20 ms·

Buy hi-resolution satellite images of any place on earth

713 points by for_i_in_range 4y ago

kickout 4y ago
Very cool. Always interested in these hi-res photos for agricultural field monitoring. A little pricey though. ETA: 5 sq km seems big for a minimum. Multispectral availability is super cool tho!
- mckeed 4y ago
  Cool, I was wondering if this would be useful for farmers. Could you share more info on how multispectral images would be used?
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    Well with SAR you can get moisture content of soil which can help with crop yields. Right now third parties do this for ag work but our goal is to have integrated analytics cause really a farmer doesn't care about the imagery he or she cares about crop yields...that's what we are solving for.
    - mckeed 4y ago
      Interesting, thanks!
- budget_rabbit 4y ago
  Take a look at www.arlula.com that marketplace offers 1 kilometer minimum orders with many of their suppliers. It seems like this space is getting quite competitive.
jofer 4y ago
What's interesting to me is that the pricing isn't that unique. That's pretty normal for a list price. $7 sq km + 25 sq km min (basically the size of the image). That's probably because they're (I think?) buying tasking capacity from other companies, so the pricing can't be below the rate they negotiate. That probably results in then negotiating a below list price from a few companies and then setting prices that wind up being close to the average list price for the industry. The difference is two very key things: 1) no minimum overall buy 2) fully public pricing That price is pretty normal, but usually you have to commit to at least a few thousand dollars worth. 25 sq km min per target is also pretty normal, but the contracts usually require you committing to at least a few hundred of those. Next is public list pricing. Every company has list pricing, and that's basically what smaller customers will pay. Large customers negotiate it down, of course. But just explicitly advertising the list pricing is also a big deal and not normally done. It's usually way too hidden. A lot of folks (hi there Joe) have been pushing for more transparency in pricing, and a lot of companies have been talking about chasing the "long tail" of small customers for a long time, but it's really good to see someone actually doing it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jofer 4y ago
  With that said, I'm still very skeptical that there's enough revenue in the "long tail" of small customers to make a viable satellite imaging company. Please prove me wrong there!
  - brookst 4y ago
    Hello jofer! I couldn’t help noticing your red 2017 Subaru Crosstrek was out in your driveway all winter, and probably needs a spring detail. We’re running a special this week! We’ve also identified signs of water damage on your roof, which was last replaced 22 years ago according to public records. Our local affiliate will provide a repair estimate free of cost, and we’ll throw in a discount on the car detail.
    - anlsh 4y ago
      I think I'm going to vomit :(
      - layer8 4y ago
        Don’t do that outside though! You’ll get ads for gastrointestinal medication.
      - NavinF 4y ago
        Local contractors driving by your home can do the same thing.
    - jofer 4y ago
      Good luck recognizing that level of detail! This isn't that type of imagery. You can tell just barely tell a truck from a car and can definitely tell the color of the vehicle, but that's about it. You're describing 1cm imagery from drones, not satellite imagery. Regardless, insurance companies are big customers for similar reasons. Recognizing swimming pools in imagery is tougher than you'd think, but a classic thing (and real) that gets brought up is your insurance company raising your rates because you put in a pool and didn't tell them. Insurance companies would love to (and sometimes do) detect that from satellite imagery instead of boots on the ground. Either way, those are big companies / big contracts, rather than individuals buying imagery directly.
jebarker 4y ago
I dislike that this website replaces my cursor with a circle. Is there any good reason to do that?
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely (Chrome on MacOS). It's like they built it only for touchscreens? I expect I'll never go back and use it now. Jeez, who signed off on this?
  - entropie 4y ago
    > It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely Same. Brave on Windows
  - culi 4y ago
    Do you have javascript disabled? Some design heavy sites like to replace the default cursor. The CSS standard[0] still only really supports the few custom cursors that we've had for decades now and provides no way to style them so the only way to achieve this is through javascript currently [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      No, but it might uBlock origin blocking something, I dunno. I went into devtools and modified the CSS attribute and was able to get past it. Dumb.
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. We may go back. I signed off on it
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Ok my iPad it makes a dot where I touch the screen. It does seem like an irrelevant distraction. Also, it would be nice to be able to search for available images without the app.
daemonhunter 4y ago
Custom mouse cursor, how 90s.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  in fact, there was a 90s website that sold high resolution satellite imagery prints, called Pictopia
- gwking 4y ago
  On macOS Safari, it causes the mouse to disappear when you transition from the browser window to another screen. I can't help but wonder how much money they spent creating that nuisance.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  It was a design choice we made obviously. Probably gonna go back
nileshtrivedi 4y ago
What I'd like is to have this image then be uploaded in Google Maps' satelite layer for everyone's benefit. Or OpenStreetMap for that matter.
- amelius 4y ago
  Copyright will prevent that from happening, I'm guessing.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  As sibling said, copyright won't let you do that. But there is lots of imagery already available that can be used more freely [0], though usually not in high resolution - enough for some cases, not enough for others. [0] https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ (still check usage conditions)
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Copyright isn't supposed to apply to non-artistic images. Is the jurisdiction USA, do you know of caselaw that's relevant here? Thanks.
m348e912 4y ago
Has anyone been able to select their highest resolution option to buy? Looks like its not available for unregistered users at least.
- GasTrader 4y ago
  Not turned on yet expected in late February as we go thru Quality control.
slowhadoken 4y ago
“you’re purchasing a license to a digital image.” Lame.
- ledauphin 4y ago
  i mean - very few photographers sell their copyright. a lot depends on the terms of the license though.
  - tubatime 4y ago
    A reasonable expectation might be that at least for new imagery this is “work for hire”.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      They already collected the data and are just giving you a part of their independent work under license.
- GasTrader 4y ago
  I actually agree with you and we fight for as much freedom with operators as possible. Since the industry grew up on large government contractors they have only moved so much but we continue to fight for hassle free contracts with all our providers. Great things to come.
ledauphin 4y ago
does anyone with expertise know how this resolution compares to Google Maps or other "free" providers?
- Karliss 4y ago
  They have resolution samples here https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview .
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Resolution will be worse. Age ought to be better unless you got very lucky that a plane just flew over and the footage was uploaded very fast afterwards.
pmoriarty 4y ago
I heard an interesting interview recently with someone who uses satellite imagery to trade stocks. According to him there are data vendors who use such imagery to do things like (for example) look at how full the parking lots of certain retail stores are and then use that information to help them estimate how successful these businesses really are, and make stock trades based on that.
- culi 4y ago
  Even governments use this technology to calculate how high stockpiles of certain minerals or resources are based on shadows and time of day
- heipei 4y ago
  Yes, though at this point I'd say this is old news and table stakes, so I expect everyone to be using this type of data already. As an example, Orbital Insights began tracking 250k parking lots across 96 retail chains at least all the way back to 2017. Same for things like monitoring gas silo levels via satellite imagery, etc. If you read it on the blog of one of the many sat image providers I would assume there to be no more competitive advantage to be had, unless you can read additional information from that data that other traders might have missed.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  Was it Jacob Goldstein’s interview with Planet? https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/seeing-data-from-space https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/seeing-da...
- lukefischer 4y ago
  It’s true and part of our origin story
cornstalks 4y ago
> When placing a SkyFi order for Existing or New Images, you’re purchasing a license to a digital image. I was curious what the license was and found their FAQ, for those curious: > What is SkyFi’s licensing policy? > SkyFi has the most user-friendly licensing in the satellite industry. You are free to share purchased images on the web and social media (and we encourage you to tag us @SkyFi.App or #SkyFi). Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images. You are also free to use the images to do analysis and sell the results of that analysis. You cannot re-sell images you purchase on the SkyFi platform, nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves. Please click here for more information on the SkyFi EULA (End User License Agreement). Seems fairly reasonable, though I haven’t read the full EULA. I wish I was creative enough to have some cool ideas I could do with this imagery.
- TheJoeMan 4y ago
  I have to hard disagree on the reasonableness of a licensed image. Firstly, I’m the one framing the shot. This isn’t a photographer making art, this is me paying a company to point a camera at xyz coordinates and capture the earth as it is, unprocessed. So if I personally plan out the perfect beautiful shot, now SkyFi gets to pitch it to others to make additional money off it? Secondly, calling this “democratized” satellite imagery is a farce. Democratized to me means here’s the pixels you bought, it’s yours to do whatever you want with.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    I didn't read their site in detail, but usually you're not actually framing the shot. You're buying images that they've already taken. Imaging satellites don't let you task the angle or direction and they simply continuously take pictures of anything underneath them as they pass overhead.
    - jffry 4y ago
      The linked page prominently talks about pricing for existing images from a catalog of existing images, OR paying for an entirely new image
yellow_lead 4y ago
Is there any restriction around military bases or can I buy one pointed at Area 51, or Russian military bases, or certain conflict areas in Ukraine?
- lelag 4y ago
  If not, I was thinking this type of services could be a boon to moderately-funded OSINT organisations as it would make you able to get fresh satellite imagery very easy and accessible.
  - mNovak 4y ago
    There's been heavy use of these kinds of services for exactly this purpose. See [1] for example. Typically airbases, mass graves, bridges; things we know won't move or change too fast. [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-no-damage-seen-at-russian-bomber-base-after-drone-attacks https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-repo...
- lukefischer 4y ago
