Tried Google Earth - wow!
 

I recently downloaded the new Google Earth photo mapping system. Way cool. Not only can you zoom into anywhere with satelite imagery, but then try hitting the "tilt" button to put it into 3D perspective to see the elevation effects. You can fly it along - I took a tour of the Grand Canyon, for example. Buildings sometimes come out a little odd in tilt mode (try the Eiffel Tower), but still, a worthy complement to Fodors addiction.

It is at earth.google.com

Woo Hoo! I downloaded it too--the site was busy other times I've tried to do it...

It's beyond cool! I inputted our address and though it was a few houses off, I could see my neighbor's car in the driveway--that's how close it can zoom in.

I put in my mother's address and there was the gray house I grew up in with the neighborhood tennis courts showing clear as day.


I'm going to try playing around in Australia and Italy next--I may never get another thing done!

if someone is standing on the street, will you see them too?

I could actually look at our pool at our last Texas house and see the spa--that's pretty detailed!

Looking at DH's last hotel, there was a big plane sitting at the end of the runway. It's still there. Stuck :D The skylights we had installed in our casita showed up.

Eiffel Tower looks like a shadow.

Oops...there's a shark off Clearwater Beach!! jk

It took me a while to find the zoom button...there is one, which brings you in much closer.

I was amazed....but I did notice it was a house or two off. I could see my parents' car parked in the driveway!

I found Rainbow Bridge National Monument at Lake Powell and Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. It's AWESOME!

Utahtea

me too! so cool. i've been on it all morning. the beach house is even there!

For whatever reason, all I'm getting is a standard Google page. Clicking on maps doesn't offer anything more than a text map. No aerial photos... Any tips?

Too cool, curmudgeon. Thanks for the tip.

fehgeddaboudit,

Download it from http://earth.google.com.

What am I doing wrong?!?!? I've downloaded it, but have tried two addresses and it's so blurry I can barely make anything out. I can see some of the overall shape of my neighborhood, but only because there are three lakes in it that show up as dark spots. I can't see the cemetery nearby or the freeway, let alone a car in my driveway. It's just one big mass of green with a few dark spots.

Does anyone else see it this way, or is there a setting I need to change?

A fantastic program! A few comments:

1. Some areas are photographed in much better resolution than others -- it's more or less hit or miss. I can see a truck parked in my driveway but it's very fuzzy; I can see the shadows of people walking in a local outside mall. The Grand Canyon is awesome at close range, and so is Rome, Sorrento, etc. But when I went to southern coastal NC and to Lake Como (Italy, again), the images were drastically blurry beginning from a rather high altitude. It just depends -- suburbs of major cities are usually fairly sharp, more rural places less so.

2. I wish each image were marked with date and time, but it's clear that some were taken toward sunset, some more toward noon; some in the fall or winter, some in the summer. It's pretty random but soooooooo much fun!

3. I believe that there's a US regulation that says an error must be built in to such imaging for the general public so that it's not as accurate as whatever Pentagon or intelligence has, which would explain why every address I tried (I tried a dozen or so) was off by a few houses or so.

4. Be sure to tinker with zooming in and out, the tilt function, and double-clicking on new locations to watch it rotate the area itself. But be aware that the overlay functions ("airports, hotels, etc.") is even less useful than MapQuest, and less accurate.

I am also finding that alot of places I zoom in on are fuzzy and I can't zoom as close as anyof you all seem to be able to do. Help. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for the headsup on the site>
AM

I am curious, does anyone know how up to date these images are? My house was built in 1994 but on the google satelite image it is not there.
A.M.

I think it differs widely when the images were shot. For example, I looked for a friend's 3 yr. old house and it still showed undeveloped land but when I looked for World Trade Center, NYC I could see Ground Zero (very interesting photo, BTW)

Oh, one more thing: If an entire image is blurry, give it several seconds to focus. (and know you can zoom in only so far--ie you're not going to see house numbers or license plates but you'll see other bigger features. I could see my patio, for example)

It must just be that the areas I've tried to see (all in Michigan) don't have high-res photos. I've given them plenty of time to come into focus, and am not trying to zoom in far. I can't even tell that there are houses in the neighborhood, let alone tell which one is mine. And the neighborhood is 50+ years old, so I don't think the photos were taken before the land was developed. ;)

Downloaded it and it made everything oooh so slow. Had to remove it. Very interesting images. Looked at my house by the water and it shows the roof before it was replaced -- the roof was replaced in 2000. Some of these images must be quite dated.

A really fun and interesting site. Thanks.

Great program, thanks for the heads-up. You need a fairly up-to-date computer and high speed access for it to work well. That may explain why some people are having problems with the speed and resolution.

