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Here is another mapping option, it contains both regular atlas-style views, and the ever-popular satellite views. It's not as fast as Google maps, but one thing I like about it is that it seems to show more highway numbers than Google, so instead of just seeing "Mayfield Rd", I see US-322 and Mayfield Rd.
I checked it out with both current Firefox and IE 7.0 browsers and I found it to be much harder to use than Google Earth and others. It looks like it ought to be cool, but mostly it is frustrating to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mass Tim
Mark
Very nice! The sat images are very nice from the sampling I did (Wenatchee, WA for low res B&W, Phoenix, AZ for High Res Color). The color sat areas are very crisp!
I couldn't help but notice the Copyrights in the corner (lower left) were Microsoft and NAVTEQ. Could this be the mating of MS Vitural Earth data and Keyhole/Google Earth data??
Very nice though.
I checked out my town. Very cool. Couldn't see the house well. Needed to be able to get a bit closer to see it through the trees but I can't zoom in that far.
However, I noticed something quite interesting. A log yard that hasn't had logs in it for at least 5 years was full of logs. Huh? The picture had to be at least that old for there to be logs there. So I double-checked some other areas where development has changed the area significantly and I have to conclude that these pictures are actually closer to 10 years old, maybe even older.
Why wouldn't the site have more current satellite photos, I wonder?
Don't get me wrong....it's still a cool site but I if all areas are pictures that old, I wonder how helpful it will be.
It depends on the area. Some of the sat pictures from my area of Phoenix are about 6 months old, if that.
... but this one lets you view sat images from any of four directions. Each directional view is a different image and angle.
For example, I viewed my own house -- from one direction I see my wife's car bought last September, from another I see her old car (or was my even older car? :-).
Best Practices suggestion: Use the map to get very close, then switch to Images. The Images are handled with a 3x3 grid, which in theory ought to make navigatin fairly easy -- but if you recognize nothing, the map is better -- street names and all (at least on my screen -YMMV). But once you have zoomed closely to your neighborhood, image navigation works well.
Another Ymmv caveat: I live in a highly populated, my father iin law in a rural area. Images in his area were black & white, higher up, and outdated, so 'spose it all depends where you live.
-ttm
Some areas will have Black and White images. Most of these aren't true Sat images, they are usually high altitude USGS aerial photograhs. They are slowly but surely replacing all with very good Sat Images.
As far as options powered by MS, they should all be reading from the same database.
-Brad
I've noticed that most, if not all, of the satellite imagery (at least on the sites I know about) falls behind in updates, even in urban areas. Near where I work there used to be three triple-deckers and a parking lot. Now it's a dormitory for
the nearby University.
Google shows our old Dodge pickup parked out front of the house - that's been gone for almost two years now (and it's not missed...). Other evidence shows that the picture is about five years old.
I guess this brings up the point that, no matter how good a name a source for mapping has, nothing beats the local intel that we can get through this site and its associated resources!
It's been 6 years since my parents house was built near Wenatchee, and the community they live in had been in existence for 7, and not a single image shows the neighborhood. My guess is that the images are purposely delayed in being released to the general public in our post-9-11 world. How much of a delay, thats yet to be revealed.
That does make a lot of sense and it wouldn't surprise me! But I also think that it's a matter of expense maybe. Why update my little town very often, ya know?Quote:
Originally Posted by Arizona Brad
Hmm.. I haven't chimed in on this yet. MS's web sites (and the ones that use its geographical image library) use primarily aerial photographs for their detailed pictures of a specific area. The aerial photographs have been build up in a data base by one of the companies Microsoft bought a couple of years ago. They're recently cut a deal to provide highly detailed pictures from OrbView if memory serves, which operates a high resoluton Earth observation satellite. MS's product differentiator is the "birds eye view" which is an overlay of oblique (at an angle) aerial photographs which have been comissioned for many urban areas in the US. Where they haven't been able to purchase space or aerial photography, they use older USGS aerial photography which may be up to a decade old.
Google Earth, their main competitor took a different tack. Rather than focusing on high precision pictures of US urban areas they bought images from Digital Globe which operates a high resolution commercial Earth observation satellite. GE has focused on a global-down GIS data base (Geographic Information System) and is slowly updating the GE GIS data base as higher precision photography from Digital Globe becomes available. It should be noted that Digital Globe sells images to a lot more people than Google, and as they take an order for a high resolution region on the Earth, they may not release it into the public domain through Google Earth for a while, since someone may want to hold exclusive rights to it for a while.
In both cases, if memory serves, the contracts allow OrbView and Digital Globe to hold their high resolution pictures out of the public domain for a while for commercial considerations, before they are released into their global GIS data bases. This is strictly a commercial consideration -- MS and Google would have to pay a lot more money to have first rights to release the data.
This also has helped them defuse a couple of law suits on "invasion of privacy" where people have tried to sue the companies for putting high resolution images of their houses or property on the internet. But if the images are a year or two old at least, there's not a lot of immediate loss of privacy for historical images.
In a very few cases, I know Google has covered over or fuzzed out specific locations for national security concerns -- for some time you could not see the roofs of some buildings around the White House, for example. That was to restrict some information about specific security operations, and most of those restrictions have been lifted from what I understand. Again, something that was in the pictures a year or so ago, is not necessarily what is there today.
But, its really economics that limit how often the images are updated on the free internet data bases. The satellites (or aerial photography on the same scale) are very expensive, so the companies look for a commercial dollar revenue generating user of the pictures for a while before they release them to the public on the internet.
I have purchased some limited use rights (high res photos) for various mapping projects and I can confirm this is VERY EXPENSIVE. I was going to weigh on some of the economics, but your post is very complete and stands alone -- so thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Larrison
Mark