  First image I got was of Area 51 and Russian troop build ups last Feb
  - yellow_lead 4y ago
    care to share? :)
justicz 4y ago
I’m really excited for this. I thought this was what the company Planet (planet.com) was going to be, but when I actually tried to buy images from them it went through a complicated sales process I couldn’t easily complete. I felt like I clearly wasn’t the target customer. I love websites with an “add to cart” button instead of a “contact sales” button :)
- justicz 4y ago
  It would be really cool if I could upload a short python snippet/map-reduce job to run a piece of code over the entire globe. Could be super useful for e.g. counting all of the solar farms in the world.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  I despise “contact sales” and why I essentially outlawed it at the company.
rsync 4y ago
I need this, as in, today. I am ready to make an immediate purchase. I want to give them my money. But all I see is "launch skyfi" ... and, of course, I don't want to "launch" anything. I want to enter simple information into a web form and hit a submit button. I do not need an app install or a telephone. All I need is a web browser. Is it actually impossible to purchase one of these images from their actual website ?
- carbocation 4y ago
  I felt the same way but clicked "Launch skyfi" anyways. It takes you to a login form in the browser. Bad name for a link.
  - version_five 4y ago
    I clicked the button, on my phone, and got page that said it's best viewed in the app, and a link to the app store, with no other option SkyFi is an easy-to-use mobile or desktop app that allows you to get satellite imagery of any place in the world at any given time. SkyFi is creating a marketplace for businesses and consumers alike to capture earth observation data to make better informed business decisions, capture life’s most precious memories, and more. The SkyFi App, thanks to its satellite partners, allows customers to either order a New Image, where a satellite in-orbit is ordered to capture an Area of Interest for a date in the future, or select an Existing Image from our database of hundreds of previously-captured images. The best part? This can all be done from your phone, tablet, or computer. This is completely unwanted, I agree with the person at the top of the thread.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      To be fair, the mobile app is pretty nice. A bit unnecessary, but other than ‘sign in with apple’ it works pretty well.
      - kraseng 4y ago
        Thank you for the positive feedback about the mobile app. We are working on the Apple SSO. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.
londons_explore 4y ago
The fact they charge differently for existing vs new images tells me that they will probably let you know which applies before purchase... And if that's the case, I think there could be a market for a monitoring/alerting system to detect if anyone else orders imagery of your factory/port.
heliodor 4y ago
I picked an area. The preview low-res image seems to indicate that they are happy to sell me pictures of clouds!
- ritwikgupta 4y ago
  That's just the part of the equation when using electro-optical imagery. You're paying to task a satellite, not necessarily a clear picture. To me this will be an interesting test for SkyFi. Casual customers just expect to see the ground when they "buy an image" and giving them clouds will put them off from using the service further.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    You can select maximum cloud cover in the resulting image, over a month long imaging window. They predict cloud cover to task satellites. It's kind of the dual problem to "get me and image on this date"
  - heliodor 4y ago
    I understand that for new images but for existing images I expect them to stack multiple images into a cloud-free image, just like Google Maps does. Otherwise, at least calculate the cloud cover and discount me the money proportionally.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      >at least calculate the cloud cover and discount me the money proportionally. That makes sense if you can figure out how to get food to duplicate their satellites.
    - kraseng 4y ago
      This is a great point. We are not going to charge anything (will refund) if we cannot deliver an ordered new image that does not satisfy the minimum cloud cover requirements. There are options for selecting the threshold when tasking. For existing/archive images the cloud cover is indicated in the image description. However, if the information is hard to see or not helpful, let us know, please. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.
denlekke 4y ago
48 hours from new image capture to being able to download it. didn't see info on the time between requesting a new image and how soon it can be captured
- lukefischer 4y ago
  We aim to be faster. It’ll increase with more supply
divvyy 4y ago
This is a horrendous privacy violation. Being able to purchase high resolution, newly-created images of arbitrary locations is way over the line of an acceptable offering. This will be used to stalk and harass individuals. There's no mention on their website of how they plan to prevent this type of intrusive surveillance either. Loads of people complain about the NSA's bulk data collection for the purposes of national security, but we barely see any opposition to bulk aerial surveillance imaging such as this, despite it being even more of a privacy breach due lack of safeguards around who can obtain and exploit such data.
- bookofjoe 4y ago
  That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
  - divvyy 4y ago
    That doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about services that launch even more of such ships. This offering is a stalker's delight. The only thing that would make it worse is if they paid people to turn up to a specified location and take photos, like some sort of Uber for creeps. At minimum, they should have a form where you can opt out of having your home included in this sold imagery. Better would be to notify all property owners and dwellers within a photographed region that the imagery has been purchased, with an option to opt-out. Best of all would be if everyone being photographed had to opt-in before a sale could be made. That would be a company taking privacy seriously rather than trying to profit from breaching it in bulk.
    - heliodor 4y ago
      We also have private investigators walking by the front of your house. This is no different.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  You've always been able to hire a pilot to take photos from a small plane, for much of the populated earth. This isn't any different. Just cheaper and easier. Nobody has any expectation of privacy from the sky, any more than they do from a public street. Also, I'm not sure taking a single photo at some arbitrary time over the next few days is particularly useful or cost-effective for "stalking".
amelius 4y ago
What are people using these images for? Just curious.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  we could talk all day about use cases...trading, agriculture, real estate, insurance, curiosity, reporting, etc etc etc
TigeriusKirk 4y ago
I saw this linked somewhere yesterday and bought an existing image of my neighborhood from late last year. Resolution is 0.75 meter. I'd describe it as notably worse than what's on Google Maps (which might be aerial survey), but several years more recent. I have no particular use for it other than curiosity, from that perspective it was worth $20.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  really depends on the use case and for some reasons Google Earth is just fine
bookofjoe 4y ago
I wonder how long until you can buy the ability to aim a satellite using your phone and take just the picture — with the exact resolution — that you want. Not if but when....
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  the resolution is hard limited by satellite size, and there's no reason to aim when you can just deploy enough to cover everything.
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    kind of true but it's also orbit positioning VLEO can have much better image quality than LEO if comparing apples to apples. There is a cost and that cost is atmospheric friction and energy use which can degrade the satellite faster
dougmwne 4y ago
Also I have used this company to monitor things like road and other infrastructure construction. Images most of the planet daily. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs
- lukefischer 4y ago
  its a great resource. more options the better with varying resolutions and sensor types
teruakohatu 4y ago
> Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images. Can you crop the images? > nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves. Can you sell a commercial report containing the images? Can the images be published in an journal?
- version_five 4y ago
  Wait, does that mean the image has watermarks on it? I was just contemplating ordering one of a property we have to make a poster. Having a watermark rules that out
  - GasTrader 4y ago
    Watermark will not be on image.
- teruakohatu 4y ago
  With no responses to my questions after a couple of days, I guess the answer to all of them is "No".
KingLancelot 4y ago
[dead]
conor_f 4y ago
I honestly expected the resolution to be better? The sample preview (https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview) really isn't that great? Where it the idea this is 50cm resolution from?
- invalidator 4y ago
  Did you zoom in? When I zoom in on one of the major intersections and look at the cars, it looks about right. Half-meter resolution means that each car should be several blurry pixels wide, and that's what I get.
  - alberth 4y ago
    When I zoom into my property, a Google logo is display. So I assume they are sourcing from them.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - qwertox 4y ago
      The explorer is actually Google Maps. It looks like they are using it for you to have a tool to select the area that interests you. Maybe there should be a disclaimer.
  - 7ewis 4y ago
    I zoomed in, was also disappointed. Don't know the use case for these photos, but when you compare it to the quality of say a drone photo, SkyFi is nowhere near as good. I'm sure there must be a market for these photos, but for most people I think a drone is probably better and more cost effective.
    - lukefischer 4y ago
      we have drone partnerships, airplane, stratospheric balloons, etc and are just STARTING with satellites. Drone imagery is better but a problem of scale but we are trying to solve that. Think of it not as photos but more so of data....we could never list the complete use cases here because there are so many
ghastmaster 4y ago
Keep in mind that if you are looking for "Hi-Resolution" images of Israel, the results may be limited by the Kyl Bingaman Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment
- cstejerean 4y ago
  > After a further review in 2019, the NOAA reversed itself and dropped the GSD limit to 0.4m in a decision published in the Federal Register on 21 July 2020. So I think "high resolution" is fine as it is >= 50cm
- thaufeki 4y ago
  Wow its not even an international agreement, it's just straight up an American law for Israel's benefit in particular
  - goldenchrome 4y ago
    I wonder why!
- andai 4y ago
  >U.S. law mandates U.S. government censorship of American commercial satellite images of no country in the world besides that of Israel. Fascinating.
aliljet 4y ago
I've long wondered why we couldn't start collecting pure drone footage for this kind of data. Literally decentralize the collection of overhead imagery.
- kbaker 4y ago
  https://openaerialmap.org/ https://openaerialmap.org/ exists!
  - aliljet 4y ago
    Wait, how can I start sending my drone footage to them? This is cool?
    - lukefischer 4y ago
      We have a couple drone partners...I'm a big drone fan (ran the experiment while at Uber Elevate) and want to have every drone hobbyist be able to upload their data and get paid (probably a small chunk but size based) as long as it can be geo rectified
- lukefischer 4y ago
  It’s on our roadmap. Imagery and data from all sources
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aendruk 4y ago
