You thought google maps was scary enough... [Archive]

dmacdonald111

May 25th, 2006, 12:25 PM

...well, have you all seen Microsoft's new offering at http://local.live.com/?

Same idea, but a LOT more detailed. On google, I can only see a blur where I live, with the microsoft map, I can actually make out my car parked next to my house! Now THAT'S scary!

unbuntu

May 25th, 2006, 12:30 PM

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Great...Another site that only works for M$ IE

dabear

May 25th, 2006, 12:35 PM

Great...Another site that only works for M$ IE
works fine here in Flock.

dmacdonald111

May 25th, 2006, 12:40 PM

I'm using firefox and don't have any problems. Do you have java and such installed?

darkninja

May 25th, 2006, 12:54 PM

I'm using firefox and don't have any problems. Do you have java and such installed?
Working fine here too.

imagine

May 25th, 2006, 01:06 PM

Works also in Opera. However the maps for Europe are crap. You can hardly make out villages, let alone houses or cars.

Stew2

May 25th, 2006, 01:16 PM

Bummer, just a map of my area. No arial views :( . Site works fine on my fox though.

bluenova

May 25th, 2006, 01:28 PM

Well there are some nice views of the states, but the rest of the world is very low res.

matthew

May 25th, 2006, 01:39 PM

Works great in FF1.5 on Dapper with Java installed. It used my IP address and automatically started me in Morocco. It also has the best map of Fes that I have seen without buying the paper-version one. Impressive.

n3tfury

May 25th, 2006, 04:28 PM

Great...Another site that only works for M$ IE

wrong.

-Rick-

May 25th, 2006, 05:26 PM

So far windows live is quite original .. ;)
Anyway maps in Holland aren't detailed yet...

IYY

May 25th, 2006, 05:37 PM

In my City (not some obscure European town; Toronto), it's much less detailed than Google maps. In Google maps I could see the car in my driveway and the tree in my back yard, here I only have a blurry little house.

arsenic23

May 25th, 2006, 05:58 PM

Scunizi

May 25th, 2006, 06:00 PM

I can remember trying this site on my Windows side and could get the satelite images. When trying it on Ubuntu & FF I now don't see an option for satelite or any further detail other than a standard flat map. What am I missing? Where's the option?

paul cooke

May 25th, 2006, 07:16 PM

Great...Another site that only works for M$ IE

works great for me with firefox... jus as long as I don't get carried away like I did last night. Browsing around the Severn area, managed to fill all my ram AND virtual memory with cached images... it was only when things started slowing down that I had a shock at the amount of memory in use... for just one firefox window...

paul cooke

May 25th, 2006, 07:18 PM

Well there are some nice views of the states, but the rest of the world is very low res.

what??? I could zoom right in on my block of flats and see my car outside... I'm in the UK...

sophtpaw

May 25th, 2006, 10:10 PM

Works also in Opera. However the maps for Europe are crap. You can hardly make out villages, let alone houses or cars.

Thats right. Multimap is much better for us. Give you nice aerial views, at least for me it does

By the way i love these maps. Like having your satelite. Wont be long before we'll be able to click on any area of the planet and zoom right in on it. Why do i think that is cool :rolleyes:

sophtpaw

May 25th, 2006, 10:13 PM

Nasa has a program that seems to run off the same data, but it super imposes it ontop of topographical information, so you get this all on a completely zoom-and-pan-able 3d earth.

Unfortunately it runs off .net
I'll link it just incase anyone has a windows box that would like to run it for them:
http://www.download.com/World-Wind/3000-2054_4-10532223.html?tag=lst-0-3

would it work with I.E installed on wine? (is that how you say it? :-# )
I don't want to regret ditching windows. Wanna be able to do whatever they can ( i mean only the good stuff) :D

dmacdonald111

May 25th, 2006, 10:56 PM

Not in response to anyone, but just airing my views (heh) but doesn't anyone find this really unnerving? I mean, it is possible to get live satellite feeds of little rocks and dust clouds on the surface of Mars, and they are telling us that google/microsoft maps is cool new technology? Sorry guys, but I am never opening my curtains ever again! Ah!

