Google Offers Hybrid Satellite and Map View

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."

I wonder ...

... how large is the intersection of code between Google Maps and Google Earth?

Re:I wonder ...

Earthsized?

Nice

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

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

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:As good as this looks...

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...

Re:Hmm...

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.InternetExplorerSupportForPNG [msdn.com]

Re:Hmm...

Perhaps a more interesting question would be why they bothered to make it work with IE, rather than requiring IE to work with PNGs. How long is it before Google is strong enough, at least in the web sphere, to dictate terms to Microsoft?

Maybe they're there already - it's not implausible that they could release something that doesn't work properly with existing versions of IE, along with an explanatory note to upgrade to a working browser.

If they put in a direct link to Firefox say, the takeup could be huge, dwarfing the installed base to date. All of us here may know about all the alternative browsers, but your average joe doesn't - but if Google were to start pushing people towards them... now *that* would be news.

Not entirely new

Mapper of Doom [ofdoom.com] has had this for quite some time, albeit with existing data from Terraserver.

Scale!

They added a scale since the last time I checked the maps, too! Halleluah!

Poor Guy...

Ouch, you must be on dial-up. My condolences. Maybe you can write google and see if they can do an ascii version to speed up the downloads.

BUT

Still NO EXIT NUMBERS! :(
I can't believe I still use Mapquest's tiny and slow interface just to find freeway exit numbers.

Re:Scale!

Not really. Depending on how they project from spheroid to rectangle, the scale should change. The distance between parallels is constant, but the distance between meridians decreases as you move further from the equator.

I guess it is actually odd, though, because the rectangle covers the same area at all times. Interesting.

This'll come in handy...

This is certainly bad news for all those girls I've been stalking.

Scaled as well

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.

Re:Scaled as well

Excuse me, there are maps for Ireland as well. (Not to mention Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.)

PNG support in IE

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!

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

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

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?

WTF is up with you people?

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!

This guy did it earlier...

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.

Re:It has to be said.

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.

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.

Re:It has to be said.

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.

Re:It has to be said.

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!

Zoom support

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.

IE supported as well (transparent PNG)

There are a couple of different ways to achieve transparent PNGs in IE - besides simple 100% transparent colors (as known from gifs). The Google overlay isn't simply 100% transparent. The same goes for the "speech bubble" when clicking on different places.

There are a couple of different methods. The Google Maps API mentions one:

http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/#XHT ML_and_VML [google.com]