4 ms·

Google Imagery: Cost-effective, accurate imagery for your operations

53 points by alternize 12y ago

mxfh 12y ago
37 days from SkyBox acquisition announcement to product offering; well that's fast. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7874092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7874092
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Perhaps this was in the works prior to the official announcement?
- narrowingorbits 12y ago
  This is not SkyBox related, but rather aerial. Note the 15cm resolution.
shubb 12y ago
At 15cm resolution, I'd say that the high resolution imagery is arial photographs. Satellite imagery doesn't get much better than 0.5m because of physics and govmint[1]. Sxfh refers to skybox. They are very exciting, offering satellite video feeds. It's important to note that they don't offer global live coverage - as the satellite flys over the globe, you get a 'strip' of video. So at a given location, you get a very short period of video, and then the satellite has moved on and nothing until another one flies over. To me, drones or balloons would be the only candidates for providing ubiquitous video coverage of a city for instance (see NPR documentary last year), but even then, cloud is an issue. I tend to wonder if the best way of observing a city would be to fuse radar from multiple satellites to build a live, cloud immune 3D model of the city surface. [1]GeoEye hope to achieve 0.34m with GeoEye-2, but will probably only be allowed to release it at 0.5m.
- bnolsen 12y ago
  you can schedule aircraft so they cover and area when there's a cloud free (or diminshed) window. Satellites get what they get. For cities like portland that's typically not good enough.
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    Mapbox get good results with their post-processing to remove clouds. http://www.wired.com/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas http://www.wired.com/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas I'd be intrigued to see how it would look once you zoom in further to city scale. Would you see blurs of cars along roads?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- mikecb 12y ago
  The law changed recently. The lower limit is now 25cm, but I'm not sure if that's due to Digital Globe's new satellite or if that is the new legal limit. [1]http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/digitalglobe-satellite-idUSL2N0N71IX20140415 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/digitalglobe-satel...
jqm 12y ago
I found this a few weeks ago when I needed some satellite images for a project. http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The resolution is not the quality Google is offering but it worked for what I was doing. And the price (free) was right. When I see a "Contact Us" button where the price should be, I'm generally suspicious the price is more than I want to pay for a small or a hobby project.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  There is 15 cm imagery in some areas there. It depends on whether some locality that usgs coordinates with wanted to pay for it or not. I was poking around Boston the other day, 15 cm was available there.
- notatoad 12y ago
  Not only is there a "contact us" link instead of a pricing link, there's a big banner saying "enterprise" at the top of the page. If ever there was a clue that something isn't going to be cheap, that would be it.
brixon 12y ago
You can get all kinds of imagery at http://mapmart.com/ http://mapmart.com/
bnolsen 12y ago
sattelites dont commercially provide 6 inch. its all aerial. 1m accuracy is very poor for things like property boundary checks, etc. Fine for getting to your destination, however.
ewams 12y ago
Title is wrong, these are aerial photos - from the linked page: "Google has global ambitions for our consumer aerial imagery."
ryanburk 12y ago
it is really strange that this is hosted on the "google-mkto.com" domain.
- tindrlabs 12y ago
  Did some checking Enterprise Google+ Account Post: https://plus.google.com/117578386194324385666/posts/JTp8HWPJGbr https://plus.google.com/117578386194324385666/posts/JTp8HWPJ... Links to a Blog Post: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/07/bringing-google-earth-images-to-business.html?utm_campaign=entblog&utm_source=MapsImagery07162014&utm_medium=g-plus http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/07/bringing-google... Links to: http://lp.google-mkto.com/Google-imagery.html http://lp.google-mkto.com/Google-imagery.html
flgb 12y ago
NearMap is an Australian startup that has a similar product but with higher resolution and more frequent refreshes. But only operates in Australia now, as far as I know. http://nearmap.com http://nearmap.com From Wikipedia: A unique exclusive process of imagery capturing, processing and publishing is used. Traditionally, high resolution aerial imagery has to be captured by a low altitude flying aircraft, then the data is manually processed and stitched together digitally to create a PhotoMap, a slow process which can take months to complete. nearmap speeds up this process by using their own engineered camera capture equipment, named a 'HyperPod', which is attached to Cessna 210 light aircraft, which fly at a high altitude, enabling entire cities to be captured in a day or two. Once the imagery is captured, it is processed through super computers which run software known as 'HyperVision' which automatically processes and stitches together the many individual photographs captured into one virtually seamless PhotoMap. These PhotoMaps are then hosted on nearmap's end user web portal, known as 'MapBrowser'. Along with traditional top-down photography, the HyperPod is also able to capture oblique aerial photographs from 4 different angles and digital elevation model data at the same time.
javiramos 12y ago
Could you photograph the terrain at another part of the light spectrum (i.e. IR to image through clouds) and stitch the data together?!

