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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Offers Hybrid Satellite and Map View 298

Posted by Zonk from the best-of-both-worlds dept.
That's Unpossible! writes "Google Maps now offers a hybrid view which combines their map view with their satellite view. The Google blog has a notice on the update. It appears to use 8-bit alpha transparent PNGs to make it work."
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Google Offers Hybrid Satellite and Map View More

Google Offers Hybrid Satellite and Map View

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  • I wonder ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by poopooboi ( 829906 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:57PM (#13141730)
    ... how large is the intersection of code between Google Maps and Google Earth?

    • Re:I wonder ... (Score:4, Funny)

      by dariuscardren ( 826733 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:09PM (#13141811) Journal
      Earthsized?
    • Frankly, I think Google Maps' Hybrid Mode is much better than Google Earth's street mode. It's so perfectly clear - that was the thing that immediately won my adoration of Google Maps when it came out...I immediately recognized just how much it eat the pants off stuff like MapQuest -- and of course, the smooth scrolling and zooming. Google Earth is pretty awesome, but: a. I can only use it at work (I run Linux & OS X at home); b. It's extremely sluggish sometimes (not sure if it's congestion or RAM/CP
    • Well it seems that [recently] the Google Maps 'satellite' images were replaced with those images used in the Google Earth product [Google Maps had some nearby areas with older/different images that I could easily notice the change, and there was no change from Keyhole to Google Earth (I had the demo about a month before Google changed it)]

  • Nice (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jeet81 ( 613099 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:58PM (#13141735)
    Saw that this afternoon as I was pulling out directions. More interestingly they even have arrows pointing traffic flow which I don't think they had earlier.

    • Re:Nice (Score:3, Informative)

      by bladx ( 816461 )
      They've had arrows pointing out traffic flow for a while now... as far as I know. (Because I used it a while ago to see traffic flow for a certain city...)

    • Re:Nice (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fimbulvetr ( 598306 )
      Interestingly, if you read the story [slashdot.org] about the dude getting a taffic ticket, he said they inferred the "two way" streets because the one ways were clearly marked.
      It's the same way here. I'm so glad they have the hybrid mode, the sat./map worked well before for navigating, but I think this will take the cake.

      I wonder if there are any streets incorrectly labled as one way, and how often the map (not sat.) portion gets update to reflect these changes. It doesn't really matter too much, although I hope changi

      • Re:Nice (Score:3, Interesting)

        by OrangeGoo ( 678478 )
        I dunno how often their maps are updated, but it is interesting to note that in certain areas, their map data is at least as old as their satellite data. A new bypass highway opened around my piddly hometown not too long ago. To no surprise, the completed highway doesn't show up on the satellite (though most of it is present). The map, however, shows none of it.

        It's amazing how accurate the roads they do show are, though - most online mapping tools (MapQuest, MSN) aren't very close, especially on the

        • Re:Nice (Score:5, Interesting)

          by bmwm3nut ( 556681 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:49PM (#13142000)
          To no surprise, the completed highway doesn't show up on the satellite (though most of it is present). The map, however, shows none of it.

          here's a cool view of a place where the map is newer than the sattelite picture. you can see where rt 36 extends to the west over washington street. but in the pure sattellite picture, you can only see the construction. this is a realitively new bypass, so the sattellite doesn't have it in, but the map is updated perfectlly. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=westminster,+co&ll=3 9.825644,-104.980974&spn=0.007749,0.015003&t=h&hl= en [google.com]

        • Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)

          by surprise_audit ( 575743 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @11:48PM (#13142238)
          I just looked for my house, and found something a bit out of place. The road running past my house has another road joining it as T-junction, with the upright part of the T running directly away from the house. Google Maps shows that as a 4-way intersection, with a completly fictitious road following what is in fact a drainage ditch... And just up the road the map shows a cross-street that runs through someone's house...

