Re: [Flightgear-users] Google Earth 3D--approach to New York City !!

[Curtis O. <cur...@gm...>]

On 1/31/07, David Baron wrote:
>
> The latest-and-greatest is posted on www.kde-apps.org. One of the
> screenshots
> is a 3-D "approach" to the south side of Manhattan Island. (NYC is one of
> the
> FG locations which is not so wonderful). OK, it is propietary but they
> give
> this out for free. How do they generate such a picture? If they are indeed
> creating this from NASA, USGS and other such (Public Domain) things, we
> should be as well.


I suspect their underlying terrain is taken from SRTM data (that is just a
guess) but all their mapping and aerial/satellite imagery is very
proprietary.

Google has spent a fortune on this, and they are actively paying aerial
surveyers to make real flights and collect updated imagery for their
database.  That is *extremely* expensive on a large scale.  It is
fascinating to see the breadth of their coverage.  Many remote places that
were very low res a few years ago are now available in nice high res
detail.  My birthplace and the house I grew up in (way out in the middle of
nowhere in Peru, SA) is now available in very high detail ... really
fascinating to see all the roads and routes I used to ride my bike around as
a kid are all there exactly as I remember them ... <sniff> :-) ...

But google only makes this imagery in a "read only" format.  They clearly
state you cannot reuse their imagery, and they are careful to obstruct all
the obvious reuse mechanisms (in case you forget to read their terms of
use.)

I dream of the day when we can cut a deal with google to somehow use their
imagery within FlightGear, but that hasn't happened just yet.  Hey, if you
are the president of google, and just happen to be subscribed to this
mailing list, please email me offlist ... :-)

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/  http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
http://www.flightgear.org
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