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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't call it the "live" you would expect (although depends on what you were expecting -- I wasn't honestly expecting a live view of "anywhere on Earth", but at least some level of detail). As soon as you zoom in to any level of <100km detail it reverts to years-old imagery. I guess it's understandable -- since when you get to that level, clearly they are picking/choosing the imagery that's cloud-free, etc.

It's more like a "live" view if you were to look at the entire Earth at once from the Apollo capsule...

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Well the only way to get “live” imagery at any level of perceptible detail is to be a three letter agency. Even the highest levels of private sector aren’t tasking satellites with that level of latency.

Sure, that's fair. But what / who then are they trying to sell the idea of with the phrase "live"? Is any average person really interested in a "live" view of the whole Earth, such that it would be meaningfully different or changed compared to the static blue marble photo we're all familiar with? I think we all know what we're interested in when we think of "live"... things at the <<1km level.

Sure, we can't zoom in, but I thought that this was pretty cool. Yeah we've seen photos of the planet from a distance, but printed maps and Google/Apple/et. al.'s map software condition us to forget about how widespread cloud cover is. So, to me, an "average person", it's interesting to see the world "as-is" right now - the various storms around the world, the fact that the cloud cover near my house is something I only ever think about locally but, upon viewing this, is so obviously part of a much, much bigger system that extends thousands of miles beyond my locale, the neat kind of horizontal "line" of clouds stretching around the planet along the equator, etc.

Yeah, I'm not going to spend a lot of time checking this out, but it's still really neat for a few minutes.

Edit: User qeternity responded to your post as well, and I'll also echo their comment about how seeing this whole planet as something that's minutes old building a strong connection/appreciation is another great point.

I mean, at this level, it's not that different from Google Maps satellite view, right? I can see years/months-old imagery there too.

I'm the developer of Zoom Earth. "Live" is shorthand for "near real-time". But, you're right. Most visitors simply want to see their house from space. Which is understandable, but also kinda depressing. They could look at _anywhere in the world in near realtime_, but they wanna see what their roof or garden looks like.

Meteorologists love it though.

Also, it's good for monitoring wildfires. For example, here are fires currently raging in the Arctic: https://zoom.earth/#view=67.86,151.46,6z/date=2020-07-20,am/...

I guess it's pretty normal to check your own place because you know it well enough to rate the quality of the imagery. In this case, whatever you're using offers better and more recent resolution than Google Earth at greater speed so it's my New Favorite Thing.

Do you have a WMS interface?

> They could look at _anywhere in the world in near realtime_, but they wanna see what their roof or garden looks like.

I'm sure, they are interested in more. They might pick their home first, as they are familiar with it and can compare the pictures you provide with their mental image. You have to gain their trust first.

Why not just say how old each image is, like with a color overlay? “Zoom past this level and you will be looking at 400 days ago” etc

It does - imagery is dated to the nearest month from level ~12 and higher. (See top left on desktop, bottom on mobile)

From which year are the cloudless images shown when deselecting the live/daily layers? There seems to be one per month but all from the same year, right?

It's interesting to see how winter is taking hold of the planet - but a little bit disappointing that I cannot compare snowy areas between different years.

So live/daily is for zoom levels 0-9, and the archive goes back 20 years to 2000. Zoom in, and older imagery dates will vary based on the location.

I'm super happy to see this website personally, seeing the weather patterns and being able to timestep through them historically is really awesome. I'm a sailor, so that's my angle.

Large weather patterns are the first thing that jump out to me. But perhaps the knowledge that the blue marble you’re looking at is mere minutes old builds a stronger connection and appreciation for it.

Either way I think it’s cool, even if it lacks the Jason Bourne resolution.

I mean if I could look at myself sitting in my own garden it would be unimaginably awesome.

I for one would love to get a live view of the lineup at my nearest grocery store.

Back when drones were a relatively new thing and I lived in a country where people don't get upset about this kind of thing, we sent a drone down to see how busy our local pub was.

If you aren't a TLA there are options. Planet SkySat will give you 50cm resolution twice daily if you have budget[1].

Planet, Digitalglobe[2], Airbus[3] and others will give you similar or better without the ability to task collection.

[1] https://www.planet.com/50cm/

[2] https://www.digitalglobe.com/products/satellite-imagery

[3] https://www.intelligence-airbusds.com/en/8692-pleiades

Check out planet labs. Not a government agency, and taking high resolution scans of the entire planet very frequently.

Is it theoretically, and practically possible for a private company to task a satellite with this level of latency/detail? Are there laws/regulations in this regard? Or is it more a technical/financial barrier?

When they were looking for the missing Malaysian airliner, there were "fresh" (I guess days old) satellite images for people to look through, although the detail level was not that great.

I think a commercial satellite imaging company supplied the images for free.

Planet Labs do this (planet.com) but $$$

Some of the "old" views are really quite old. Older than that visible in Google Maps, for example.

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