          I too wonder where they get their data. I was looking at a couple of mapping apps a few weeks ago, playing with a GPS puck I got for my birthday, and I think one of those shows the same stupid mistakes in the streets. It was either Microsoft Streets and Trips, or it was Rand McNally Streetfinder. I don't remember which, and right now I don't have either loaded because my disk drive died...

          The satellite view shows my pool, though, so - Hey!! I can see my pool from space!!

          • Re:Nice (Score:3, Interesting)

            by itchy92 ( 533370 )
            The satellite view shows my pool, though, so - Hey!! I can see my pool from space!!

            That's more scary than exciting to me, though.
        • It's amazing how accurate the roads they do show are, though - most online mapping tools (MapQuest, MSN) aren't very close, especially on the local college campus. Google, however, has everything nailed. Well... at least until the college decided to rip up all the streets, but that's another story. I wonder where they get their data...

          While they've nailed the streets in well-populated areas, and around points of interest (such as my college campus), it's funny to see how far off some of the streets are w

    • Re:Nice (Score:2, Informative)

      by turkeywrap ( 560320 )
      It was these arrows that saved a man from a traffic ticket: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/180231 &tid=133&tid=217&tid=1 [slashdot.org]
  • I personally won't use it much. I like to be looking at either a map or a satellite, but not some combination. While I'm sure there will be plenty of neat hacks on this, and all sorts of other great things done with it, I just don't feel it.

    On a side note, I am wondering who exactly is doing QA testing for all of these things, given how much square mileage is covered and how poorly some things may match up.

    • Re:As good as this looks... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:27PM (#13141898) Homepage Journal
      Quite the contrary, I could see using the hybrid in preference to just the map. If you print it out for someone, I find it more useful than just the raw map...
    • I am wondering who exactly is doing QA testing for all of these things, given how much square mileage is covered and how poorly some things may match up.

      You saw the new Willy Wonka, haven't you? You know, those squirrels?
    • There used to be a significant desynch between the map and the satellite image for Canada and other northern areas. It was an artifact having to do with how the projection was done. They seem to have cleared it up now though; Winnipeg looks much less stretched, though you can still see some funny business in the watermarks.

    • I personally won't use it much. I like to be looking at either a map or a satellite, but not some combination.

      Not to be contrarian, but I actually think the hybrid will be useful.

      Several times I've found myself flipping back and forth between the two as I'm trying to visualize where something is and I need to see the street names to know exactly where something is, and the map to reconcile with the geography.

      Like all shiney google things, you may not need all of the features, but someone will find 'em

  • Cool! (Score:2, Funny)

    by ballstothat ( 893605 )
    This is a great development. As a delivery person for certain "items", it will be great to have an overview of roads and traffic patterns for my "stops" on my "route", especially when traveling to new areas.

    It was so tiring carefully printing out the satellite views and then cutting out the roadmaps in thin slivers to fit over my printouts.

    • It was so tiring carefully printing out the satellite views and then cutting out the roadmaps in thin slivers to fit over my printouts.
      man, what a godsend..

  • Not entirely new (Score:5, Informative)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:03PM (#13141771)
    Mapper of Doom [ofdoom.com] has had this for quite some time, albeit with existing data from Terraserver.

  • Scale! (Score:5, Informative)

    by OrangeGoo ( 678478 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:05PM (#13141778)
    They added a scale since the last time I checked the maps, too! Halleluah!

  • Draw my own line? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wirwzd ( 699017 )
    Now they need to make it do I can draw or adjust the line to see the mileage on different routes I want to take.

    This could also potentially used be used to collect data to improve the mapping, i.e if the end user plots a better/shorter/faster path between two points if to/from map drawn.

    Also could be used to collect correction data (i.e directed down one way street.

    A button for optional feedback on change reasoncouldbe used to collect why the change was made, etc.

