
Only clear skies on Google Maps and Earth - albertzeyer
http://google-latlong.blogspot.de/2013/06/only-clear-skies-on-google-maps-and.html
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crazygringo
I'm checking out the new Google Maps beta, and if you zoom all the way out in
Earth mode, it actually puts the clouds _back-in_ \-- based on real-time
satellite data.

Pretty cool. Now if there were just a time slider...

But it's also very cool that Google Maps no longers looks like a big patchwork
of images from totally different satellites and sources. It actually looks
seamless now, no matter where you're zooming. That's pretty incredible. EDIT:
the more I've been playing with it, the cooler it is. You can actually get a
sense of how the colors of houses, roads, lawns, fields, etc. merge as you
gradually zoom out, seamlessly. I've never seen anything like this -- wow.

~~~
hugi
My hometown still looks horrible :'(
[https://maps.google.com/?ll=65.14846,-13.690295&spn=0.015042...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=65.14846,-13.690295&spn=0.015042,0.055747&t=h&z=15)

~~~
seszett
Hehe, even the middle of the Indian Ocean is better:
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Port-aux-
Fran%C3%A7ais,+Terre...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Port-aux-
Fran%C3%A7ais,+Terres+australes+et+antarctiques+fran%C3%A7aises&hl=fr&ie=UTF8&ll=-49.349133,70.219867&spn=0.002037,0.005262&sll=65.148297,-13.68948&sspn=0.010515,0.0421&oq=Port&t=h&hnear=Port-
aux-Fran%C3%A7ais,+Terres+australes+et+antarctiques+fran%C3%A7aises&z=18)

it was even updated this year.

~~~
agilebyte
Cool, I'll take the pink shack.

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kurt_
Another interressing articles on cloudless map on mapbox: *
[http://www.wired.com/design/2013/05/a-cloudless-
atlas/](http://www.wired.com/design/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas/) *
[http://www.mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-
mak...](http://www.mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-making-
clouds-disappear/)

~~~
mxfh
don't miss [http://www.mapbox.com/blog/cloudless-atlas-with-
landsat/](http://www.mapbox.com/blog/cloudless-atlas-with-landsat/) as well

Thanks to Landsat 8 new data also no longer suffers from Landsat 7's defunct
SLC

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znowi
Landsat 7 was launched in 1999. Had the Scan Line Corrector failure [1] in
2003 and has been taking striped images since then.

Landsat 8 is the recent addition launched in February 2013. Here you can see
sample images from the satellite [2] and a side-by-side comparison to Landsat
7 [3].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsat_7#Scan_Line_Corrector_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsat_7#Scan_Line_Corrector_failure)

[2]
[http://landsat.usgs.gov/LDCM_Image_Examples.php](http://landsat.usgs.gov/LDCM_Image_Examples.php)

[3]
[http://landsat.usgs.gov/LDCM_Underfly_with_Landsat_7.php](http://landsat.usgs.gov/LDCM_Underfly_with_Landsat_7.php)

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adventured
Google has contributed numerous great things to the Internet / Web / computing
technology of the last 15 years, but among all of that, Google Maps might just
be my favorite. It's a great product and they keep improving it / investing
into it, and I'm not aware that it generates much revenue (it seems to be the
grocery store version of milk). Most companies slack big time once they're out
in front, Google doesn't seem to be doing that (granted they're being chased
by a lot of good competition).

~~~
Peroni
Completely agree. Aside from the practical, everyday application of maps,
being able to jump into streetview and see the house I grew up in, zoom out
and jump to the other side of the planet and jump back into streetview to see
the house I lived in whilst living in New Zealand is almost magical.

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vlasev
Oh my god! I didn't know that the the united states is literally crisscrossed
by roads in a relatively square grid fashion, as in [1]. This kind of detail
was invisible in the previous version. Here is a frightening image of China
[2]. Each of these patches is a town!

This update of the maps is amazing!

[1][https://maps.google.com/?ll=47.115467,-97.306595&spn=0.29298...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=47.115467,-97.306595&spn=0.292982,0.837021&t=h&z=11)
[2][https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.002656,115.434723&spn=0.67848...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.002656,115.434723&spn=0.678488,1.674042&t=k&z=10)

~~~
maxerickson
The road network is somewhat a result of the land survey that was used:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System)

I've messed around with building 'road pressure' maps using the Tiger data
from the census, in states like Michigan (at least in the lower peninsula),
there is very little land that is not within about 1/2 mile of a public road.

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andrewljohnson
It's cool to see these images improve, but they just got this idea from
MapBox, no? Just like they got the idea to move on vector and 3D from Apple.
Is invention at Google Maps dead, and now we just watch as they ape their
competitors to stay ahead?

Reactivity is to be expected from the entrenched player, but aping competitors
alone won't keep Google relevant forever.

~~~
mayanksinghal
MapBox announcement seems to be not more than a couple of months old. If you
think that someone can take inspiration, get data, process, QA test and launch
such a feature in such a short duration, you should be impressed anyway.

Google Earth had 3D for a long time. Vector maps is again a huge undertaking
and takes time to get right. Some companies didn't take their time, some did.