Does this allow me to use purchased images as a reference for OpenStreetMap contributions? Or even better, donate them to OpenStreetMap for other contributors to reference? Occasionally the available imagery around important features is too outdated (e.g. completed construction of public infrastructure) and I’d love to be able to fund a prioritized update.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  I read elsewhere in the thread that the license allows basically anything, provided that you aren't making money and that you give credit. The latter is the hard part. Would a source=... tag on the object be enough? Or does anyone using that part of the OSM map need to be made aware that this contains data based on skyfi? There are no methods currently for doing the latter.
  - habi 4y ago
    IANAL, but an avid mapper with OpenStretMap. Contributors are listed at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors (via https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright). A written document by skyfi allowing the use of their images for tracing would be necessary.
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      Far from every application does that, nor would it be practical. As skifi won't be the contributor (I would, for example), it also wouldn't show up there. There is no mechanism to make attribution work if anyone who sees the derived material needs to be made aware of the source rather than just setting a source tag.
alberth 4y ago
Question: what service is better than Google Earth for aerial images for individuals to use? Something with a resolution of 1 foot or better. I use to use https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ which was ok, but their high res image support ends this month. Note: I’m willing to pay but don’t need a corp contract from someone like DigitalGlobe. It’s just for my on land.
- thatwasunusual 4y ago
  I bought a drone. It does the work fantastically, and I can send it up every f-ing day.
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    Drones are great, hard to scale and provide value to the masses that don't have drones though
- GasTrader 4y ago
  If having a 6 month to years old image is fine for your use case then Google Earth is fine. There are many use cases where near real time is preferred and/or other sensors are preferred. We don't expect every consumer to have a near real tine satellite imagery need.
rsync 4y ago
Good news / bad news ... The good news is, after overcoming confusion and annoyance about "launching" their website I was able to quickly and easily define, select and purchase an image. The bad news is that I have dollar-votes that I can cast in the marketplace and I just voted for a product that reshapes my cursor to some cutesy thing for no good reason.
- kraseng 4y ago
  Thank you for using the product and leaving your feedback. We are working on getting rid of the “cutesy” cursor.
lukefischer 4y ago
Biased being the CEO but just gotta say the comments are great and will help us better serve you all and the rest of the world
- coder543 4y ago
  Do you plan to sell off-nadir imagery too? It's one thing I notice that seems to be missing, and I think that can create some of the coolest looking satellite photos. Although, I wish your license actually allowed me to sell the photos if I pay for the satellite tasking. It could make for some cool t-shirts or something!
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    Off nadir is something in the roadmap. This was our first baby step in launching last week. It's trick to sell imagery...you can sell the derivative works so let me do some more clarification on the t-shirt idea...i like it and would buy one!
kepler1 4y ago
Except imagery of Israel, right? For some reason we give them a special pass to not be subject to the same scrutiny and concerns as other places, huh?
- frieses 4y ago
  I suppose it's to prevent helping Palestinian freedom fighters to test the Iron Dome. Some of SkyFi's funding comes from Israeli venture capitalists so it's not surprising that this was presumably a condition attached to receiving all those $$$.
nly 4y ago
The "high resolution" 50cm option wasn't even available in my area of the UK. Lame.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  This is our first entry to the market, agree it's not ideal you can't get it but working on amping up supply as quick as we can.
cozzyd 4y ago
Is this just a reseller for Maxar imagery? FYI if you're working on a federal grant, you technically have access to Maxar imagery for free for legitimate purposes via the NextView license, though in practice getting access is a bit harder (if you work in polar programs, the Polar Geospatial Center will help...).
- lukefischer 4y ago
  no, not just a reseller. resellers are just a sales channel and don't negotiate on process or price on behalf of the customer. we do
lukefischer 4y ago
We got the feedback on the cursor. Changing it back as I type, lol. Message received :)
lesquivemeau 4y ago
Is it just me or is the "very high res" sample less detailled than the preview on the map ?
gist 4y ago
I was not able to find a way to see (prior to purchase) the age of the stock image (is that info on the site?). Also if you order a new image how do you know it will be taken when no clouds (or is that just obvious they only take when not obstructed (and by how much)?
- prowseed 4y ago
  For each existing photo there is a date in which photo was taken, this is clearly visible in app and web, for second part of question: you have an input what amount of clouds you accept, if there is more clouds photo is most likely not even captured
chadd 4y ago
Last year, I was hiking with a crew of Scouts in Philmont, New Mexico, and at one point used my Garmin inReach to send a text via Satellite to a friend to tell them where we were and that we were safe. At that point I said to the group - when you come back here with your families, you won't need to do this - they'll pay $40/month to watch a real-time live video feed, from space, in 4k, of our 12 day hike.... This is a step toward that future.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Another use great use case! Using thermal cameras in the future would also allow you to see through some of the vegetation. Search and rescue is a great area to enhance since it's all about speed.
yboris 4y ago
For all their talk about "high resolution" there is nothing in the FAQ (or anywhere else I've found) to what that means. How many pixels do you get per square meter on the ground? That's the only meaningful measure, and it's lacking. Am I missing something?
- version_five 4y ago
  You are missing something. Resolution is the feature size on the ground that can be resolved. So (to simpiify) if it's 0.5m resolution, and I have some much smaller, but bright reflector on the ground, you will see it blurred out to look 0.5m wide. It could be a couple pixels wide, it could be a thousand if you want to up sample it, the point is you won't see small stuff. This is why pixels are not mentioned
- lolc 4y ago
  I too was wondering about the resolution. Found it in the FAQ: > Our current spatial resolutions range from 50cm to 3m for our optical sensors and 5m for our hyperspectral sensor. SkyFi will be frequently updating and adding higher resolutions. https://www.skyfi.com/faqs https://www.skyfi.com/faqs
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
I’m generally sceptical of latent EO, but I’ve never seen such a slick B2C play. Few thoughts: (1) Depending on your acquisition contracts, you may have scattered access to historic imaging. For a consumer, having an image of my house around e.g. the time of a break-in is valuable. (As a party trick, recent imagery will work in a way “wait a day” doesn’t.) (2) You’ve heard this, but it bears repeating: four hours is an order of magnitude more valuable than 24 and an order less than one. You should be able to predict fast-return windows, given orbits and ground station coordinates, for a given AOI. Bonus: natural time pressure on the sale. (3) Multispectral options unclear. May be worth discriminating by band. (4) Exclusivity pricing. Where you sell the image to me, fully, and without retaining the right to re-sell it to anyone else. There also appears to be a name collision with an Israeli ISP?
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Excellent thoughts! Once more supply comes then there is obviously more consumer optionality (time of a break in). We test internally on ordering a New Image via tasking a satellite (aka pass prediction) but I'm not willing to release it to the wild until its reliable and a magical experience. We aren't there yet. Speed of delivery is extremely important. Again, more supply means better speed and future tech will enable downloads faster. Copy all on multispectral and will put that into the pipe to clear up re: bands Exclusivity pricing is interesting and what we talk about a lot. It's a tougher problem because you may buy that image from us from a specific provider but then another provider could take the same exact image and it's not unique anymore. Regardless, will work on it and if there is enough demand then I'm all about it.
- doetoe 4y ago
  I first read that you were talking about the consumer as the one planning a break-in (for whom this would also be a useful service for sure)
CPLX 4y ago
I saw this on Twitter last night and bought two pictures. They were from the existing images feature at the highest resolution. The images totally sucked. They were blurry, and the experience was completely confusing since the sort of preview type map making image where you move the square around was very clear and sharp, and then the one I ordered was totally unusable for anything.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  What were you trying to use it for? Happy to give a full refund if you didn't get what you wanted. Email or chat with our customer support and give them the details.
campchase 4y ago
Absolutely brutal for the SkyFi team trying to have a relaxing Saturday afternoon - keep up the good work, you nuts.
thinkingemote 4y ago
Are the images orthorectified? I imagine they have some kind of georectification at least, but correction for ground , mountains etc is kind of important for measurements for distances and area and for tracing etc
- kraseng 4y ago
  This is a great question. Yes. Our images are orthorectified.
  - fguerraz 4y ago
    Hello! I couldn't find this information on the website, what DEM do you use for othorectification?
  - fguerraz 4y ago
    Second question: the area I'm interested in has notoriously bad DEMs (including Tandem-x), is it possible to download images that are not orthocorrected?
m3kw9 4y ago
Wouldn’t this be regulated like encryption if the resolution is too fine?
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Every country is different. NOAA regulates this for US based sensors for the commercial sector. More regulation is coming eventually just like every other emerging industry
gghffguhvc 4y ago
Just used the iPhone app to purchase an image. Pretty easy experience. Sign in with Apple, pay with Apple Pay was slick. Just one defect when toggling to medium resolution and back to check price difference changed capture area from 25km^2 to some large area but not back which was not intuitive. My image will be ready inside two weeks which seems reasonable.
einpoklum 4y ago
Issues: 1. "resolution (available in medium, high, or very high)" <- so, they're not willing to tell me what the resolution is? Is it a secret? 2. I don't like it that there's an app for doing stuff. I don't want their app. I just want to (maybe) buy an image. 3. Why is there a 25 Km^2 minimum? That's huge. Can they really not capture smaller areas? I may want to get a satellite image of my home town or village (not city).
- prowseed 4y ago
  Ad.1 it is very hard to give exact number because it’s based on many variables but still you have fairly good explanation of what you can get in each category Ad.2 how would you do it differently? Like with power of thought? :D Ad.3 imagine someone sent big camera into space… would you hire excavator to dig 30cm hole in your backyard? :)
technological 4y ago
What is the usecase for common man ? I cannot think of anything, so asking to understand how one will use it. Thanks and awesome website
