Google Maps News: Sharper satellite images and Streetview

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi all,

Starting this week, you’ll see a brighter, more vibrant globe made possible thanks to Google’s new AI tools to remove clouds and sharpen satellite images.

This is what Stafford Marquardt who is Senior Product Manager for Maps explained 2 days ago in this announcement on The Keyword which is Google’s official blog.

You can read about the new Cloud Score+ AI here. It eliminates clouds by combining more images. Here is an example from Egypt’s Toshka Lakes, recently formed in the Sahara Desert from Lake Nasser overflow.

I don’t think I have seen this new feature yet. Please share your experience in a reply below when you see it. But I don’t recall clouds being an issue around here. While satellite images can have somewhat low resolution, I believe that photos taken from planes (arial photos) are often replacing images from satellites when we zoom in.

Better streetview

The announcement also mentioned that 80 places now get updated streetview images. Keep an eye out for updated Street View images from around the world, in countries like Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Rwanda, Serbia, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Uruguay and many more.

Here is one example from my country featured in The Blog:

To me, this image looks stunning compared to the quality we are used to in Streetview.

I looked up the place on Streetview and found this image:

Take a look for yourself here. It was super easy to find the place by using Google Lens.

Thanks to @AdrianLunsong for drawing my attention to the new announcement.

Cheers

Morten

[SandmanT]

I have to say Apple’s street view and satellite view where available is quite impressive. I’d say superior in the few places I’ve seen. Most importantly, it’s not AI (artificially generated) like Googles version. In fact, or seems Googles is losing ground rapidly in LLM (AI) universe.

[shaileno]

Yes @MortenCopenhagen sir you are right, I also didn’t see any update on satellite views map, when I draw the roads. Anyway thanks for update sir .

[MrFreez]

This is interesting @MortenCopenhagen
I can imagine the possibility of having better view and thus better approval rate for road drawing on Google Maps, I’m sure this will interest TRAC enthusiasts like @SholaIB

Another interesting read from the link you shared is the ability to go back in time to see history from up to 80 years back of the satellite view of a place. Brilliant. Thanks for sharing

[MortenCopenhagen]

Thanks for the feedback, @MrFreez

I tested the new Google earth timeline/time lapse but the resolution was so low on my end that I decided not to include it. Is it working for you?

By the way, when adding new roads on Desktop you might see even newer satellite images.

Cheers

Morten

[shaileno]

Yes @MortenCopenhagen sir just I checked the map on desktop computer,now looks clear and sharp on map in comparison to previous version of map.

Thanks

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hehe I told you first!

This was in my inbox right now:

Cheers

Morten

[Camo_Rama]

Very nice scene in Denmark but what I like to do (mainly with my own Street View panos of Greek Islands) is to generate a Windows Background image which I can rotate on a daily basis to remind me of my travels now I am no longer able to do so at 80 years old.

So I did the same for this scene.

[L-C]

Hi @MortenCopenhagen , some good news in this announcement, however I wanted to add some precisions:

« To me, this image looks stunning compared to the quality we are used to in Streetview. »

This image quality is what Google provides with their latest camera generation introduced in 2017. Not really improvements, however they did introduce the new high quality imagery in many countries lately, like Iceland. Yesterday their released Street View in Liechtenstein, where no data was available before, and they just started releasing new high quality imagery in Switzerland around an hour ago.

Unfortunately they also released low quality coverage (lower than the one made in 2008-2011!) in some countries like Ecuador, Cambodia, or Finland, with Nepal being the next victim as locals spotted cars with bad cameras driving around. Particularly, India is fully covered in bad, blurry imagery, and Apple is driving its high quality cameras in India right now. This is going to be a hard hit for Google when Apple will publish its own images: millions of Indians are going to compare the quality and this will really not look good for Google. A similar case happened when Apple released views of Hawai’i, Google was mocked because of the old, mediocre quality that was available at this time on a road and they rushed a new car on this specific road only to quickly update the data and avoid looking bad. Google needs to react quick by sending their good cameras to India as soon as possible!

« Maybe they removed the people! »

They didn’t! You can actually see the exact same image here, one frame next the view you found: https://maps.app.goo.gl/PPMrjThR1CbtRFFn6