<runs screaming into the only room in the house without windows and hides>

arsenic23

May 26th, 2006, 12:02 AM

would it work with I.E installed on wine? (is that how you say it? :-# )
I don't want to regret ditching windows. Wanna be able to do whatever they can ( i mean only the good stuff) :D

It doesn't run out of a browser like the other apps that are talked about in this thread. It's a 100-200 odd meg program that's at least partially writen in .NET. But I won't even use it on any of my windows boxes, because I don't like having extra stuff like the .NET framework installed on them. I've put this on one of our machines at work though, and it is kinda neat. But I wouldn't mess with getting it to work in wine, I recon you'd be disappointed after all your work.

BWF89

May 26th, 2006, 12:25 AM

Same idea, but a LOT more detailed. On google, I can only see a blur where I live, with the microsoft map, I can actually make out my car parked next to my house! Now THAT'S scary!
That doesn't mean its better than Google Maps, each map service or virtual earth program uses differenet satilights and some of them give greater detail in certain areas.

Example, Google Earth has some areas that have a higher resolution than NASA Worldwind and Worldwind has certain areas that it shows in a higher resolution.

Lovechild

May 26th, 2006, 12:33 AM

The resolution is exactly the same as Google Map for my neighborhood.

it's a nice service but I think I like Google Maps better, Microsofts service definately needs a lot of work, their menus don't work probably and the interface is generally a bit to touchy. Also the ariel view isn't as easy to make out as the hybrid view on Google Maps.

Overall I think they did well for a first attempt.

drizek

May 26th, 2006, 12:42 AM

google is stil better. My area is exactly the same in both, but windows live sucks in opera and outright doesnt work in konqueror.

unbuntu

May 26th, 2006, 02:00 AM

It works now on FF on Ubuntu. Apparently something happened b/w this morning when I first tried the site and now...OK, I'll retract my first comment...

RAV TUX

May 26th, 2006, 02:04 AM

Both Google and Windows live-local are built on old technology atleast 10 to 15 years old, I don't see what the buzz is about?

http://elevagemo.free.fr/emoticones/animaux/animo21.gif

Bragador

May 26th, 2006, 02:19 AM

Here some house selling corporations are already using google earth to helps the customers see where the houses are and how is the environment.

Expect these corporations to expand the google map in Quebec anyway.

Remax even made publicities on tv showing it.

Scunizi

May 26th, 2006, 03:09 AM

Yep... You can check out how google maps works for realtors at my site www.markgarrow.com.

batholith

May 26th, 2006, 03:28 AM

Even the local news stations (out of Denver) are using Google maps to illustrate locations of car wrecks, traffic jams, etc... I assume they're paying the $ for the upgraded version...

ubuntu27

May 26th, 2006, 04:34 AM

Even the local news stations (out of Denver) are using Google maps to illustrate locations of car wrecks, traffic jams, etc... I assume they're paying the $ for the upgraded version...

Yep, and I also see that almost 60% or more of Oregonian TVs uses Google Earth for their news and Weather Report.

jason.b.c

June 9th, 2006, 04:23 AM

YourSurrogateGod

June 9th, 2006, 04:52 AM

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see that level of detail that some described.

drizek

June 9th, 2006, 06:02 AM

Is google earth actually a Live feed or is there some delay..???:confused:

A friend of mine is telling me that he was told that google earth has a two day delay, But i didn't believe that..
Why ( how ) would/could you use it if there was a two day delay..???](*,)

It depends on where you live, but its closer to a 2 year delay. They take pictures every few years, it is not a live camera.

jason.b.c

June 9th, 2006, 07:10 AM

It depends on where you live, but its closer to a 2 year delay. They take pictures every few years, it is not a live camera.

What..???:confused: Well what kind of crap is that..??](*,)

I thought This (http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21413&topic=1140) meant that it was live.??
:confused:
And what do you mean "It depends on where you live"..??? How does that matter.??

drizek

June 9th, 2006, 02:31 PM

in some places they take more pictures than others, and sometimes they just havent gotten around to "refreshing" your area yet.