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wongarsu 4y ago
  It makes some kinds of research easier. Imagine you were a blogger or youtuber making a piece on Ukraine, this would allow you to check how previously mothballed Russian tank stockpiles look like this month, or get reasonably up-to-date images on flood events. Anything where recency is more valuable than super high resolution.
- Mengkudulangsat 4y ago
  Some fun personal projects using AI? [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8sZ6dLrhDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8sZ6dLrhDs
- ansgri 4y ago
  Make a detailed OpenStreetMap of your favorite village? Need to check licensing though, OSM has some very strict rules on data rights.
mrahmadawais 4y ago
Oh what has the world come to. This is amazing.
elliotshep 4y ago
I just bought and received imagery of my rural property, just for fun. The resolution is very poor. Technically you might be able to make out 50cm things as a pixel, but it’s blurry and has a lot of artefacts. The colours are also not brilliant. If you’re expecting anything at all like what you get from google earth, you’ll be disappointed. However, it was a very recent image (a few weeks ago), and with clear and sensible pricing. I can see how for some uses it would be perfect. I had someone come and map 170ac for about AU$1k using a drone. Extreme resolution (and 3D + DSM too), so there are a lot of options.
- m2fkxy 4y ago
  Google Earth/Maps imagery is mostly aerial, so that makes sense.
- alberth 4y ago
  > The resolution is very poor. Technically you might be able to make out 50cm things as a pixel, but it’s blurry and has a lot of artefacts The CEO in this thread says they use Albedo for imagery. I feel like Albedo is way overselling their capabilities because it’s not real 10cm imagery. It’s essentially computational photography taken at a way worse resolution (>30cm), and does a poor job computing a better image. If you read about it in their blog post and actually zoom in on their example simulated 10cm image, it looks quite bad. Way worse than just Google Earth. https://albedo.com/post/albedo-simulated-imagery https://albedo.com/post/albedo-simulated-imagery Direct image link: https://assets.website-files.com/5fd162c9a5bb9e401ce96317/62295fc3218e617553223b57_Albedo_10cm_Residential_Blog_v2%20vertical%20.jpg https://assets.website-files.com/5fd162c9a5bb9e401ce96317/62... What’s also super confusing is SkyFi uses Google Earth to be the viewer you use to find the image you want to buy from them, so you’re essentially being shown a way higher resolution (Google) aerial photo than what your actually buying. Back to Albedo, what’s also frustrating is they rarely include the word “simulated” when they talk about 10cm imagery (should ALWAYS be stated as “simulated 10cm”). Which leads people to believe their image products are higher resolution than they really are.
  - boulos 4y ago
    Their write up is a little confusing, especially when combined with your statement. > The imagery starts with panchromatic plus 4 color aerial imagery that was collected at a native GSD of 3.8 cm, which enables accurate removal of aerial sensor properties and resampling to the Albedo 10 cm resolution and camera properties. Makes it sound like they have a spatial resolution of 3.8cm per pixel. This isn't panchromatic in a single pixel, but that's also true of things like Bayer mosaics in digital cameras. Where do you see 30cm+?
s-xyz 4y ago
Some preview images are of very low resolution, anywhere I can find an example of the result of a high resolution one? Also, what is the main target audience of this service?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
good_boy 4y ago
How long does it take? Just want to check if there are cops around before taking out a drone...
dhruvrrp 4y ago
What would be an ideal viewer to open these huge satellite images? I'm assuming everyone that comes with Windows will just hang
- ls612 4y ago
  Windows photo viewer should be fine so long as you have enough RAM.
- MikkelRasmussen 4y ago
  SkyFi Earth Observation Specialist here - the program most suited for viewing imagery like this, is specialised geospatial information system (GIS) software. There is a quite nice open source software called QGIS. However, beware - it is not the most user friendly experience, and we are working on creating a video tutorial, to help first time users visualise the data and start doing analysis.
Waterluvian 4y ago
I remember starting my career in GIS in 9th grade. We had a bunch of Landsat 5 (I think?) imagery and it was just the wildest, coolest thing ever. Especially when we began using the infrared bands to make vegetation pop out in false-colour composites. Back then 30m resolution was pretty high. :) Then Google Maps became a thing and it all slowly expanded into the public space. The rest is history.
neets 4y ago
Ummm what are they doing with the info that they know who is buying these images!?!?!?
quietthrow 4y ago
How is this different from planet labs? planet labs actually makes their own satellites.
tomrod 4y ago
This is timely. We are launching a project that needs satellite input. This helps us cost it!
pwdisswordfishb 4y ago
The statements in this thread by the company founders are concerning. How long until you can pay them to drive or walk or drone fly past someone's house with a 360° camera, Google Maps style? Not long, it seems. And if not them, then others. The implications of this are worrying. Public spaces are public, but the social contract has never included being unexpectedly and repeatedly monitored. This is taking the privacy mores of the Internet and applying them to the physical world. If we're not cautious to nip this in the bud right now, we'll end up with a pervasive surveillance scenario similar to that in Stephen Baxter's The Light Of Other Days. What is the equivalent of Let's Encrypt and HTTPS Everywhere for the real world? As we're going to need it before much longer.
- defrost 4y ago
  > we'll end up with a pervasive surveillance scenario similar to that in .. Bob Shaw's slow glass series of stories, including Light of Other Days (1966) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days
Aeolun 4y ago
Is there a technical limitation that allows a maximum resolution of 50cm? Or could you potentially go to 25 or 10 just by dialing up the zoom level on the satalites?
- MikkelRasmussen 4y ago
  The technical limitation from space is at around 10cm. Current commercial offerings go down to 30cm, but there are companies like Albedo that are aiming at having satellites in very-low earth orbit, resulting in 10cm imagery. Their imagery is expected to be on the SkyFi platform, once their satellites are in orbit. (Note that I am affiliated with SkyFi - I work as an in-house Earth Observation Specialist)
Tepix 4y ago
How does it compare to https://spymesat.com/ https://spymesat.com/ which has been around since 9+ years?
deleted 4y ago
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bamboozled 4y ago
Crazy expensive for my area and for some reason I have to have a 250km image, which is $250, I'd love to buy but no thanks.
retube 4y ago
Why would i buy this and not just screenshot google maps which is way higher resolution?
- ridgewell 4y ago
  Google Maps in many urban areas is actually aerial imagery. Satellite imagery serves a different use case - often for difficult to access areas where aerial photography is not viable or permitted.
- pininja 4y ago
  It depends on your use case. I used this to take a picture of my backyard before and after landscaping. Kind of a toy use case.. but I’ve heard of more serious examples in agriculture and construction.
pininja 4y ago
Luke is a former colleague of mine, and I got pretty excited when I saw his new company. I got a chance to try out their beta, and it was a pretty smooth experience! I was most surprised by how affordable it was to buy a small portion of an existing photo. They made prints of Oshkosh AirVenture too.. pretty incredible.
Aeolun 4y ago
Hmm, I just bought an existing image of my local area at 75cm resolution, but that is not high-res enough to be interesting. At least it only cost me $20. If I’d paid the full price for a fresh image I’d have been very disappointed.
- kraseng 4y ago
  Thank you for testing our product! Your feedback is much appreciated. We are working on making 50 cm and 30 cm available in the very near future and 10 cm a little bit down to road via our partners at Albedo. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.
ansgri 4y ago
Does not work on ipad. Directs to install mobile app, but that only works in iphone emulation mode. “Request desktop website” doesn’t help either.
- kraseng 4y ago
  Thank you for your feedback. Highly appreciated. This is on our roadmap. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.
adg001 4y ago
When I request new imagery my expectation is to have the copyright of the resulting image. Whilst I would have the need for high-resolution satellite images, I am not interested in acquiring licenses of any of them.
doetoe 4y ago
Do the multispectral images cover (part of) the infrared range? That might allow to detect heat loss through the roof
- MikkelRasmussen 4y ago
  SkyFi Earth Observation guy here - the multispectral images do cover parts of the near-infrared ranges, but not the thermal infrared, so heat loss is not possible with the current data. We are eagerly awaiting more satellites being launched, some of which will be carrying thermal infrared sensors, with spatial resolutions suitable for observing heat loss through the roof. The wavelengths covered by the current multispectral offering is from 450nm to 1040nm. In comparison, the wavelength of thermal emissions from a house, of say 30 degrees celsius, is around 9700nm.
iamtedd 4y ago
Why would anyone in Australia bother? https://qldglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ https://qldglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ 10cm resolution for free. A vast repository of historical imagery for free. I'm sure other states have similar.
- zokier 4y ago
  Because the latest data there is few years old vs getting completely fresh data on-demand?
bobwernstein1 4y ago
I want you to count how many trucks arrive at the local cement factory every day for a month so that we can make an informed offer.
wiradikusuma 4y ago
How recent are the images for non-US? Next to my house there's a condo development since last year, and all I see (in the preview?) is green empty land.
- coder543 4y ago
  That's not the imagery. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34470086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34470086
gggggg5 4y ago
Super poor choice of images on this website, most of them are beautiful but do nothing to help understand the level of detail provided.
ro9y 4y ago
The photo's, (at least the ones I've checked) are just standard Google Earth stuff from up to 5 years ago as far as I can tell. I checked several places that I have Google Earth photos saved and this is the case. Not much of a deal when you can get it for "free" on Google Earth
- Bedon292 4y ago
  They're using it as a base layer so you can see the area you're ordering. You can also buy images that haven't been captured yet. And there's a big difference between actual imagery and a screenshot from Google. For technical analysis as well a recency.
ro9y 4y ago
And yes, I do realise that I'm just looking at the preview, still...
paytonb 4y ago
*SkyFi Employee here! Would love feedback!* Someone requested a price filter so that a SkyFi user could say "I want a picture of Austin, Texas under $30" and all related Existing Images would appear. Thoughts on this feature? Down the road, we could implement alerts/push notifications of "Images under $XX for X AOI", which I think would really gain traction across infrastructure, agriculture, etc. use cases.
stolsvik 4y ago
What is the license I get? “Download”, well sure, but what can I do with it? Put it in an app? On a poster I sell? Ads?
Transisto 4y ago
There is a market for ordering drone footage from random plebs arround the world. Given the drones range is 7km radius and images can be so perfectly stitched. I don't see that much appeal to small area via satelite.
rcdwealth 4y ago
[dead]

