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Comment by martijn_himself | Hacker News Reader

Google Maps must be one of the modern wonders of the world, it's still nothing short of breathtaking to zoom out of streetview in crowded London and then land somewhere on a country crossroads in remote Vietnam.

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I count with one hand all the technologies that have blown my mind: discovering the electronic parts of my toys, playing a NES game in my friend's PC, my first contact with the internet, the first iPhone. But discovering Google Earth was a really special one, suddenly I was able to explore every street in the world, I was able to look at my house (in a small city in a developing country). Then I started imagining all the possibilities, also my conspiracy side kicked in, I mean, I as a teenager with a Celeron PC was able to look at any place I wanted in the world, then what kind of secret technologies could a big government have?? Good old days, I hope technology will keep blowing my mind in the near future.

There was a guy on a TV documentary once that had worked for the government in some capacity. He was explaining that the satellite maps provided to the public are extremely zoomed out compared to what the government is able to see.

He said that the government had photography so detailed, that they could find a golf ball on a golf course, and even tell you what brand of golf ball it is.

There's always some dude on TV bragging, but I'd be skeptical.

https://www.quora.com/How-powerful-are-the-cameras-on-modern...

TL;DR is that satellites have a 9 cm resolution at best. That's not enough to see a golf ball (4 cm diameter), and far away from discovering a producer's imprint on it.

With drones you can get an order of magnitude better, but that's still only barely enough to find said golf ball, and not enough to read fine print.

Probably right. But my guess is that the actual ability of current satellite photography is highly classified.

These pictures are from 3D flyovers, not satellite. They usually flyover every year, mostly municipial, not by country.

Who said it has to a be a satellite?

jjeaff did.

> He was explaining that the satellite maps provided to the public

> compared to what the government is able to see.

That does not imply satellite maps.

I guess you can read it that way if you try. But neither I or the other commenter got that meaning.

> if you try

Please refrain from baseless accusations. Thank you.

the government's spy satellites have very high resolution, but that claim was just bogus.

And once you land on those country crossroads, you can continue exploring the area at the street level. It's really an incredible tool for sating wanderlust - just pop over to some place you've wanted to visit and wander the streets via streetview, all from the comfort of your seat!

Speaking of which, GeoGuessr [1] is a great example of how to enjoy Google Maps. You start at some random streetview and try to figure out where in the world you are by walking around (and hoping to see a sign or two)! A lot of times you end up in dirt roads in small countries, and it's really cool to see what it looks like there.

[1] https://geoguessr.com/

As far as I know google street view costs money from this month, and it's not exactly cheap, $14 for a thousand streetviews:

https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/

I wonder if this tool stays free, lots of site owners are complaining about paying much more with the new pricing.

It'll be an interesting thing. They definitely understand the gaming angle due to Pokemon Go causing them to specially create tools and customize their API for gaming: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/gaming/

But that seems to be Enterprise level only.

They seem to have already updated for the new level. They also have advertisements and are a profitable business.

My guess is that they "Contacted Sales" like the Gaming API asks you to do and have a very agreeable discounted rate.

I've never seen a third party site using streetview so not much will be lost. But considering the effort and volume of data they have meticulously collected you can't blame them for monetizing it directly. Google is going to learn their lesson with the insane pricing on regular maps, though.

They could monetize it by putting ads on the maps/streetviews. They are an ad company after all, so they should have an option to show a map with ads for free, or without ads, but then it costs money.

This is fantastic!

It is, i remember being captivated by this film in the (mid? late?) 90s.. (from the late 70s, pieced together by hand). Never imagined it would be (partly) possible in realtime.. some 10 years later.

(eagerly hanging out for orbit view milky way, but probably not in my lifetime)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

Thanks for posting that - I was thinking about it the other day when I saw this[0] posted in another thread here. Great for sense of scale, but no "street view" in this one.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1mkjkTqg0Y

Google Earth VR is mindblowing.

Holy Shit! I just youtube'd some videos about that and it looks amazing! This is the first thing that has really made me want to get VR.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCrkZOx5Q1M

Big picture I think it's truly one of the high water marks of human achievement

Was going to make the same comment. I was pretty stunned by it.

Thanks to this comment I just spent the last hour exploring Moscow, Tokyo, Kyoto, and the Dominican Republic. I feel like I've always taken street view for granted. But it is a truly incredible experience to drop into a city you've never been to and see things you wouldn't see even if you visited.

Granted, nothing compares to actually experiencing the culture and places in person, but street view makes for a completely different, incredible experience.

I tried something similar to Google Earth in the late 90's at SIGGRAPH, running on an SGI Origin or similar. Was gobsmacked as I "parachuted" from orbit into Dodger Stadium. :D

Google Earth originated from a team that spun off from SGI (twice, kind of), so you probably saw the demos by Michael Jones and co.

Nowadays, you can build or buy a Liquid Galaxy to get a better experience than the Origin's, at a fraction of the price: http://liquidgalaxy.org/

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