  • This'll come in handy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by The I Shing ( 700142 ) * on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:06PM (#13141789) Journal
    This is certainly bad news for all those girls I've been stalking.
  • Some reasons life would be better if it were like the internet:
    • "Remove presence authorization from" would work physically on annoying coworkers without causing a scene involving security
    • People calling me to not spend money would be told to "slow down, cowboy!"
    • I could get driving directions from my home to my favorite campground by following a purple line floating over the highway
    • As for the purple line floating over the highway, that's an active research area. The military is pumping a lot of dollars into augmented reality. I've gotten to see a few shots of some of their demo tech and it's pretty cool stuff. Now they just have to make it work correctly all the time and give proper depth queing... heheh

      Someday, though. Someday!

  • Scaled as well (Score:5, Informative)

    by Penguin ( 4919 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:13PM (#13141830) Homepage
    It's pretty neat - the satellite photos are no longer wrapped around a cylinder (making places far away north or south from equator look squished).

    Unfortunately there still isn't maps available for Europe besides England. I hope it would arrive soon.

  • PNG support in IE (Score:5, Informative)

    by gusnz ( 455113 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:27PM (#13141893) Homepage
    OK, so as sort of a meta-reply to all the posters asking about IE and PNG support, here's 2 interesting hacks you can use to get your PNG magic rolling in MSIE.

    MSIE (as of v6) doesn't support 32 bit transparent PNGs natively, but there is a cool hack [kevinfreitas.net] where you can dither them down to 8 bits, retaining translucenct for browsers that support it, and using 1-bit transparency in MSIE, so it still looks OK.

    Alternatively, you can use the AlphaImageLoader() filter for near native IE PNG support [twinhelix.com] -- that's a link to my own free CSS behavior that automatically adds IMG and background-image support for PNGs to MSIE 5.5+.

    Either way, PNGs rock, except for the lack of a cross-platform gamma standard -- if you need to match other colours on your site, just use JPEGs/GIFs.

  • About time! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:27PM (#13141899) Homepage
    Multimap [multimap.com] had done this for quite some time over the UK, but only with Internet Explorer. Google's solution works fine on Safari, and it looks clean to boot. Kudos Google!

    Now if our ZIP codes resolved to a single address, we would be set. ZIP+4 helps, but it's still not there yet. UK postcodes, while not perfect, are much better in this regard.

  • I guess "regular" maps can now be officially (Score:3, Insightful)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:29PM (#13141911) Homepage
    I guess "regular" maps can now be officially declared dead. This is right on so many levels, and implementation appears to be flawless.

  • Very Impressive (Score:4, Insightful)

    by (eternal_software) ( 233207 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:34PM (#13141927)
    From a programming standpoint, this is amazing.

    The fact you can zoom in, to the highest zoom level, anywhere in the US... and the roads line up with the satellite maps.. is amazing.

    I just zoomed in fully to my street on Long Island, NY, and the road names and highways were overlayed perfectly with the actual streets as depicted on the satellite map.

    How do they do this? I guess the satellite maps are labelled so precisely that they can overlay lat/lon routes on top of them?

    • Re:Very Impressive (Score:3, Interesting)

      by OrangeGoo ( 678478 )
      I dunno, but it must be a nightmare having to get everything to work correctly. I've recently had the (dis)pleasure of doing coordinate conversions - not only between coordinate systems (lat/lon, UTM, SPCS), but also projections (LCC, NAD27/83, WGS84) and datums (NAD27/83, WGS84), and sometimes even spheroids (GRS80, Clarke66, WGS84).

      They do it so well and so cleanly, I can't help but wonder if maybe some of the major GIS companies are starting to worry. Could ESRI be the next target? I know we've bee
      • Id love to see ESRI get some real competition. I have the STate of open GIS and use some open source GIS apps, but they dont have the tools that ESRI does now.

        Server, though is another thing, if you can make you maps, you dont need ESRI to show them, you can do it yourself for nothing. And be better at it too.

