This article was originally published on BGR. More from BGR: Don’t buy the Galaxy S5 when it launches next month Google Maps introduces Immersive View for routes, combining Street View and aerial imagery for a realistic birds-eye view of the route. These satellites will orbit Earth multiple times per year, capturing plenty of photos for Google, Apple and Bing maps, which need new, improved imagery on a regular basis, but also for other customers that require access to images from space. military has imagery satellites that can pick up objects that are less than 10 cm (4 inches) across in size. The key technology of Google Earth is not the imagery or the process of combining it. Commercial images such as the ones Google Maps and Google Earth use, meanwhile, will only show objects that measure 50cm (20 inches). Photogrammetry involves creating a mesh using depth maps from the various cameras and adding the texture of individual structures to this mesh. (As in, mind-blowingly realistic insane.) Grand Canyon. And, as you might know if you’ve checked out the new Google Earth, the 3D imagery looks insane. The satellite will be able to see objects that are just 25cm (10 inches), although that’s the kind of resolution only the government has access to. Google Earth is an amazing tool that lets ordinary humanssans wings or jetpackzoom around the world. Google was the first internet company to fully leverage this insight and build a business on the data that people leave behind. When it launches into orbit later this year at around 600km (370 miles) above Earth, Worldview-3 will be one of the most powerful observation satellites sent up by a private company. “The light comes in through a barrel structure, pointed at the Earth, and is bounced around by a series of mirrors, before being focused onto a CCD sensor.” “With its long cylindrical shape, Worldview-3 looks more like a telescope than a camera, and it works on the same principle,” BBC writes. “At its simplest, it is a decent resolution digital camera in space,” he said and explained that instead of taking individual pictures it takes continuous images “along thin strips of land or sea.” Ball Aerospace is the maker of Maps- and Earth-related imagery satellites and it’s now started working on the Worldview-3 satellite for commercial satellite operator DigitalGlobe, BBC News reports.īall project manager Jeff Dierks, who has worked on most satellites opperated by companies that sell images to Google, says the technology used by these gigantic flying cameras is rather basic. In fact, Apple and Microsoft also use the same company to get their imagery from space for their respective mapping products. Clary/Getty Images I originally posted a version of this story in 2007 and have added a few updates for 2020. In addition to strange-looking cars that drive around towns with huge cameras on top, Google relies on other imagery for its Google Maps and Google Earth products, with the former a prominent service accessed on millions of computers and smartphones.
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