Google Earth Maps
 

Rarely do I recommend a link on a forum such as this, but this site is in a class all its own. If you have a decent computer and high speed connection, download the app. for http://earth.google.com Be sure to check the airport/transportation box. I suspect the resolution is made intentionally blurry when zooming in very close but still clear enough to recognize both my current vehicles in the driveway. :eek:

Rick Galati RV-6A "Darla"

I was just looking at Google Earth myself while waiting on some paint to dry (6 month old puppy - don't ask). The resolution on Google Earth is driven by the resolution of the satellite which photographed a certain area. For instance, if you look at Atlanta, and specifically Georgia Tech, you can see individual pedestrians on campus and can even recognize the make/model of certain vehicles.

If you look closely, you can even see the "splice lines" where different photos come together to form the whole enchilada. It is very obvious where the sharp (high magnification?) images were taken and where they adjoin lower areas photographed under lower resolution.

Interestingly, if you look near the major airports (e.g. Hartsfield, O'Hare, etc) you'll be able to see multiple aircraft taking off or landing.

This is a very impressive free piece of software.

KB

What is amazing about this software is that you can set the altitude and rotate the angle of the picture so you can "fly" into any airport before you really fly there. I will use it to familiarize myself with an unknown airport and the area around it. Combine this with Microsoft flight sim and you know exactly where you are flying and what it will look like from the air before you ever get there.

Why are the images so blurry on my computer? I have Dell computer that is only about a year old. You can't make out any detail except for airports and cities. You have to be at an altitude of about 10 miles before things don't look blurry.

UPDATE:
I zoomed in on Kansas City and the detail is much better. It seems there is not high resolution pictures of small towns and rural areas. I searched for my zip code (72601) and the detail is very poor.


Thanks

Google Earth Addons
 

If you like Google Earth, you've got to try these addons......

http://www.fboweb.com/antest/ge/intro.aspx

LAX, BOS, ORD, ATL and JFK Inbound Traffic
US Airspace Polgygons (3D representations of Special Use Airspace)
US Sectional Charts
LAX Center Frequency Map

Really cools stuff, but I wouldn't advise it without a good broadband connection!

--Michael

Good day,

We use a lot of satellite imagery like this in my group at work to build visual databases for simulators. You can get low resolution images of most of the western world for free somewhere on the internet, generally at a pixel resolution of 30 meters or bigger. That means that each pixel on your screen represents 30 meters (a little more than 30 yards). Some imagery is 100 meters or more. This makes for a really mushy image, unless your viewpoint is like 20,000 feet or more.

The detailed images you see of cities, airports, campuses, etc are generally 1 meter or better. The issue is that all of this data is very expensive to acquire, and thus high resolution images are normally only taken of points of interest (i.e. airports). Normally, in my business, you have to pay to get the high resolution images, and that can run in the $1-$2K range for EACH image. Where Google gets their images, I don't know, but it is cool that you can get some very high resultion stuff there.

Just to ensure that guys like me don't use these images for commercial purposes , if you look close at the screen you'll see "Google 2005" or something as a watermark throughout the image.

So, just to make this incredibly long story short, your Dell computer has nothing to do with it. It is displaying the images just fine. It is just that the majority of the world imagery (on Google) is only available in low resolution.

I'm done, now. No, really.... ;-)

Resolution
 

Try the local mapping services of your county.
Pima County in AZ has pretty high resolution photos on-line as part of it's GIS mapping software. The b/w resolution in one set is good enough to see the pool cleaner and hose in our pool!

gil in Tucson

Link working but feature not
 

I got the sectional to work but not the traffic. I have used google for awhile and have cable broad band? How do you get it to work? I down load and than what? Thanks George

I'm using Mozilla's FireFox browser. When I click on one of the features, it presents me with two options, Save to Disk or Open with Google Earth.kmlfile. If I chose Open, it launches Google Earth and the the "feature" works. I just tried it the the ATL (Atlanta,GA) file and it worked fine.

See if that helps.

--Michael

Google goofs up
 

I also can not get the google earth to work, when it gets too "low" to the ground, the imiage breaks into something like "Tiles" (as in how you can set up the desktop), and then it gets worse as it zooms in----------kinda looks like different "layers" of the composit photo are comming apart, and moving around. even the line of script with the address goes screwy.

I also am using Firefox------------any of you tech types out there have any idea what is going on???

Mike