Very cool. Always interested in these hi-res photos for agricultural field monitoring. A little pricey though. ETA: 5 sq km seems big for a minimum. Multispectral availability is super cool tho!

mckeed 4y ago
Cool, I was wondering if this would be useful for farmers. Could you share more info on how multispectral images would be used?
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Well with SAR you can get moisture content of soil which can help with crop yields. Right now third parties do this for ag work but our goal is to have integrated analytics cause really a farmer doesn't care about the imagery he or she cares about crop yields...that's what we are solving for.
  - mckeed 4y ago
    Interesting, thanks!
budget_rabbit 4y ago
Take a look at www.arlula.com that marketplace offers 1 kilometer minimum orders with many of their suppliers. It seems like this space is getting quite competitive.

jofer 4y ago

What's interesting to me is that the pricing isn't that unique. That's pretty normal for a list price. $7 sq km + 25 sq km min (basically the size of the image). That's probably because they're (I think?) buying tasking capacity from other companies, so the pricing can't be below the rate they negotiate. That probably results in then negotiating a below list price from a few companies and then setting prices that wind up being close to the average list price for the industry. The difference is two very key things: 1) no minimum overall buy 2) fully public pricing That price is pretty normal, but usually you have to commit to at least a few thousand dollars worth. 25 sq km min per target is also pretty normal, but the contracts usually require you committing to at least a few hundred of those. Next is public list pricing. Every company has list pricing, and that's basically what smaller customers will pay. Large customers negotiate it down, of course. But just explicitly advertising the list pricing is also a big deal and not normally done. It's usually way too hidden. A lot of folks (hi there Joe) have been pushing for more transparency in pricing, and a lot of companies have been talking about chasing the "long tail" of small customers for a long time, but it's really good to see someone actually doing it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jofer 4y ago
With that said, I'm still very skeptical that there's enough revenue in the "long tail" of small customers to make a viable satellite imaging company. Please prove me wrong there!
- brookst 4y ago
  Hello jofer! I couldn’t help noticing your red 2017 Subaru Crosstrek was out in your driveway all winter, and probably needs a spring detail. We’re running a special this week! We’ve also identified signs of water damage on your roof, which was last replaced 22 years ago according to public records. Our local affiliate will provide a repair estimate free of cost, and we’ll throw in a discount on the car detail.
  - anlsh 4y ago
    I think I'm going to vomit :(
    - layer8 4y ago
      Don’t do that outside though! You’ll get ads for gastrointestinal medication.
    - NavinF 4y ago
      Local contractors driving by your home can do the same thing.
  - jofer 4y ago
    Good luck recognizing that level of detail! This isn't that type of imagery. You can tell just barely tell a truck from a car and can definitely tell the color of the vehicle, but that's about it. You're describing 1cm imagery from drones, not satellite imagery. Regardless, insurance companies are big customers for similar reasons. Recognizing swimming pools in imagery is tougher than you'd think, but a classic thing (and real) that gets brought up is your insurance company raising your rates because you put in a pool and didn't tell them. Insurance companies would love to (and sometimes do) detect that from satellite imagery instead of boots on the ground. Either way, those are big companies / big contracts, rather than individuals buying imagery directly.

jebarker 4y ago

I dislike that this website replaces my cursor with a circle. Is there any good reason to do that?

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely (Chrome on MacOS). It's like they built it only for touchscreens? I expect I'll never go back and use it now. Jeez, who signed off on this?
- entropie 4y ago
  > It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely Same. Brave on Windows
- culi 4y ago
  Do you have javascript disabled? Some design heavy sites like to replace the default cursor. The CSS standard[0] still only really supports the few custom cursors that we've had for decades now and provides no way to style them so the only way to achieve this is through javascript currently [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    No, but it might uBlock origin blocking something, I dunno. I went into devtools and modified the CSS attribute and was able to get past it. Dumb.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. We may go back. I signed off on it
Finnucane 4y ago
Ok my iPad it makes a dot where I touch the screen. It does seem like an irrelevant distraction. Also, it would be nice to be able to search for available images without the app.

daemonhunter 4y ago

Custom mouse cursor, how 90s.

mistrial9 4y ago
in fact, there was a 90s website that sold high resolution satellite imagery prints, called Pictopia
gwking 4y ago
On macOS Safari, it causes the mouse to disappear when you transition from the browser window to another screen. I can't help but wonder how much money they spent creating that nuisance.
lukefischer 4y ago
It was a design choice we made obviously. Probably gonna go back

nileshtrivedi 4y ago

What I'd like is to have this image then be uploaded in Google Maps' satelite layer for everyone's benefit. Or OpenStreetMap for that matter.

amelius 4y ago
Copyright will prevent that from happening, I'm guessing.
bornfreddy 4y ago
As sibling said, copyright won't let you do that. But there is lots of imagery already available that can be used more freely [0], though usually not in high resolution - enough for some cases, not enough for others. [0] https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ (still check usage conditions)
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Copyright isn't supposed to apply to non-artistic images. Is the jurisdiction USA, do you know of caselaw that's relevant here? Thanks.

m348e912 4y ago

Has anyone been able to select their highest resolution option to buy? Looks like its not available for unregistered users at least.

GasTrader 4y ago
Not turned on yet expected in late February as we go thru Quality control.

slowhadoken 4y ago

“you’re purchasing a license to a digital image.” Lame.

ledauphin 4y ago
i mean - very few photographers sell their copyright. a lot depends on the terms of the license though.
- tubatime 4y ago
  A reasonable expectation might be that at least for new imagery this is “work for hire”.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    They already collected the data and are just giving you a part of their independent work under license.
GasTrader 4y ago
I actually agree with you and we fight for as much freedom with operators as possible. Since the industry grew up on large government contractors they have only moved so much but we continue to fight for hassle free contracts with all our providers. Great things to come.

ledauphin 4y ago

does anyone with expertise know how this resolution compares to Google Maps or other "free" providers?

Karliss 4y ago
They have resolution samples here https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview .
lucb1e 4y ago
Resolution will be worse. Age ought to be better unless you got very lucky that a plane just flew over and the footage was uploaded very fast afterwards.

pmoriarty 4y ago

I heard an interesting interview recently with someone who uses satellite imagery to trade stocks. According to him there are data vendors who use such imagery to do things like (for example) look at how full the parking lots of certain retail stores are and then use that information to help them estimate how successful these businesses really are, and make stock trades based on that.

culi 4y ago
Even governments use this technology to calculate how high stockpiles of certain minerals or resources are based on shadows and time of day
heipei 4y ago
Yes, though at this point I'd say this is old news and table stakes, so I expect everyone to be using this type of data already. As an example, Orbital Insights began tracking 250k parking lots across 96 retail chains at least all the way back to 2017. Same for things like monitoring gas silo levels via satellite imagery, etc. If you read it on the blog of one of the many sat image providers I would assume there to be no more competitive advantage to be had, unless you can read additional information from that data that other traders might have missed.
janalsncm 4y ago
Was it Jacob Goldstein’s interview with Planet? https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/seeing-data-from-space https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/seeing-da...
lukefischer 4y ago
It’s true and part of our origin story

cornstalks 4y ago

> When placing a SkyFi order for Existing or New Images, you’re purchasing a license to a digital image. I was curious what the license was and found their FAQ, for those curious: > What is SkyFi’s licensing policy? > SkyFi has the most user-friendly licensing in the satellite industry. You are free to share purchased images on the web and social media (and we encourage you to tag us @SkyFi.App or #SkyFi). Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images. You are also free to use the images to do analysis and sell the results of that analysis. You cannot re-sell images you purchase on the SkyFi platform, nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves. Please click here for more information on the SkyFi EULA (End User License Agreement). Seems fairly reasonable, though I haven’t read the full EULA. I wish I was creative enough to have some cool ideas I could do with this imagery.

TheJoeMan 4y ago
I have to hard disagree on the reasonableness of a licensed image. Firstly, I’m the one framing the shot. This isn’t a photographer making art, this is me paying a company to point a camera at xyz coordinates and capture the earth as it is, unprocessed. So if I personally plan out the perfect beautiful shot, now SkyFi gets to pitch it to others to make additional money off it? Secondly, calling this “democratized” satellite imagery is a farce. Democratized to me means here’s the pixels you bought, it’s yours to do whatever you want with.
- mlindner 4y ago
  I didn't read their site in detail, but usually you're not actually framing the shot. You're buying images that they've already taken. Imaging satellites don't let you task the angle or direction and they simply continuously take pictures of anything underneath them as they pass overhead.
  - jffry 4y ago
    The linked page prominently talks about pricing for existing images from a catalog of existing images, OR paying for an entirely new image

yellow_lead 4y ago

Is there any restriction around military bases or can I buy one pointed at Area 51, or Russian military bases, or certain conflict areas in Ukraine?

lelag 4y ago
If not, I was thinking this type of services could be a boon to moderately-funded OSINT organisations as it would make you able to get fresh satellite imagery very easy and accessible.
- mNovak 4y ago
  There's been heavy use of these kinds of services for exactly this purpose. See [1] for example. Typically airbases, mass graves, bridges; things we know won't move or change too fast. [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-no-damage-seen-at-russian-bomber-base-after-drone-attacks https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-repo...
lukefischer 4y ago
First image I got was of Area 51 and Russian troop build ups last Feb
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  care to share? :)

justicz 4y ago

I’m really excited for this. I thought this was what the company Planet (planet.com) was going to be, but when I actually tried to buy images from them it went through a complicated sales process I couldn’t easily complete. I felt like I clearly wasn’t the target customer. I love websites with an “add to cart” button instead of a “contact sales” button :)

justicz 4y ago
It would be really cool if I could upload a short python snippet/map-reduce job to run a piece of code over the entire globe. Could be super useful for e.g. counting all of the solar farms in the world.
lukefischer 4y ago
I despise “contact sales” and why I essentially outlawed it at the company.

