbob666 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:04:00 -0000

"There are military sats that will do lic plates without a problem so the tech is out there."

I have often wondered about this in the sense that is it meant literally? Cos I struggle to understand how when the license plate points horizontally and the satellite vertically..

@Phil: Watch 24. Awesome for stunningly simple and amazing technology. Moving a satellite and getting imagery with a few seconds of keyboard presses anyone? ;-)

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

tankdriver — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:55:44 -0000

There are military sats that will do lic plates without a problem so the tech is out there.

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Jimbob666 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:20:23 -0000

@Raj: Wow, just had a look at Frankfurt International Airport and the detail and clarity is very good.

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Phil Harnish — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:53:45 -0000

@Hassan thanks for calling the author out on that. I came in here to make a similar comment. The stuff you see in MIB and cheesy spy movies is the stuff of myths and it irks me whenever I see misinformation to the contrary. I love the way you ended your technical explanation, as if to say nice try: "Satellites sure are cool though." Seconded! :D

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Raj S — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:05:53 -0000

The memorable thing I have ever seen is the Frankfurt international airport. It is so detailed and could see most of the happenings inside the airport area.

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Jimbob666 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:24:58 -0000

Sounds like the satellite will be busy!

Siberia is also very blocky :-)

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Anon A Mus — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:21:10 -0000

I'm still waiting for Google to update its maps for my area. Those images are over 7 years old. A lot of new roads have been added since then!

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Jimbob666 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:51:43 -0000

@Hassan: You have a valid point on the detail side of things. What I think this does is allow for far higher resolution images from the desolate outposts in our world. The detailed plane magery tends to be cities and towns, not desolate areas. Plus I'm assuming a satellite can get more pictures far quicker than a plane going backwards and forwards.

Bring on a high res detailed coverage of Earth! :-)

Re: Google Maps: Now Officially Gorgeous

Hassan Hodges — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:46:18 -0000

You've got a few factual problems here.

-- .41 meters is not crisp enough to read a license place, unless that license plate were about 12 feet across. Each pixel on the image would resolve to about 41 centimeters. Rendering your typical license plate at about 1/4 of a pixel.

-- As far as the end user is concerned, this resolution is not the REALLY good stuff, it's not even the best that you'll find in google earth imagery. Planes travel much closer to the earth than satellites and capture images with a much higher resolution (less than a foot vs. less than a meter). Most of the existing high resolution imagery in google earth is shot from a plane, not from space.

Satellites sure are cool though.