Google Releases Their Satellite Map Service

[eastside]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jsoderq

Boy I don't know what you guys are looking at, but it is sure not what I see. All I get for my home town is a line drawing map - highly stylized - like a stick figure drawing. All the streets are just straight with roadway way to wide in proportion to the city lots. The railroad tracks don't even go anywhere - just parts of them are indicated. This is definitely not satellite imagery - may be some crude software processing of an image.

Look in the upper-right corner. Did you select satellite instead of map? Try, for example, Chicago. You should see the downtown buildings clearly. Maybe Google hasn't yet added the images for your area.

[Modelcar]

...I can't pass judgment on the Google system yet as I have not been "into" it to see what it's capability really is...but I give Terra good credit with what it can do...I can find my house and see even the patio at the back of it and even checked out the area we stayed at in Florida and actually found the condo we stayed in down there, etc....and much detail to looking at railroads in the mountains, tunnels, Pennsylvania Turnpike and much more...with a resolution down to about I meter...No complaints about Terra except it does take a while to move from one area continuously to another...

[mudchicken]

TREE: Most GIS systems are inept to just plain dumb when they get around railroads.

[jsoderq]

Boy I don't know what you guys are looking at, but it is sure not what I see. All I get for my home town is a line drawing map - highly stylized - like a stick figure drawing. All the streets are just straight with roadway way to wide in proportion to the city lots. The railroad tracks don't even go anywhere - just parts of them are indicated. This is definitely not satellite imagery - may be some crude software processing of an image.

[TheS.P.caboose]

Very nice. Living in an area where mountain railroading prevails, this is very helpful. Thanks for sharing with us.

[tree68]

Found the maps to be more up to date than most everything else for my area, although the reailroad is still "Conrail." Resolution of the satellite isn't super for my area, either. Certainly can't pick out my house, although I can narrow it down pretty well. Terraserver is still better in that respect. In Google's defense, though, they are using satellite. Terraserver uses aerial photos (as in, from airplanes).

Very impressive, and will be another arrow in the quiver.

[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.

[spbed]

Eons above Mapquest in my opinion. Thanks for the tip!

Originally posted by eastside

Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR  Austin TX Sub

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