NESFreak

June 9th, 2006, 02:46 PM

what the hell is this wifi thing?

YourSurrogateGod

June 9th, 2006, 02:52 PM

in some places they take more pictures than others, and sometimes they just havent gotten around to "refreshing" your area yet.
They'll probably fix it. As with most new things, it takes time for the problems to be shaken out of the system. That and I'm pleasantly surprised that Microsoft has made something that will work so well in Firefox, hopefully they won't fark with this and make it unworkable.

pyromidget

June 9th, 2006, 04:55 PM

Wow.

On Google Maps, my entire TOWN is a kind of grey-ish smudge but on MS' one, I can see the layout of my garden!

Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=fk6+5nj&ll=56.013929,-3.919544&spn=0.02135,0.086346&t=k&om=1)
Windows Live Local (http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=56.013172~-3.918879&style=a&lvl=18)

I hate to say it,but I think I'm gonna switch over to the MS one for now...

EDIT: Just checked out my work now and... Well, see for yourselves!

Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=fk1+1xt&ll=55.994637,-3.756638&spn=0.021361,0.086346&t=k&om=1)
Windows Live Local (http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=55.993682~-3.756389&style=a&lvl=18)

mcduck

June 9th, 2006, 05:51 PM

Quite the opposite here. With Google maps, I can actually see the house I'm living in. With that Microsoft thing the closest usable view covers about half of the city I'm living in, after that it's all just a blur. But it's the same with the rest of Finland.. I suppose Microsoft hates Finland because of Linus coming from here ;)

Anyway, I don't like either service. The one I love is NASA's WorldWind. But as long as there's no Linux port, I prefer Flash Earth (http://www.flashearth.com/). It's Google's maps, but with just the map and no Google \\:D/

Minyaliel

June 9th, 2006, 07:03 PM

I could see the road I live in, nothing else. I suppose they haven't gotten any snapshots of my city yet.

Virogenesis

June 9th, 2006, 07:41 PM

I found the microsoft's one utter crap the picture seemed to be more blurry, the microsoft's version is nice with all that js mind.

paul cooke

June 9th, 2006, 10:16 PM

It depends on where you live, but its closer to a 2 year delay. They take pictures every few years, it is not a live camera.

the imagery on windows live for the UK is some 6 years old. It was done as the "millenium survey" where this light aircraft with a special camera and gps interface flew a grid pattern over the Uk over a period of several months.

The imagery for the Google "satellite" view is about 2 years old for my City as I was able to find my car outside the flat where I lived back then. The Cities are done with aerial photography rather than satellite imagery. You can tell because of the weird distortions at the edges of where they joined up the strips. The windows live imagery is better for the UK because they used narrower strips resulting in negligible distortion at the joins.

I'm still amazed at how fast ram fills up when scrolling around the view in Firefox... surely they should have implemented a better system where older views get discarded as ram gets filled past a certain value. I hope it's not a "feature" of firefox... oh, I've just tried the same route from one place to another using Opera and the memory remained more or less constant while firefox hogged it up with every drag across the screen.

nuvo

June 9th, 2006, 10:31 PM

Apparently, there's no imagery for Leeds, Northern England, so finding my house isn't currently possible.
Google Earth picks up my street, but it's difficult to pick things out with it.

curuxz

June 9th, 2006, 11:29 PM

I have to say the microsoft offering is very impressive, and those that read my posts know how much it hurts me to say that, the google map is like a patch work of diffrent images and the composite photography of microsoft local live is fantastic mostly seemless. While yes the image data is not as new as it could be the birds eye view mode is hella cool and the detail is wayyyyy better than google. In the battle of the evill compaines on mapping m$ wins round one in a KO as far as I am concerned.

