Google Earth

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Tony Jay

You spoilt the illusion, half the population seem to think we have loads of satellites that can image one's patio furniture.

Its rather obvious on Live search which has what appears to be photos taken from 40 or so degrees (use bird's eye view) Radcliffe Camera in Oxford for example
Live Local Search

Tony

Blimey, you can read that guy's newspaper through the window!

I've not seen one that bad before - looks like one of those they sell of your house door to door.

Most aerial stuff (Getmapping etc) for the OS goes through a fixup called photo rectification - fitting to a grid, the LIDAR stuff involves knowing where the cameras are too as elevation to a few mm can matter with flooding stuff.

Adrian

[Frederick Perrin]

I just though it was spooky how I could get my house with very good details I didnt think of age or planes, abit thick at most times.
spoil my day that as.

[Scuby]

Originally Posted by Adrian Kelland

IIRC, the high res stuff is done with planes anyway. Usually for Ordnance Survey level type stuff and it may as well be done with the LIDAR surveys currently underway for flood planning.

Yeah, all the high res stuff is. But the "missing" areas which are currently terrible resolution (like where you can just about make out that there might be a town there) will be massively improved if Google buy up some of the satellite imagery (which is a big if, since there is already a lot of much better stuff out there that they haven't got). But in theory it allows the whole planet (near enough) at very decent resolution relatively quickly.

David