Google Earth

It only took 3 minutes to download and install it on my computer, but the resolution is nowhere near good enough to pick out an individual house (at least not any of the houses I tried to find). David

Some areas have better resolution than others. Randy Replogle

That's for sure. I can't even see the road in front my house and barely see the river next to it.

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:07:39 -0600, with neither quill nor qualm, "David Courtney" quickly quoth:

Yoda said "Use the Force, Luke!"

Larry says "Use the _zoom_ tool, David."

IOW, R T F M , bubba. ;)

AFAIK it does not/ will not run on dial-up, will only run on broadband. The detail ranges from 'can't see a house' to 'seeing people and cars reasonably well'. Maurice

I don't know if it will run any better on dialup, but this is also a pretty nifty tool, most areas have arial photos, some areas have "birds eye" photos which almost let you count clapboards and paving stones:

Also, google maps itself is pretty good, depending on the available arial photos. I particularly like the "hybrid" view which superimposes a street map on the arial photos: I don't know if either will be able to do what you want, but at least there are no programs to download (I'm sure just the images will take long enough). --Glenn Lyford

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:50:55 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, Larry Jaques quickly quoth:

Oops, I was thinking about the finer resolution (at least at my house in semi-back-country Oryguns) on the Terra Server at Micro$oft. The service is topo & aerial, not satellite.

Try

not only shows your house but the market value too.

I met a man taking pix of the entire 'hood. There is some Canadian co. sending people out to to photo every inch of the world. I lost the brochure but there is no place going unmapped. You are being watched.

The database is a massive collection of survey maps, custom maps, University maps - areas of major universities - very high resolution - some houses I have lived in are good some fair this one is just outside of a high res university zone - and oilfield so it is fuzzy. Typically 10,000 ft, 30,000 but some places have 100 feet. I can see people on the crosswalks and types of cars. But here - I see a fuzz ball for the house.

Wonder how long will it take to update just the U.S.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member

Randy Replogle wrote:

I can see my box truck. The pictures are a few years old, though.

And in my case..totally erroneously in both location and value.

It shows my house as been 4 houses away...and $100k over priced. For both my house and the house indicated.

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

I doubt if it's usable on a dialup. The 11 meg download is just the program; the (enormous) database it uses remains on Google servers. As you move around or zoom in and out, the program is continually streaming new data from the servers to your machine. The latency isn't bad with a broadband connection, but it would be awful on dialup.

Also, it seems to be picky about graphics hardware. It won't run on our laptop, with some mobile ATI chipset, but does run on desktop machines of no more recent vintage. All of the cards provide 32-bit colour, but it doesn't like the laptop for some reason.

Hmm. I don't remember having to register anywhere to use it.

Dave

Don't even think about running it on a dial-up. The _minimum_ they specify is 128 Kb and the recommended is 768 and they mean it.

Most of the areas they cover are "medium resolution". Many major cities get

3-meter or better coverage. In some areas you can make out cars in parking lots, but I haven't seen one yet that gives enough resolution to identify them by model.

Resolution really varies. I was looking at a place in Wisconsin

42.62091 (north) -88.311550 (west)

In the south part of the area you can clearly see the black tar strips in the road, see windows on the trucks parked nearby. Can't quite pick up the models but cars, pickups, and SUV's are clear.

According to Lew Hartswick :

At least, you are presumably using a system which they

*support*. I just went to look at their site, and it says the following;

====================================================================== OS: Windows 2000, XP, or Mac OS X (10.3.9 +) ======================================================================

For someone who will not let a Windows system touch the outside net, and who has only unix systems which he *will* allow to touch the net, the only option seems to be to pick up a Mac for this sort of thing. And I'm *not* that thrilled with even the idea of a Mac -- even though it does have a unix underpinning these days.

Good Luck, DoN.

I think you're being excessively paranoid about Windows. What do you think will happen if you "let a Windows system touch the outside net"?