Google Releases Their Satellite Map Service

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tatans

Just checked out a city in Saskatchewan on google maps,seems they are using maps issued for the selling of land in the late 1880's, most of the streets were strictly speculation, a lot of the streets were never built or even recorded, where would they get this information??? I wonder how many satellites there were in 1887. what's going on here???

The joys of Tiger type census maps....Paper streets are platted in government/ provincial/county files. GIS is just like a bunch of other computer data. Garbage In = Garbage Out[:D][:D][:D] Alot of the GIS game is the buying and selling of credible info.
Looks like google got some bad old cadastre, never field checked.

[railman]

While highly detailed in some city areas, I find the map quite worthless when it comes to smaller town areas. Understandably, they haven't taken detailed satellite shots of everything, but some of the areas they did, I have to wonder, "why?" For instance, St. Cloud gets the Fuzz while a portion of Monticello, MN and adjoining farmland gets superdetail.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by railman

While highly detailed in some city areas, I find the map quite worthless when it comes to smaller town areas.

Agreed. It is useless for my area of interest. Perhaps they will improve it in the future, but for now, the zoom into the mountainous areas of the Adirondacks doesn't come close to that of Terraserver. Color aside, it has a very long way to go to rival terraserver.

Wayne

[Overmod]

There are worse problems with it as currently designed --

A quick test from my present to my old address has the 'best' route between Memphis and Englewood, NJ routed through West Virginia, for heaven's sake, and then via the Beltway and New Jersey Turnpike. Mountains up the wazoo, then tolls up the wazoo, and 56 miles longer to boot! I can't figure out what they're thinking...

Then I try to pick up 51 Prospect in Princeton, and no matter what I do it goes to South Brunswick. No excuse for this other than idiots. None.

Even for beta software, this is ridiculous. The thing that *really* bothers me is that it's a crapshoot whether or not stuff like this gets fixed. Yes, it's nice to have satellite pix, and yes, it loads really fast. But that's simple 21st-century server-side functionality. Be nice for Google to tie into all these municipality and county GIS systems as well as satellite imaging -- but I'd almost bet there will be some kind of 'premium' $$$ access charges by the time that happens.

[mudchicken]

Overmod: Now you start to understand why surveyors look at GIS people with a jaundiced view when watching GIS folks market their product.

[Modelcar]

...My only try with it so far was to put in my address and it rather quickly brought it up but, it was not close enough to be useful....and I couldn't bring it up any closer. On the other hand, TerraServer will go down to about 1 meter resolution....At least it did the last I tried it. If my car would have been sitting in the dirveway...I would have been able to see it but I couldn't even distinguish our home with the Google unit....Just the arrow pointing to where it is....

[Anonymous]

Its a cool website. Although when looking at the railroad names on the map are out of date. Penn central still exist on the maps.

[ericsp]

QUOTE: Originally posted by eastside

In comparing to Terra, my impression from features that I'm familiar with is that Google's maps are more up-to-date, even though they say they will deliberately lag by 6-12 months. Some of Terra's maps are years old. Have they ever updated? Note the "Beta" designation below the Google logo. This means that it's a test, not the final version. I guess they're still filling-in some of the missing data.

One area I looked at in both Google and Terra Server's "Urban Areas" has the same train in the exact same place. Appearently they used the same photographs, only the :"Urban Areas" allows one to zoom in closer. This would mean that if Terra Server only have "Aerial Photograph" available for an area then Google's photograph would be newer, probably the same for maps.

[M636C]

Cajon Pass is pretty impressive, but the photo changes half way down a train. Still , you can count the cars! They don't have any detail photos of Tehachapi yet, although you can just make out the loop on the big picture.

Peter

[canazar]

That North Platte yard was mind blowng. Good greif....


johnk

[ericsp]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Dough

Oh and the fact that you can't link to a particular map is frustrating.

Click on the "Link to this page" on the right side of the page to get the website address for a particular view

[techguy57]

For Carl and all of the other UP folks and fans, a zoom in of Proviso Yard

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.897703,-87.908531&spn=0.005890,0.007918&t=k&hl=en

[spbed]

I heard that the maps are at least 6 months behind real time. [:p][:)]

Originally posted by techguy57

Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR  Austin TX Sub

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