I should have mentioned that high-speed internet access is really a must to use this. I can't imagine using it over dialup. It's a even a little slow over my 384kb dsl line, though pretty good over 1.5mb dsl.

I've got high speed and have also found images with such low resolution that you can't make out much of anything. Most of these are somewhat rural areas...ie South Hero, VT, Stonington, CT, Windermere, England. There are a few somewhat rural areas it doesn't seem to recognize...Southboro (or borough) or Hopkinton MA for instance--it has no idea where to go, although Ashland, MA, no bigger than the others, was no problem.

I can look at our marina in Gulfport, FL and even make out our boat, but the image is the old configuration of the marina before the docks were reworked, and placement completely changed, which means the picture is at least 4 years old. Our current house, built for the 2003 Parade of Homes not only doesn't show, but there are no houses showing on this street at all. Still a terrific program--I had so much fun being back in Paris yesterday--finding Ste Chapelle, brought a big smile and I noted it was even sunny...made me want to run right over! :) I've never felt the vastness of the Tulieries just walking through it but was amazed at the sight from "the air".

You need Windows XP, a fast computer, and a very fast internet hookup, but if you have all that, it's truly a Fodorite's heaven. You can "fly" over all the places you've been, revisit them as if actually walking those maps you took with you -- trace your steps from the Pantheon to Piazza Navona and across to the Vatican.

If you don't have a fast enough computer or modem, try to find a friend who does, just to get a taste of this.

It's not the computer or the connection that makes the pictures blurry. I have a windows XP computer, less than 1 year old with cable modem. If I look at Paris, things are great. But someone out there try looking at Ann Arbor, MI. I can't make out anything beyond green blurs and the river. Haven't tried looking at the football stadium yet, and I can't use it from this computer. I'll play more when I get home, but I really wish it wasn't blurry in my town. :(

I just found myself and I'm two years younger. I love Google Earth!

mm

Here's another site with arial photos. This one does not require a download.

http://terraserver.microsoft.com

Gee thanks Curmudgeon. You got some of us all excited only to find out you need the latest software, hardware, and high speed internet access. What a let down. Now I feel bad!

For those of us without all the latest bells and whistles check out terraserver.microsoft.com. It has black and white photos where you can see your house and neighborhood without all the latest software, hardware, and high speed internet.

The images that make up google's image database are a mosaic of low res satelite images that cover the entire globe - even Antartica, for example, and high res patches in many urban areas, but a suprising number of random areas as well. (Edinburgh, for example, is low res, but the area immediately west is high res). So if everything looks blurry in the place you are, just zoom out. Eventually it won't be blurry - but it will be a photo from much higher up, so you won't be able to make out as much. Look in the bottom right hand corner of the tool to see the altitude that you are looking at the earth from. Sometimes you can see cool things even in the low res photos - Mt. Washington, for example, looks cool even in low res.

But I gather Google is adding more and more high res places as they acquire images and get them online and such. So you're town may eventually be high res too! :)

Take a look at www.googlesightseeing.com for more info about google's satellite photos. If e

Oh, and also check out maps.google.com and click the satellite button. It gives you the same pictures through a website, rather than a nifty interface.

jlm_mi, you need the XP and fast connection to keep things from freezing up or taking so long to download that zooming is really impossible. You're right, has nothing to do with the image's resolution but does have something to do with whether a user can get to the level with the best resolution.

If you haven't tried Niagara Falls yet, it's the clearest one I've tried so far.

Venice and Paris are so cool!! Love this site!!

Is there a way to find places like the Grand Canyon through the search engine. When I type in Grand Canyon it sends me to someplace in Missouri. I found the Grand Canyon by zooming in on the area where it is, but is there an easier way?

The photo mapping is old- at least more than three full years in my section (IL) because they show the house next door with no pool and several houses missing that are now built.

It was online but not under Google last winter because I was fooling with it then.

Makes me stop and think about how much change there has already been, and so quickly!

On Terraserver I can see my dad digging the field. On the other half of the farm which the photo must have been taken when the satellite passed around again he is in a completely different part of the field doing the same thing. Two dads in the same field. I figured the the salellite must have taken about two hours to make another pass.

Awesome! By the way, you also need a large screen monitor for best pic. Mine is a 17 inch and cuts off a bit of the right side, but you can just mouse over to that area.

We looked at a military base in NJ - it showed in clear detail every plane on the ground. Hmmmm...don't like that. The weird thing was that there were no visible markings on the planes, even though they were clearly featured. Censored?

Thanks curmudgeon!

Onboard Sausiltio ferry and waving ... can you see me? Hi .... hi up there ... hi ... whoops, almost bumped into the lady with the big hat ... do you see her ... isn't she the coolest! Have a great day all, and ciao, L