53 points by alternize 12y ago

mxfh 12y ago

37 days from SkyBox acquisition announcement to product offering; well that's fast. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7874092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7874092

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Perhaps this was in the works prior to the official announcement?
narrowingorbits 12y ago
This is not SkyBox related, but rather aerial. Note the 15cm resolution.

shubb 12y ago

At 15cm resolution, I'd say that the high resolution imagery is arial photographs. Satellite imagery doesn't get much better than 0.5m because of physics and govmint[1]. Sxfh refers to skybox. They are very exciting, offering satellite video feeds. It's important to note that they don't offer global live coverage - as the satellite flys over the globe, you get a 'strip' of video. So at a given location, you get a very short period of video, and then the satellite has moved on and nothing until another one flies over. To me, drones or balloons would be the only candidates for providing ubiquitous video coverage of a city for instance (see NPR documentary last year), but even then, cloud is an issue. I tend to wonder if the best way of observing a city would be to fuse radar from multiple satellites to build a live, cloud immune 3D model of the city surface. [1]GeoEye hope to achieve 0.34m with GeoEye-2, but will probably only be allowed to release it at 0.5m.

bnolsen 12y ago
you can schedule aircraft so they cover and area when there's a cloud free (or diminshed) window. Satellites get what they get. For cities like portland that's typically not good enough.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  Mapbox get good results with their post-processing to remove clouds. http://www.wired.com/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas http://www.wired.com/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas I'd be intrigued to see how it would look once you zoom in further to city scale. Would you see blurs of cars along roads?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
mikecb 12y ago
The law changed recently. The lower limit is now 25cm, but I'm not sure if that's due to Digital Globe's new satellite or if that is the new legal limit. [1]http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/digitalglobe-satellite-idUSL2N0N71IX20140415 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/digitalglobe-satel...

jqm 12y ago

I found this a few weeks ago when I needed some satellite images for a project. http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The resolution is not the quality Google is offering but it worked for what I was doing. And the price (free) was right. When I see a "Contact Us" button where the price should be, I'm generally suspicious the price is more than I want to pay for a small or a hobby project.

maxerickson 12y ago
There is 15 cm imagery in some areas there. It depends on whether some locality that usgs coordinates with wanted to pay for it or not. I was poking around Boston the other day, 15 cm was available there.
notatoad 12y ago
Not only is there a "contact us" link instead of a pricing link, there's a big banner saying "enterprise" at the top of the page. If ever there was a clue that something isn't going to be cheap, that would be it.

brixon 12y ago

You can get all kinds of imagery at http://mapmart.com/ http://mapmart.com/

bnolsen 12y ago

sattelites dont commercially provide 6 inch. its all aerial. 1m accuracy is very poor for things like property boundary checks, etc. Fine for getting to your destination, however.

ewams 12y ago

Title is wrong, these are aerial photos - from the linked page: "Google has global ambitions for our consumer aerial imagery."

ryanburk 12y ago

it is really strange that this is hosted on the "google-mkto.com" domain.

tindrlabs 12y ago
Did some checking Enterprise Google+ Account Post: https://plus.google.com/117578386194324385666/posts/JTp8HWPJGbr https://plus.google.com/117578386194324385666/posts/JTp8HWPJ... Links to a Blog Post: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/07/bringing-google-earth-images-to-business.html?utm_campaign=entblog&utm_source=MapsImagery07162014&utm_medium=g-plus http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/07/bringing-google... Links to: http://lp.google-mkto.com/Google-imagery.html http://lp.google-mkto.com/Google-imagery.html

flgb 12y ago

NearMap is an Australian startup that has a similar product but with higher resolution and more frequent refreshes. But only operates in Australia now, as far as I know. http://nearmap.com http://nearmap.com From Wikipedia: A unique exclusive process of imagery capturing, processing and publishing is used. Traditionally, high resolution aerial imagery has to be captured by a low altitude flying aircraft, then the data is manually processed and stitched together digitally to create a PhotoMap, a slow process which can take months to complete. nearmap speeds up this process by using their own engineered camera capture equipment, named a 'HyperPod', which is attached to Cessna 210 light aircraft, which fly at a high altitude, enabling entire cities to be captured in a day or two. Once the imagery is captured, it is processed through super computers which run software known as 'HyperVision' which automatically processes and stitches together the many individual photographs captured into one virtually seamless PhotoMap. These PhotoMaps are then hosted on nearmap's end user web portal, known as 'MapBrowser'. Along with traditional top-down photography, the HyperPod is also able to capture oblique aerial photographs from 4 different angles and digital elevation model data at the same time.

javiramos 12y ago

Could you photograph the terrain at another part of the light spectrum (i.e. IR to image through clouds) and stitch the data together?!