rsync 4y ago

I need this, as in, today. I am ready to make an immediate purchase. I want to give them my money. But all I see is "launch skyfi" ... and, of course, I don't want to "launch" anything. I want to enter simple information into a web form and hit a submit button. I do not need an app install or a telephone. All I need is a web browser. Is it actually impossible to purchase one of these images from their actual website ?

carbocation 4y ago
I felt the same way but clicked "Launch skyfi" anyways. It takes you to a login form in the browser. Bad name for a link.
- version_five 4y ago
  I clicked the button, on my phone, and got page that said it's best viewed in the app, and a link to the app store, with no other option SkyFi is an easy-to-use mobile or desktop app that allows you to get satellite imagery of any place in the world at any given time. SkyFi is creating a marketplace for businesses and consumers alike to capture earth observation data to make better informed business decisions, capture life’s most precious memories, and more. The SkyFi App, thanks to its satellite partners, allows customers to either order a New Image, where a satellite in-orbit is ordered to capture an Area of Interest for a date in the future, or select an Existing Image from our database of hundreds of previously-captured images. The best part? This can all be done from your phone, tablet, or computer. This is completely unwanted, I agree with the person at the top of the thread.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    To be fair, the mobile app is pretty nice. A bit unnecessary, but other than ‘sign in with apple’ it works pretty well.
    - kraseng 4y ago
      Thank you for the positive feedback about the mobile app. We are working on the Apple SSO. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.

londons_explore 4y ago

The fact they charge differently for existing vs new images tells me that they will probably let you know which applies before purchase... And if that's the case, I think there could be a market for a monitoring/alerting system to detect if anyone else orders imagery of your factory/port.

heliodor 4y ago

I picked an area. The preview low-res image seems to indicate that they are happy to sell me pictures of clouds!

ritwikgupta 4y ago
That's just the part of the equation when using electro-optical imagery. You're paying to task a satellite, not necessarily a clear picture. To me this will be an interesting test for SkyFi. Casual customers just expect to see the ground when they "buy an image" and giving them clouds will put them off from using the service further.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  You can select maximum cloud cover in the resulting image, over a month long imaging window. They predict cloud cover to task satellites. It's kind of the dual problem to "get me and image on this date"
- heliodor 4y ago
  I understand that for new images but for existing images I expect them to stack multiple images into a cloud-free image, just like Google Maps does. Otherwise, at least calculate the cloud cover and discount me the money proportionally.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    >at least calculate the cloud cover and discount me the money proportionally. That makes sense if you can figure out how to get food to duplicate their satellites.
  - kraseng 4y ago
    This is a great point. We are not going to charge anything (will refund) if we cannot deliver an ordered new image that does not satisfy the minimum cloud cover requirements. There are options for selecting the threshold when tasking. For existing/archive images the cloud cover is indicated in the image description. However, if the information is hard to see or not helpful, let us know, please. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.

denlekke 4y ago

48 hours from new image capture to being able to download it. didn't see info on the time between requesting a new image and how soon it can be captured

lukefischer 4y ago
We aim to be faster. It’ll increase with more supply

divvyy 4y ago

This is a horrendous privacy violation. Being able to purchase high resolution, newly-created images of arbitrary locations is way over the line of an acceptable offering. This will be used to stalk and harass individuals. There's no mention on their website of how they plan to prevent this type of intrusive surveillance either. Loads of people complain about the NSA's bulk data collection for the purposes of national security, but we barely see any opposition to bulk aerial surveillance imaging such as this, despite it being even more of a privacy breach due lack of safeguards around who can obtain and exploit such data.

bookofjoe 4y ago
That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
- divvyy 4y ago
  That doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about services that launch even more of such ships. This offering is a stalker's delight. The only thing that would make it worse is if they paid people to turn up to a specified location and take photos, like some sort of Uber for creeps. At minimum, they should have a form where you can opt out of having your home included in this sold imagery. Better would be to notify all property owners and dwellers within a photographed region that the imagery has been purchased, with an option to opt-out. Best of all would be if everyone being photographed had to opt-in before a sale could be made. That would be a company taking privacy seriously rather than trying to profit from breaching it in bulk.
  - heliodor 4y ago
    We also have private investigators walking by the front of your house. This is no different.
crazygringo 4y ago
You've always been able to hire a pilot to take photos from a small plane, for much of the populated earth. This isn't any different. Just cheaper and easier. Nobody has any expectation of privacy from the sky, any more than they do from a public street. Also, I'm not sure taking a single photo at some arbitrary time over the next few days is particularly useful or cost-effective for "stalking".

amelius 4y ago

What are people using these images for? Just curious.

lukefischer 4y ago
we could talk all day about use cases...trading, agriculture, real estate, insurance, curiosity, reporting, etc etc etc

TigeriusKirk 4y ago

I saw this linked somewhere yesterday and bought an existing image of my neighborhood from late last year. Resolution is 0.75 meter. I'd describe it as notably worse than what's on Google Maps (which might be aerial survey), but several years more recent. I have no particular use for it other than curiosity, from that perspective it was worth $20.

lukefischer 4y ago
really depends on the use case and for some reasons Google Earth is just fine

bookofjoe 4y ago

I wonder how long until you can buy the ability to aim a satellite using your phone and take just the picture — with the exact resolution — that you want. Not if but when....

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
the resolution is hard limited by satellite size, and there's no reason to aim when you can just deploy enough to cover everything.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  kind of true but it's also orbit positioning VLEO can have much better image quality than LEO if comparing apples to apples. There is a cost and that cost is atmospheric friction and energy use which can degrade the satellite faster

dougmwne 4y ago

Also I have used this company to monitor things like road and other infrastructure construction. Images most of the planet daily. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs

lukefischer 4y ago
its a great resource. more options the better with varying resolutions and sensor types

teruakohatu 4y ago

> Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images. Can you crop the images? > nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves. Can you sell a commercial report containing the images? Can the images be published in an journal?

version_five 4y ago
Wait, does that mean the image has watermarks on it? I was just contemplating ordering one of a property we have to make a poster. Having a watermark rules that out
- GasTrader 4y ago
  Watermark will not be on image.
teruakohatu 4y ago
With no responses to my questions after a couple of days, I guess the answer to all of them is "No".

KingLancelot 4y ago

[dead]

conor_f 4y ago

I honestly expected the resolution to be better? The sample preview (https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview) really isn't that great? Where it the idea this is 50cm resolution from?

invalidator 4y ago
Did you zoom in? When I zoom in on one of the major intersections and look at the cars, it looks about right. Half-meter resolution means that each car should be several blurry pixels wide, and that's what I get.
- alberth 4y ago
  When I zoom into my property, a Google logo is display. So I assume they are sourcing from them.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - qwertox 4y ago
    The explorer is actually Google Maps. It looks like they are using it for you to have a tool to select the area that interests you. Maybe there should be a disclaimer.
- 7ewis 4y ago
  I zoomed in, was also disappointed. Don't know the use case for these photos, but when you compare it to the quality of say a drone photo, SkyFi is nowhere near as good. I'm sure there must be a market for these photos, but for most people I think a drone is probably better and more cost effective.
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    we have drone partnerships, airplane, stratospheric balloons, etc and are just STARTING with satellites. Drone imagery is better but a problem of scale but we are trying to solve that. Think of it not as photos but more so of data....we could never list the complete use cases here because there are so many

ghastmaster 4y ago

Keep in mind that if you are looking for "Hi-Resolution" images of Israel, the results may be limited by the Kyl Bingaman Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment

cstejerean 4y ago
> After a further review in 2019, the NOAA reversed itself and dropped the GSD limit to 0.4m in a decision published in the Federal Register on 21 July 2020. So I think "high resolution" is fine as it is >= 50cm
thaufeki 4y ago
Wow its not even an international agreement, it's just straight up an American law for Israel's benefit in particular
- goldenchrome 4y ago
  I wonder why!
andai 4y ago
>U.S. law mandates U.S. government censorship of American commercial satellite images of no country in the world besides that of Israel. Fascinating.

aliljet 4y ago

I've long wondered why we couldn't start collecting pure drone footage for this kind of data. Literally decentralize the collection of overhead imagery.

kbaker 4y ago
https://openaerialmap.org/ https://openaerialmap.org/ exists!
- aliljet 4y ago
  Wait, how can I start sending my drone footage to them? This is cool?
  - lukefischer 4y ago
    We have a couple drone partners...I'm a big drone fan (ran the experiment while at Uber Elevate) and want to have every drone hobbyist be able to upload their data and get paid (probably a small chunk but size based) as long as it can be geo rectified
lukefischer 4y ago
It’s on our roadmap. Imagery and data from all sources

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aendruk 4y ago

Does this allow me to use purchased images as a reference for OpenStreetMap contributions? Or even better, donate them to OpenStreetMap for other contributors to reference? Occasionally the available imagery around important features is too outdated (e.g. completed construction of public infrastructure) and I’d love to be able to fund a prioritized update.

lucb1e 4y ago
I read elsewhere in the thread that the license allows basically anything, provided that you aren't making money and that you give credit. The latter is the hard part. Would a source=... tag on the object be enough? Or does anyone using that part of the OSM map need to be made aware that this contains data based on skyfi? There are no methods currently for doing the latter.
- habi 4y ago
  IANAL, but an avid mapper with OpenStretMap. Contributors are listed at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors (via https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright). A written document by skyfi allowing the use of their images for tracing would be necessary.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    Far from every application does that, nor would it be practical. As skifi won't be the contributor (I would, for example), it also wouldn't show up there. There is no mechanism to make attribution work if anyone who sees the derived material needs to be made aware of the source rather than just setting a source tag.

