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Comment by trothamel | Hacker News Reader

At first I was going to wonder what the benefit of this above something like www.heavens-above.com is, and then I went all the way through. The real benefit is, I think, the use of a street view visualization to show where the satellites are going to be in the sky.

I would suggest that it might make sense to emphasize that technology over the globe-with-satellite view, as it's a much better trick to pull off.

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Thanks! The problem is street view is expensive. I would love to load it at startup but I would run out my free Maps API quota more quickly. (That may happen anyway if this gets popular.) I'm hoping that this way people who aren't that interested bounce before loading street view so that the quota is reserved for people who are really interested.

Google should just buy this from you and make it part of google maps for free :)

No, because Google would then risk shut it down.

What he should do is, ask for free « open-source » credits, for the glory of science. That’s something Google would get behind.

If you want to make that clearer you could perhaps create a gif of a generic location and put it at the start of the demonstration?

Or even just a screenshot.

(you probably could not do it with a streetview photo, because of their terms, but a generic photo would totally do)

A way for people to "experience" the app, if/when quota is exhausted. Which might also to satisfy the curiosity of some, before they use quota.

> (you probably could not do it with a streetview photo, because of their terms, but a generic photo would totally do)

My fuzzy recollection is some years-ago TOS permitted showing the service being used?

I meant more as a visual way to demonstrate, once the page is open, what you will get out of it

(better interface. but then again, it might make too many people use it)

even using a generic image, and showing the path through the horizon with a compass in a generic 3d space would help to orient yourself

Makes sense. As many others have noted, nice integration of Street View and satellite data!

Shameless plug: we at NetToolKit recently launched a very affordable geocoder that includes rooftop-level geocoding for most of the US (using OpenAddresses data). You can test out the accuracy here: https://www.nettoolkit.com/geo/demo

We'd be thrilled if you would consider using our service (first 1,000 requests per day can be free).

I thought there was a way to use a users quota instead of yours. But hopefully Google just comps you a quota increase.

it's a great site, I'm gonna see if I can spot the satellite in a few minutes :)

could you maybe also draw the path of the satellite as a faint line where the dot moves over? the entire path wasn't in view meaning I had to wait for the animation, if you get my point.

oh and another idea, could you make it so you can also pan the height at which you look in the streetview? Because I was looking out of my window on the second floor, but streetview is at street level. I dont know if that's a possible feature, though.

Can we create user accounts that require our own streetview api credentials from Google?

I’ll second that the street view was super impressive

Street view is awesome especially for less than novices like me. The daytime street view is good because I know ah that’s in my back garden or I better go on the street and look right to see it. A star map projected onto a daytime augmented reality would be useful too if someone created that.

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