    • Re:Very Impressive (Score:3, Informative)

      by killa62 ( 828317 )
      The accuracy of the overlay seems to vary according to the elevation of the area and also the image itslf.
      Because of the fact that sattilites can only zoom in so far and still have a good image, in areas where you can zoom all the way in, they have to use airplanes to take pictures. Nevertheless, these survery airplanes have to maintain a perfect or almost perfect parallellness with the ground or else the image will look shifted. In places where the overlays are not very exact, the most common reason is th
    • Yea, praise Google and all that... Except my town near Salem, OR is grossly mislabeled on Maps. One of the 2 main roads in town is cut off at roughly halfway. This is a couple mile long road that feeds directly into the interstate, and is not labeled properly at all... As long as you want to stay on the Northeast end of it, you are fine, though.
    • The fact you can zoom in, to the highest zoom level, anywhere in the US... and the roads line up with the satellite maps.. is amazing.

      Not quite. Everyplace I look at in the satellite views never have the highest view zoom resolutions available. Outside of the largest metropolitan areas coverage is not quite as reliable. For instance they show my house as being at the wrong end of my street. (What it claims is my house is a small apartment building.)

    • The fact you can zoom in, to the highest zoom level, anywhere in the US... and the roads line up with the satellite maps.. is amazing.

      This is only true where the satellite imagery is complete, and it isn't. My hometown of Peoria, IL is missing detailed imagery for about the eastern third of the city. There's nothing Google can do if they don't have the imagery, of course. I just wanted to point out that your praise isn't strictly true.

      Yeah, it's 1 AM and I don't have anything better to do right now. :-)
      • Google maps v 1 didn't really blow me away. there were cool features, but it was mostly like, "wow, but so?". This is frickin' incredible. Seeing the world top-down doesn't always make sense to us, but with the points of reference you can get a much better sense of perspective. Real street maps should be like this, but they couldn't be big enough.

        Someone should make a pda that can snag this stuff via gps.

  • WTF is up with you people? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:41PM (#13141955) Journal
    They have satellite/aerial photography. They have map data. The map data is often derived from said photography. They've compositied one over the other.

    Geez! If they put pictures of fancy roses in corner you'd be creaming yourselves!

    • yes, but either is less useful without the other. it's a small thing, but it makes a huge difference because it adds meaning/significance to images we otherwise might not recognize unless you like to sit on your roof a lot.
  • Before you can Google Map a picture from Pioneer 10 that's way out there!
  • When did google add the satellite images to google maps? Is that new too?

    This totally makes up for the lack of a Google Earth mac version :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I was just using this with my brother. On his pentium III 600, 256 mb ram comp, and windows 2000, google hybrid killed his virtual memory and pretty much borked his computer into a hard restart.

    this happen to anyone else?

  • This guy did it earlier... (Score:5, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @11:01PM (#13142038) Homepage Journal
    I wholly agree that this is a very cool development, but some credit has to go to this guy [kokogiak.com] who developed it first with the Google API.

    And I find his GUI better than Google's. It's slicker, and the ability to adjust the transparency (slider at the bottom) is quite innovative. As is also the ability to move the foreground or background and have the other align itself accordingly.

  • It has to be said. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    As much as I admire Google, I think they really need to grow up a little. Yeah, all the cool applications and features they keep releasing are impressive as hell. But they're starting to neglect the basics. Like getting a product out of Beta mode in a reasonable time. (It's true that Google's Beta releases are often less buggy than most companys' final releases, but that doesn't change the fact that many of their products never seem to mature.) Like putting basic functionality ahead of the gee whiz stuff: G
    • Parsing addresses is not as easy as all that, as not only do people type them all sorts of non-standard ways, but also cities use many different non-standard naming formulas. These things being so, Google does extremely well in figuring out the garbage that people type in.

    • Yeah, but all the cool applications and features they keep releasing are impressive as hell.

    • Re:It has to be said. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dourk ( 60585 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @11:29PM (#13142152) Homepage
      But, since Google provides all these neeto features to me and so many others free of charge, who am I to complain?