alberth 4y ago

Question: what service is better than Google Earth for aerial images for individuals to use? Something with a resolution of 1 foot or better. I use to use https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ which was ok, but their high res image support ends this month. Note: I’m willing to pay but don’t need a corp contract from someone like DigitalGlobe. It’s just for my on land.

thatwasunusual 4y ago
I bought a drone. It does the work fantastically, and I can send it up every f-ing day.
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Drones are great, hard to scale and provide value to the masses that don't have drones though
GasTrader 4y ago
If having a 6 month to years old image is fine for your use case then Google Earth is fine. There are many use cases where near real time is preferred and/or other sensors are preferred. We don't expect every consumer to have a near real tine satellite imagery need.

rsync 4y ago

Good news / bad news ... The good news is, after overcoming confusion and annoyance about "launching" their website I was able to quickly and easily define, select and purchase an image. The bad news is that I have dollar-votes that I can cast in the marketplace and I just voted for a product that reshapes my cursor to some cutesy thing for no good reason.

kraseng 4y ago
Thank you for using the product and leaving your feedback. We are working on getting rid of the “cutesy” cursor.

lukefischer 4y ago

Biased being the CEO but just gotta say the comments are great and will help us better serve you all and the rest of the world

coder543 4y ago
Do you plan to sell off-nadir imagery too? It's one thing I notice that seems to be missing, and I think that can create some of the coolest looking satellite photos. Although, I wish your license actually allowed me to sell the photos if I pay for the satellite tasking. It could make for some cool t-shirts or something!
- lukefischer 4y ago
  Off nadir is something in the roadmap. This was our first baby step in launching last week. It's trick to sell imagery...you can sell the derivative works so let me do some more clarification on the t-shirt idea...i like it and would buy one!

kepler1 4y ago

Except imagery of Israel, right? For some reason we give them a special pass to not be subject to the same scrutiny and concerns as other places, huh?

frieses 4y ago
I suppose it's to prevent helping Palestinian freedom fighters to test the Iron Dome. Some of SkyFi's funding comes from Israeli venture capitalists so it's not surprising that this was presumably a condition attached to receiving all those $$$.

nly 4y ago

The "high resolution" 50cm option wasn't even available in my area of the UK. Lame.

lukefischer 4y ago
This is our first entry to the market, agree it's not ideal you can't get it but working on amping up supply as quick as we can.

cozzyd 4y ago

Is this just a reseller for Maxar imagery? FYI if you're working on a federal grant, you technically have access to Maxar imagery for free for legitimate purposes via the NextView license, though in practice getting access is a bit harder (if you work in polar programs, the Polar Geospatial Center will help...).

lukefischer 4y ago
no, not just a reseller. resellers are just a sales channel and don't negotiate on process or price on behalf of the customer. we do

lukefischer 4y ago

We got the feedback on the cursor. Changing it back as I type, lol. Message received :)

lesquivemeau 4y ago

Is it just me or is the "very high res" sample less detailled than the preview on the map ?

gist 4y ago

I was not able to find a way to see (prior to purchase) the age of the stock image (is that info on the site?). Also if you order a new image how do you know it will be taken when no clouds (or is that just obvious they only take when not obstructed (and by how much)?

prowseed 4y ago
For each existing photo there is a date in which photo was taken, this is clearly visible in app and web, for second part of question: you have an input what amount of clouds you accept, if there is more clouds photo is most likely not even captured

chadd 4y ago

Last year, I was hiking with a crew of Scouts in Philmont, New Mexico, and at one point used my Garmin inReach to send a text via Satellite to a friend to tell them where we were and that we were safe. At that point I said to the group - when you come back here with your families, you won't need to do this - they'll pay $40/month to watch a real-time live video feed, from space, in 4k, of our 12 day hike.... This is a step toward that future.

lukefischer 4y ago
Another use great use case! Using thermal cameras in the future would also allow you to see through some of the vegetation. Search and rescue is a great area to enhance since it's all about speed.

yboris 4y ago

For all their talk about "high resolution" there is nothing in the FAQ (or anywhere else I've found) to what that means. How many pixels do you get per square meter on the ground? That's the only meaningful measure, and it's lacking. Am I missing something?

version_five 4y ago
You are missing something. Resolution is the feature size on the ground that can be resolved. So (to simpiify) if it's 0.5m resolution, and I have some much smaller, but bright reflector on the ground, you will see it blurred out to look 0.5m wide. It could be a couple pixels wide, it could be a thousand if you want to up sample it, the point is you won't see small stuff. This is why pixels are not mentioned
lolc 4y ago
I too was wondering about the resolution. Found it in the FAQ: > Our current spatial resolutions range from 50cm to 3m for our optical sensors and 5m for our hyperspectral sensor. SkyFi will be frequently updating and adding higher resolutions. https://www.skyfi.com/faqs https://www.skyfi.com/faqs

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

I’m generally sceptical of latent EO, but I’ve never seen such a slick B2C play. Few thoughts: (1) Depending on your acquisition contracts, you may have scattered access to historic imaging. For a consumer, having an image of my house around e.g. the time of a break-in is valuable. (As a party trick, recent imagery will work in a way “wait a day” doesn’t.) (2) You’ve heard this, but it bears repeating: four hours is an order of magnitude more valuable than 24 and an order less than one. You should be able to predict fast-return windows, given orbits and ground station coordinates, for a given AOI. Bonus: natural time pressure on the sale. (3) Multispectral options unclear. May be worth discriminating by band. (4) Exclusivity pricing. Where you sell the image to me, fully, and without retaining the right to re-sell it to anyone else. There also appears to be a name collision with an Israeli ISP?

lukefischer 4y ago
Excellent thoughts! Once more supply comes then there is obviously more consumer optionality (time of a break in). We test internally on ordering a New Image via tasking a satellite (aka pass prediction) but I'm not willing to release it to the wild until its reliable and a magical experience. We aren't there yet. Speed of delivery is extremely important. Again, more supply means better speed and future tech will enable downloads faster. Copy all on multispectral and will put that into the pipe to clear up re: bands Exclusivity pricing is interesting and what we talk about a lot. It's a tougher problem because you may buy that image from us from a specific provider but then another provider could take the same exact image and it's not unique anymore. Regardless, will work on it and if there is enough demand then I'm all about it.
doetoe 4y ago
I first read that you were talking about the consumer as the one planning a break-in (for whom this would also be a useful service for sure)

CPLX 4y ago

I saw this on Twitter last night and bought two pictures. They were from the existing images feature at the highest resolution. The images totally sucked. They were blurry, and the experience was completely confusing since the sort of preview type map making image where you move the square around was very clear and sharp, and then the one I ordered was totally unusable for anything.

lukefischer 4y ago
What were you trying to use it for? Happy to give a full refund if you didn't get what you wanted. Email or chat with our customer support and give them the details.

campchase 4y ago

Absolutely brutal for the SkyFi team trying to have a relaxing Saturday afternoon - keep up the good work, you nuts.

thinkingemote 4y ago

Are the images orthorectified? I imagine they have some kind of georectification at least, but correction for ground , mountains etc is kind of important for measurements for distances and area and for tracing etc

kraseng 4y ago
This is a great question. Yes. Our images are orthorectified.
- fguerraz 4y ago
  Hello! I couldn't find this information on the website, what DEM do you use for othorectification?
- fguerraz 4y ago
  Second question: the area I'm interested in has notoriously bad DEMs (including Tandem-x), is it possible to download images that are not orthocorrected?

m3kw9 4y ago

Wouldn’t this be regulated like encryption if the resolution is too fine?

lukefischer 4y ago
Every country is different. NOAA regulates this for US based sensors for the commercial sector. More regulation is coming eventually just like every other emerging industry

gghffguhvc 4y ago

Just used the iPhone app to purchase an image. Pretty easy experience. Sign in with Apple, pay with Apple Pay was slick. Just one defect when toggling to medium resolution and back to check price difference changed capture area from 25km^2 to some large area but not back which was not intuitive. My image will be ready inside two weeks which seems reasonable.

einpoklum 4y ago

Issues: 1. "resolution (available in medium, high, or very high)" <- so, they're not willing to tell me what the resolution is? Is it a secret? 2. I don't like it that there's an app for doing stuff. I don't want their app. I just want to (maybe) buy an image. 3. Why is there a 25 Km^2 minimum? That's huge. Can they really not capture smaller areas? I may want to get a satellite image of my home town or village (not city).

prowseed 4y ago
Ad.1 it is very hard to give exact number because it’s based on many variables but still you have fairly good explanation of what you can get in each category Ad.2 how would you do it differently? Like with power of thought? :D Ad.3 imagine someone sent big camera into space… would you hire excavator to dig 30cm hole in your backyard? :)

technological 4y ago

What is the usecase for common man ? I cannot think of anything, so asking to understand how one will use it. Thanks and awesome website

deleted 4y ago
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wongarsu 4y ago
It makes some kinds of research easier. Imagine you were a blogger or youtuber making a piece on Ukraine, this would allow you to check how previously mothballed Russian tank stockpiles look like this month, or get reasonably up-to-date images on flood events. Anything where recency is more valuable than super high resolution.
Mengkudulangsat 4y ago
Some fun personal projects using AI? [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8sZ6dLrhDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8sZ6dLrhDs
ansgri 4y ago
Make a detailed OpenStreetMap of your favorite village? Need to check licensing though, OSM has some very strict rules on data rights.

mrahmadawais 4y ago

Oh what has the world come to. This is amazing.

