Google Earth and Gigapxl

[TonyW]

My graphics card went bad and I had to replace it - I guess it had been going bad for a while because I'd been having problems with Google Earth and now it's working just fine. Anyway I updated to the new version (4.2 I think) and was playing around with Gigapxl images. They are quite amazing. Not that many yet and they're all in the US (except for just a couple in Canada) but if you find one you can fly to it in Google Earth and zoom right and see the smallest details. Here's one I was just looking at (in the Yukon). On the left is the whole picture, on the right is zoomed in.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1v2vhJcHbaET6F73EX8MpDB7cguKPa_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1v2vhJcHbaET6F73EX8MpDB7cguKPa)

You can read read more on how it's done (and see some of the images) here:

http://www.gigapxl.org/faqs.htm

They use scanned film because digital cameras don't have enough resolution. Their largest are 4 gigapixels :eek: And to get a sense of the scale, in an image of a football field a single blade of grass would be 100 pixels. Now that's resolution :cool:

Tony

[Inspeqtor]

Tony,

Your image is amazing! I have had Google Earth for several years now and enjoy using it from time to time. When I look at images from Google Earth, they all appear to be taken from the satellites above, which is what I would expect. I know how to rotate the images down but they flatten out not showing any ground level image as your shows. Your image of the train looks like it was taken at ground level, not from a satellite. Is that what you get from a new graphics card? By graphics card, do you mean video card? My video card is an old one, perhaps I need to get a new one. What graphics card did you get?

Thanks for the tip!

[TonyW]

Charles: I think most graphics/video cards would work Problem with my old one I think was that it had a bad chip in it that stopped Google Earth working. Elements worked fine because it isn't so demanding. Those gigapxl images sre actual photos, not satellite images. You have to check the layer that they're on and then they show up as little camera icons. Click on them and you then get to see the image and can zoom in on it. Google Earth has changed a lot since I first used it and I haven't quite figured out how everything works now - but a lot of stuff has been added including lots of photos - and you can now not only look at the earth and the moon but also the stars. All very clever but a bit overwhelming :)

Tony

[Inspeqtor]

Tony,

Sometimes I am a slow learner, but by golly I got it! Thank you very much :D


http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1v6mVDZVwfyUiHqSwuxUfkiSyS7eez_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1v6mVDZVwfyUiHqSwuxUfkiSyS7eez)

[Ellen]

Thanks Tony for the link (or maybe not - just spent a much longer while than I meant to looking around.)
It's amazing.

[TonyW]

Tony,

Sometimes I am a slow learner, but by golly I got it! Thank you very much :D




You did indeed - look hard and you can read the name on the driver's cap. Amazing.

Tony

[Joe M]

Google Earth is fascinating. I can spend hours messing with it. The Sky function has gotten my attention lately.