    • Re:It has to be said. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson&psg,com> on Friday July 22, 2005 @11:34PM (#13142171)
      Beta is no longer a technical term for them, it is a marketing term. It is for most people.

      and about the address parsing: it isn't sure it can accurately guess what you want, so it prompts you. would you rather it guess incorrectly or prompt? I'll pick prompt, thanks.

      nothing has to be said.
      • I used to think that Google was using "beta" as a marketing term. But after a while it became obvious that it's their excuse for not having any real plan for products like Maps and GMail. They just pile on feature after feature. It is impressive that they can do this and still keep good control over their bugs. But the overall product is still something of a mess.

        I guess it's a positive thing that they're honest enough to acknowledge that mess by refusing to remove the "beta" label. But it's sad that that

        • Do you really think gmail is a mess? I find it easier to use and more feature filled than the competitors. I especially like the search.

          But anyway, to the point, I personally like the "beta" designation because it means they *are* actively working on it and improving it. Many of the improvements aren't big deals and advertised, but they make an overall better product. For example, how google maps recently added the scale and hybrid features. Both are useful, and make an overall better final product. They m
    • It isn't like Google is one short attention span hardcore coder that just jumps from project to project. Neglecting the old as he moves to the new... Google, in fact, is an entire company. Some people in that company work on the google maps project, some on the local, some on news, etc, etc... And yes, some of them are slower at releases than others, or go through more R&D or get multiple projects that get time-shared.

      Just because Google Maps is going break neck doesn't make Google Local go any slower
    • their other projects are a mess

      You said it: projects. Not products. Projects that are clearly marked as 'beta.' I totally agree that their address comprehension is pants, but at the same time I don't expect too much, given that it's a beta project, not even linked from their front page.

    • Re:It has to be said. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <<deliverance> <at> <level4.org>> on Saturday July 23, 2005 @12:28AM (#13142400) Journal
      Google isn't a company... Google is an Empire.

      They will create services which will survive for YEARS! Slow ad revenue is just a stumbling block towards total domination.

      If they can just keep generating 5c a click for 50 years they'll generate billions!

      Plus they have froogle which promises to be the biggest cash cow the internet has ever seen.
      • though froogle is nice, it's pretty hard to find deals on it. most times, prices on pricewatch or other price search engines would return the same product at cheaper prices.

        of course what froogle does is automated by scanning websites, but it's far from competing against it's rivals at the moment. i'd say at least a few years worth. a lot of refining work on their froogle engine is needed.

    • Re:It has to be said. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by krunk4ever ( 856261 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @01:18AM (#13142553) Homepage
      so how's this going to be different to you? imagine google did remove the beta word from their google maps software. would you know the difference? would it matter if it was exactly the same product that it was during beta form?

      in my opinion, beta is just a term google likes to fool the public with. if something is truly beta, you have 'beta' testers which usually are a select group to test out the product before releasing to the general public. this is usually a process to find bugs and etc. google has made the ENTIRE WORLD their beta testers, which i don't really mind, but final question that i want to ask you is how is sticking the word 'beta' or removing it from their products going to be any difference to you.

      i can see why you'd complain if it wasn't release to the general public, while beta users reaped all the usefulness. sorta like how people felt when only a select few got 1gb gmail accounts. gmail was in beta, and people were fighting to get accounts paying over $50 for 1 account. i could see why you'd want to see gmail go outta beta just for that reason. but google maps doesn't require subscription fees, no one has exclusive access, and it works beautifully.

      in fact, as someone else mention, google beta products are AD free!
    • What more could a business ask for than a model that works. Google's model may not be perfect, but currently they are more successful than any other business in its industry. You said it before: "Google will not be in real trouble for the foreseeable future". This is the case because google has not trodden the road of heavy structuring that you have suggested. Be careful what you wish for. Many have trodden that road, such as Apple and HP. Some were able to turn back but some were not. That mannic way googl

  • Zoom support (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cmason ( 53054 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @09:36AM (#13143841) Homepage
    I would really like to see the ability to zoom in by dragging a rectangle on the map. You might toggle between zoom and pan with a toolbar, or use keyboard shortcuts.

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