elliotshep 4y ago

I just bought and received imagery of my rural property, just for fun. The resolution is very poor. Technically you might be able to make out 50cm things as a pixel, but it’s blurry and has a lot of artefacts. The colours are also not brilliant. If you’re expecting anything at all like what you get from google earth, you’ll be disappointed. However, it was a very recent image (a few weeks ago), and with clear and sensible pricing. I can see how for some uses it would be perfect. I had someone come and map 170ac for about AU$1k using a drone. Extreme resolution (and 3D + DSM too), so there are a lot of options.

m2fkxy 4y ago
Google Earth/Maps imagery is mostly aerial, so that makes sense.
alberth 4y ago
> The resolution is very poor. Technically you might be able to make out 50cm things as a pixel, but it’s blurry and has a lot of artefacts The CEO in this thread says they use Albedo for imagery. I feel like Albedo is way overselling their capabilities because it’s not real 10cm imagery. It’s essentially computational photography taken at a way worse resolution (>30cm), and does a poor job computing a better image. If you read about it in their blog post and actually zoom in on their example simulated 10cm image, it looks quite bad. Way worse than just Google Earth. https://albedo.com/post/albedo-simulated-imagery https://albedo.com/post/albedo-simulated-imagery Direct image link: https://assets.website-files.com/5fd162c9a5bb9e401ce96317/62295fc3218e617553223b57_Albedo_10cm_Residential_Blog_v2%20vertical%20.jpg https://assets.website-files.com/5fd162c9a5bb9e401ce96317/62... What’s also super confusing is SkyFi uses Google Earth to be the viewer you use to find the image you want to buy from them, so you’re essentially being shown a way higher resolution (Google) aerial photo than what your actually buying. Back to Albedo, what’s also frustrating is they rarely include the word “simulated” when they talk about 10cm imagery (should ALWAYS be stated as “simulated 10cm”). Which leads people to believe their image products are higher resolution than they really are.
- boulos 4y ago
  Their write up is a little confusing, especially when combined with your statement. > The imagery starts with panchromatic plus 4 color aerial imagery that was collected at a native GSD of 3.8 cm, which enables accurate removal of aerial sensor properties and resampling to the Albedo 10 cm resolution and camera properties. Makes it sound like they have a spatial resolution of 3.8cm per pixel. This isn't panchromatic in a single pixel, but that's also true of things like Bayer mosaics in digital cameras. Where do you see 30cm+?

s-xyz 4y ago

Some preview images are of very low resolution, anywhere I can find an example of the result of a high resolution one? Also, what is the main target audience of this service?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

good_boy 4y ago

How long does it take? Just want to check if there are cops around before taking out a drone...

dhruvrrp 4y ago

What would be an ideal viewer to open these huge satellite images? I'm assuming everyone that comes with Windows will just hang

ls612 4y ago
Windows photo viewer should be fine so long as you have enough RAM.
MikkelRasmussen 4y ago
SkyFi Earth Observation Specialist here - the program most suited for viewing imagery like this, is specialised geospatial information system (GIS) software. There is a quite nice open source software called QGIS. However, beware - it is not the most user friendly experience, and we are working on creating a video tutorial, to help first time users visualise the data and start doing analysis.

Waterluvian 4y ago

I remember starting my career in GIS in 9th grade. We had a bunch of Landsat 5 (I think?) imagery and it was just the wildest, coolest thing ever. Especially when we began using the infrared bands to make vegetation pop out in false-colour composites. Back then 30m resolution was pretty high. :) Then Google Maps became a thing and it all slowly expanded into the public space. The rest is history.

neets 4y ago

Ummm what are they doing with the info that they know who is buying these images!?!?!?

quietthrow 4y ago

How is this different from planet labs? planet labs actually makes their own satellites.

tomrod 4y ago

This is timely. We are launching a project that needs satellite input. This helps us cost it!

pwdisswordfishb 4y ago

The statements in this thread by the company founders are concerning. How long until you can pay them to drive or walk or drone fly past someone's house with a 360° camera, Google Maps style? Not long, it seems. And if not them, then others. The implications of this are worrying. Public spaces are public, but the social contract has never included being unexpectedly and repeatedly monitored. This is taking the privacy mores of the Internet and applying them to the physical world. If we're not cautious to nip this in the bud right now, we'll end up with a pervasive surveillance scenario similar to that in Stephen Baxter's The Light Of Other Days. What is the equivalent of Let's Encrypt and HTTPS Everywhere for the real world? As we're going to need it before much longer.

defrost 4y ago
> we'll end up with a pervasive surveillance scenario similar to that in .. Bob Shaw's slow glass series of stories, including Light of Other Days (1966) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days

Aeolun 4y ago

Is there a technical limitation that allows a maximum resolution of 50cm? Or could you potentially go to 25 or 10 just by dialing up the zoom level on the satalites?

MikkelRasmussen 4y ago
The technical limitation from space is at around 10cm. Current commercial offerings go down to 30cm, but there are companies like Albedo that are aiming at having satellites in very-low earth orbit, resulting in 10cm imagery. Their imagery is expected to be on the SkyFi platform, once their satellites are in orbit. (Note that I am affiliated with SkyFi - I work as an in-house Earth Observation Specialist)

Tepix 4y ago

How does it compare to https://spymesat.com/ https://spymesat.com/ which has been around since 9+ years?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bamboozled 4y ago

Crazy expensive for my area and for some reason I have to have a 250km image, which is $250, I'd love to buy but no thanks.

retube 4y ago

Why would i buy this and not just screenshot google maps which is way higher resolution?

ridgewell 4y ago
Google Maps in many urban areas is actually aerial imagery. Satellite imagery serves a different use case - often for difficult to access areas where aerial photography is not viable or permitted.
pininja 4y ago
It depends on your use case. I used this to take a picture of my backyard before and after landscaping. Kind of a toy use case.. but I’ve heard of more serious examples in agriculture and construction.

pininja 4y ago

Luke is a former colleague of mine, and I got pretty excited when I saw his new company. I got a chance to try out their beta, and it was a pretty smooth experience! I was most surprised by how affordable it was to buy a small portion of an existing photo. They made prints of Oshkosh AirVenture too.. pretty incredible.

Aeolun 4y ago

Hmm, I just bought an existing image of my local area at 75cm resolution, but that is not high-res enough to be interesting. At least it only cost me $20. If I’d paid the full price for a fresh image I’d have been very disappointed.

kraseng 4y ago
Thank you for testing our product! Your feedback is much appreciated. We are working on making 50 cm and 30 cm available in the very near future and 10 cm a little bit down to road via our partners at Albedo. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.

ansgri 4y ago

Does not work on ipad. Directs to install mobile app, but that only works in iphone emulation mode. “Request desktop website” doesn’t help either.

kraseng 4y ago
Thank you for your feedback. Highly appreciated. This is on our roadmap. Disclaimer - I am affiliated with SkyFi. I am the company’s CTO.

adg001 4y ago

When I request new imagery my expectation is to have the copyright of the resulting image. Whilst I would have the need for high-resolution satellite images, I am not interested in acquiring licenses of any of them.

doetoe 4y ago

Do the multispectral images cover (part of) the infrared range? That might allow to detect heat loss through the roof

MikkelRasmussen 4y ago
SkyFi Earth Observation guy here - the multispectral images do cover parts of the near-infrared ranges, but not the thermal infrared, so heat loss is not possible with the current data. We are eagerly awaiting more satellites being launched, some of which will be carrying thermal infrared sensors, with spatial resolutions suitable for observing heat loss through the roof. The wavelengths covered by the current multispectral offering is from 450nm to 1040nm. In comparison, the wavelength of thermal emissions from a house, of say 30 degrees celsius, is around 9700nm.

iamtedd 4y ago

Why would anyone in Australia bother? https://qldglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ https://qldglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ 10cm resolution for free. A vast repository of historical imagery for free. I'm sure other states have similar.

zokier 4y ago
Because the latest data there is few years old vs getting completely fresh data on-demand?

bobwernstein1 4y ago

I want you to count how many trucks arrive at the local cement factory every day for a month so that we can make an informed offer.

wiradikusuma 4y ago

How recent are the images for non-US? Next to my house there's a condo development since last year, and all I see (in the preview?) is green empty land.

coder543 4y ago
That's not the imagery. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34470086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34470086

gggggg5 4y ago

Super poor choice of images on this website, most of them are beautiful but do nothing to help understand the level of detail provided.

ro9y 4y ago

The photo's, (at least the ones I've checked) are just standard Google Earth stuff from up to 5 years ago as far as I can tell. I checked several places that I have Google Earth photos saved and this is the case. Not much of a deal when you can get it for "free" on Google Earth

Bedon292 4y ago
They're using it as a base layer so you can see the area you're ordering. You can also buy images that haven't been captured yet. And there's a big difference between actual imagery and a screenshot from Google. For technical analysis as well a recency.

ro9y 4y ago

And yes, I do realise that I'm just looking at the preview, still...

paytonb 4y ago

*SkyFi Employee here! Would love feedback!* Someone requested a price filter so that a SkyFi user could say "I want a picture of Austin, Texas under $30" and all related Existing Images would appear. Thoughts on this feature? Down the road, we could implement alerts/push notifications of "Images under $XX for X AOI", which I think would really gain traction across infrastructure, agriculture, etc. use cases.

stolsvik 4y ago

What is the license I get? “Download”, well sure, but what can I do with it? Put it in an app? On a poster I sell? Ads?

Transisto 4y ago

There is a market for ordering drone footage from random plebs arround the world. Given the drones range is 7km radius and images can be so perfectly stitched. I don't see that much appeal to small area via satelite.

rcdwealth 4y ago

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