OrganicPanda

June 14th, 2006, 09:34 PM

has anybody used tyhe 'birds eye' feature, now this is the best thing ive ever seen ..... in terms of aerial photography.

being able to see my house in the uk crystal clear at that height with 4 different angles is a bit spectacular

bruce89

June 14th, 2006, 09:51 PM

Windows Live is a bit of a daft name, but it is a bit ironic being able to access it from Ubuntu.

OrganicPanda

June 15th, 2006, 09:45 PM

come to think of it live is a really stupid lable for something that is completely static

bruce89

June 15th, 2006, 09:59 PM

come to think of it live is a really stupid lable for something that is completely static
Ubuntu Dead might be a better name for it.

grsing

June 15th, 2006, 10:03 PM

It really just depends on the specific area being looked at. In some, Google Earth (same imagery as Google Maps for the most part, though with unlimited zoom) provides outstanding imagery, in others, it's basically worthless. Same with Windows Live Local. Just depends. The scariest, closest imagery is on A9's block by block view, but the coverage is extremely skimpy, so it's not that worrysome.

Edit: Also, Windows Live Local seems to be further off on the addresses than Google or Mapquest (neither of them is perfect, either, but Windows Live Local is 4 houses off with my house, Google is only 1.5).

Edit again: the overhead imagery is actually exactly the same, it's the Google Earth overhead with the WLL bird's eye I was comparing regarding the clarity and recentness.

bruce89

June 15th, 2006, 10:11 PM

Edit: Also, Windows Live Local seems to be further off on the addresses than Google or Mapquest (neither of them is perfect, either, but Windows Live Local is 4 houses off with my house, Google is only 1.5).

The OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org) data for my road is spot on as I made it - http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=55.929&lon=-4.33&zoom=12

drizek

June 16th, 2006, 12:32 AM

Looking at it again, Yes, MS is better at making everything the same color than google is. Still, google has better images so they still win.

Not to mention, Google Earth runs on linux!

Naglfari

June 16th, 2006, 06:33 PM

Some of these images are closer to 10 years out of date. The subdivision where I live broke ground in 1995, and my house was built in 1998. All that Windows live shows at my address is a huge, open field. Not even the beginnings of a subdivision :confused:

grsing

June 16th, 2006, 06:54 PM

The OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org) data for my road is spot on as I made it - http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=55.929&lon=-4.33&zoom=12

I already know where my own house is, I was just using it as an example. It's when I'm looking up things that I don't know where they are that it really matters. And Openstreetmap is easily the slowest of any of the mapping tools I've tried.

bruce89

June 16th, 2006, 09:30 PM

I already know where my own house is, I was just using it as an example. It's when I'm looking up things that I don't know where they are that it really matters. And Openstreetmap is easily the slowest of any of the mapping tools I've tried.
It's funny, as they put loads of new servers in too - but at least it is Creative Commons data, I contribute to it.

OrganicPanda

June 23rd, 2006, 12:33 PM

All i know is nothing i have seen so far can do my house quite like : (attached image)

Mr_J_

June 23rd, 2006, 03:32 PM

I've got it to work on Firefox...
Don't be surprised the explanations only refer to their browser.
It is, after all, MicroSoft.

bruce89

June 23rd, 2006, 03:47 PM

I have to say the only nasty thing about their site is the logo's binary transparency. Apart from that, it's very nice. Also, as I said before Windows Live is a silly name, as is accessible from non-Windows things. I suggested Cross-Platform Dead would be better.

facefur

June 23rd, 2006, 08:05 PM

The quality of the maps and satellite images is dependent upon what imagery the server contains and where either Google or Microsoft buys it - most of what's on both sites is at least two years old.

I've found both to work fine with Firefox.

bruce89

June 23rd, 2006, 08:10 PM

I've found both to work fine with Firefox.
Well, they should do, they both are AJAX. They work with Epiphany here (not suprisingly).

egorgry

June 23rd, 2006, 08:20 PM

WTH? half of NYC is in black and white with blurry images and if you get too close it says image not available. Is my internet broke? I would think that nyc would be all high res at least manhatten not just parts of brooklyn.

paul cooke

June 24th, 2006, 08:15 AM