~~~
stevehawk
But they didn't make Google Earth. They bought it from a small company that
was partially funded by the CIA.

~~~
mayanksinghal
So was the case with Apple, if my sibling is correct. I am just trying to say
is that there is plenty, like a lot lot, of innovation in Google Maps - from
devices that make it's own mapping data to using WebGL to render it in 3D in
browser. To claim otherwise, with incredibly weak argument as in the original
comments, is either lazy or dishonest.

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cryptoz
It's pretty funny how far Google will go to avoid talking about the weather.
They even put barometers in all their phones but aren't building a weather
network or buying any weather startups (like mine)! What gives? They
algorithmically remove weather, create an unused network of 50,000,000
barometers, gah!

~~~
ChuckMcM
Perhaps because Google Weather[1] will actually _control_ the weather. A
Google Pumping station every half kilometer or so, they are going to use the
barometers in Android phones to give feedback on their actions. So if you need
sunny weather the pumping stations will pull air from outside the area in and
heat it up, if you want it to rain they will create a low pressure zone by
pumping air out to a different zone. They need all the barometers to control
which pumping stations are on and how much air they pump.

[1] This is entirely fictitious of course, but having worked there I could
easily imagine just this description on the 'ideas' page.

~~~
yebyen
There is prior art on this in Rochester, NY... we've known about the weather
control device for some time:

[http://reportermag.com/article/crowdsourcing/campus-
rumors](http://reportermag.com/article/crowdsourcing/campus-rumors)

Check out Rumor #9...

"Under Dr. Al Simone, the weather machine was used nearly flawlessly, as tour
days always meant good weather, and the day after always rained."

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meandthebean
Here's a weird case:
[https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=43.047565,-123.758926&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=43.047565,-123.758926&spn=0.254157,0.528374&t=k&z=12)

Zoom in one and out one. The patchwork brown flops in some of the grid.

~~~
magicalist
Is that logging, maybe? It looks like the more zoomed out was actually a
picture taken later, as the areas that were cleared in the closer zoom become
brownish-green, and there's all new areas that are all brown that were before
all green.

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jb-
They look awesome! The best part of it is that it seems like most of the
pictures at different levels seem to be taken within a short time of each
other, if not nearly simultaneous.

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dirktheman
The clouds have gone, but the now defunct and abandoned military complex near
my hometown in Ede, The Netherlands is still rendered 'classified':
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=52.067359,5.699562&num=1&t=h&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=52.067359,5.699562&num=1&t=h&z=16)
Which is weird, because even Area 51 is completely visible in high-res.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I half-expected the Street View to be classified as well:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=52.067359,5.699562&ll=52.0645...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=52.067359,5.699562&ll=52.064576,5.691905&spn=0.009155,0.032787&num=1&t=h&z=15&layer=c&cbll=52.064578,5.691909&panoid=W0iV7y6P4M9aDFUb5lMPXA&cbp=12,59.08,,1,-1.47)

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nekojima
There is a fair amount of artificial cloud covering residential buildings in
Singapore, plus some commercial, public and military sites. Some areas such as
a diplomatic district might be understandable, though others like the odd HDB
block less so. Having lived across the street from one HDB block now obscured
by artificial clouds, I'm wondering who might live there that its a priority
to block an aerial view.

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pasbesoin
I've found myself recently wishing for a "globe" mode, akin to what's
available in Google Earth, to better see some large-scale scale and distance
interests that have come up for me.

~~~
modeless
You mean you want a Google Earth-like 3D view in the web-based Google Maps? If
so, you're in luck:
[http://maps.google.com/help/maps/helloworld/desktop/preview/](http://maps.google.com/help/maps/helloworld/desktop/preview/)

~~~
itcmcgrath
[http://imgur.com/P7nWQh4](http://imgur.com/P7nWQh4)

In chrome when you select 'Earth' view, it gets you to install a plugin, but
then it's all there.

~~~
modeless
That's the old Google Maps. In the new version no plugin is required because
it uses WebGL, and Earth mode replaces satellite mode entirely.

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tempestn
Wow. Google maps is literally beautiful now. I just spent several minutes
zooming in and out, just marveling at the detail.

~~~
goblin89
I've recently spent half an hour in Google Earth after turning on the
‘photorealistic atmospheric rendering’ feature + time slider. Makes for some
landscapes…

(Update: Should've checked prior to posting… Photorealistic rendering is on by
default in Maps with Earth plug-in, despite still being called experimental in
Earth settings.)

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mehmehshoe
A question for anybody that may work on the Earth project. Is Google actively
trying to fill in past pictures, or only working forward? One of my favorite
features was to do the time slide backwards on towns I lived in. Some go back
to the 80's and others only a few years.

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ajtaylor
I wonder if the cloud removal was in response to Mapbox's recent
announcements. It seems like an obvious improvement either way. I remember the
first Mapquest product, and now we have Google Earth in high resolution glory.
What will the next 10 years bring us?

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markhelo
Not sure why but not all clouds have disappeared. It could be Africa. I also
see images that are stitched from different times of the year as you can see
the difference in vegetation.

-7.038329,36.246508

~~~
IvyMike
Maybe the data isn't rolling out to everyone simultaneously?

Here's what I see--no clouds at any zoom level:
[http://i.imgur.com/M6PuwgI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/M6PuwgI.jpg)

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croisillon
Can't wait for the clear sky on streetview.

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wavesum
At least my home town (Tampere, Finland, the home of Nokia) is so cloudy that
the image data is useless. Misleading headline.

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randomafrican
Hometown hasnt chnaged at all

